How to optimise for the new world of hybrid work

The work environment has changed in a post-COVID world, making it imperative for business owners and employees to seek new ways of working to achieve common goals.

There is already a remedy to help businesses transition to this new work environment, according to Microsoft Influencer Events Team.

Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft in his opening remarks at Microsoft Ignite 2021 discussed how Microsoft and the Microsoft Cloud are at the cutting edge of helping organisations and their employees and customers navigate the major trends of this new time: How to optimise for the new world of hybrid work; how to help customers build hyperconnected business; how every business can become a digital business; how to protect everything with end-to-end security.

“At Ignite, we are introducing more than 90 new services and updates and will feature tech sessions that dive into news and demos from: Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Microsoft 365; Alysa Taylor, Corporate Vice President, Industry, Apps, and Data Marketing; Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud & AI; Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president, Security, Compliance, and Identity.”

News highlights

Powering the metaverse. The Microsoft Cloud provides a comprehensive set of resources designed to power metaverses – there will be more than one! At Ignite, we are making two important announcements that continue the evolution of the metaverse: Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces. Now in preview, this product provides a new perspective on the way people move and interact with nearly any space, from the retail store to the factory floor, and how they manage health and safety in a hybrid work environment; Mesh for Microsoft Teams. This bridging of communication methods makes human presence the ultimate connection. Now, everyone in a meeting can be present without being physically present using personalized avatars and immersive spaces that can be accessed from any device, with no special equipment needed.

Translating AI breakthroughs for customers. Large scale artificial intelligence models are now becoming platforms, creating ambient intelligence – digital environments that are responsive and aware of a user’s needs.

Azure OpenAI Service. This new service will give customers access to OpenAI’s powerful models in addition to the security, reliability, compliance, data privacy and other enterprise-grade capabilities built into Microsoft Azure. Microsoft also is offering Azure OpenAI Service customers tools to ensure outputs the models provide are business-appropriate and we are monitoring how people are employing the technology to assure it is being used correctly.

Building a trust fabric. As we continue to explore hybrid work, hyperconnected business, multi-cloud/multi-edge computing and zero trust security, there’s one key element that connects them: the ability to have a digital ecosystem where trust between parties can be established in real time.

Teams Shared Channels allows users to invite an external team to join a channel, schedule a shared channel meeting and collaborate on files.

Chat with Teams allows users to chat seamlessly with people outside of a work network. Teams users at work can chat with any Teams user with a Microsoft personal email address or phone number and remain within the security and compliance protocols of their organization.

 

Important Updates

Microsoft Loop, a new app that moves freely across applications, enabling teams to think, plan and create together.  You can organize everything you need for your project – files, links and data from other apps – into a single workspace. It is easy to use portable components to complete work in chat, meetings or documents, knowing that the content always stays in sync. The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, a marketing solution that puts organizations in control of their customer data to personalize, automate and orchestrate customer journeys.

Context IQ, a set of capabilities that will further integrate collaboration, sharing and communication in the flow of work across Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Teams. Several major updates across Azure, including how we are helping customers manage data and applications across hybrid and multicloud environments with Azure Arc, new, best-of-breed security solutions for small businesses with Defender for Business.