Microsoft Announces New Digital Innovations At Ignite 2021

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, kicked off Microsoft Ignite 2021, the company’s premier enterprise conference, with a virtual keynote focused on the critical role of the public cloud today, and the key attributes that we believe will drive the next generation of innovation from the cloud.

Satya was joined for this one-of-a-kind keynote by Mixed Reality Technical Fellow Alex Kipman.

Microsoft Ignite features 48 hours of free and continuous digital content. Day 1 included key segments with Jared Spataro, CVP, Modern Work, and Vasu Jakkal, CVP, Security, Compliance and Identity, and a fireside chat with Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer, Windows & Devices and Roanne Sones, CVP, Azure Edge & Platform. Day 2 included Scott Guthrie, EVP, Cloud & AI hosting a Q&A, followed later by a customer discussion with Judson Althoff, EVP, Commercial.

Key highlights:
•Innovations in Teams and Microsoft 365 aid organisations with the tools they need to be resilient and thrive in the new world of hybrid work – including external collaboration, enhanced meeting security, and real-time customer journey orchestration capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing.

•The new solution, Azure Percept, is a family of devices and services that powers real-time insights at the edge through hardware accelerators integrated with Azure Machine Learning and AI capabilities and allows customers and partners to build solutions regardless of where they are on their journey.

•Professional developers are often tasked with quickly creating business solutions to help organisations adjust in an unprecedented environment. To aid innovation and support professional developers, new low code updates in Power Platform and Azure will equip them with features that seamlessly automate legacy applications and support our vision for low code programming across power Platform applications and across the cloud.

•As data continues to become ever important to a business’s success, Azure Data is providing new solutions and tools that enable customers to easily discover data, derive meaning from it, and maximize its business value – including Purview-Synapse integration and expanded data sources for Purview, along with Cosmos DB new features including managed instance for Cassandra and Mongo DB support.

•Updates with Azure and Microsoft 365 aid security, compliance, and identity, empowering defenders to manage, defend and protect employees, data, work, and personal safety. These continue to make people and organisations more resilient in an environment of unexpected change.

•Businesses can now use Azure Communication Services to easily connect customers using their custom-built app with internal users on Microsoft Teams via voice, video, or chat. Customers can connect to employees using Teams without any app download or required authentication.

A few key stories we want to call attention to include:
• With Azure Percept, Microsoft adds new ways for customers to bring AI to the edge
• Innovate across hybrid and multi-cloud with new Azure Arc capabilities
• Harness the power of data with Azure Data and AI
• Securing & governing data in a new hybrid work reality
• Security for all: How Microsoft is using the cloud and AI to secure and protect a multi-everything world
• Flexible work is here to stay: Microsoft 365 solutions for the hybrid work world
• Announcing Power Platform updates at Microsoft Ignite 2021