Things looked a little different for this year’s annual Microsoft Inspire event, a conference where partners around the world gather to discuss all things related to the well-known company. Although the event was held virtually this year, the experience remained the same – amazing content, presentations, keynotes, and new announcements made it just as good as last year’s. In fact, Microsoft rolled out so many new features and developments that it became tricky to know what to pay attention to. So, for your convenience, we took care of the hard part and summed up the top announcements from this year’s Inspire event!
Azure: Adjusting to Rapidly Changing Conditions
Microsoft continues to invest in hybrid offerings, announcing new Azure hybrid, migration, data, and developer capabilities to help improve the journey to the cloud.
Azure HCI – Hybrid Cloud Offering: Microsoft launched the latest member of the Microsoft hybrid portfolio – Azure Stack HCI – which combines the price-performance of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) with native Azure hybrid capabilities. Learn more here.
Azure Migrate: It is more important than ever for companies to be able to act, innovate, and pivot IT operations quickly to fit the needs of the business. Microsoft shared new Azure Migration enhancements to help customers with their datacenter assessments. Learn more here.
Teams: The Communication Platform that Keeps Growing
When the pandemic hit earlier this year, many organizations quickly implemented Microsoft Teams as part of their work from home strategy. At Converge, we are helping many such organizations adhere to their data governance and compliance policies while leveraging the power of the Teams platform.
At Inspire, there were new announcements around tighter integration with the Power platform, and our engineers are already y working to build out applications and workflows in a secure and compliant manner.
Teams Room Premium: Microsoft released Teams Rooms with premium meeting room experiences that provide cloud-based IT services with 24/7 proactive management. Learn more here!
Power BI: Microsoft recently announced a tighter integration with the Power Platform, which includes Power BI and Power Apps. With new abilities to design and deploy chatbots, automation, and access to different layers of data, business leaders have their work cut out for them. They need to understand these new capabilities and make sure they are right for their users and their businesses. It is a lot to expect average users to become low-code application experts and data integrators. Automation and timely access to the right information a can benefit almost everyone when deployed properly. Learn more here.
Security & Compliance: More Important Than Ever
As more organizations shift to the cloud, having a strong security strategy is more important than ever. Tools like Azure Sentinel, Microsoft Threat Protection, Microsoft Information Protection, and Azure Active Directory are sweet spots for security on Azure. Furthermore, the M365 suite allows for high collaboration and productivity while having a strong foundation of security embedded within it.
Endpoint DLP: Microsoft has announced Endpoint DLP is coming to tenancies possessing “Microsoft 365 E5/A5, Microsoft 365 E5/A5 Compliance, and Microsoft 365 E5/A5 Information Protection and Governance” subscriptions. Endpoint DLP, another Microsoft Information Protection technology, offers protection for data on devices when end users take certain actions.
Microsoft explained that “Endpoint DLP is native to Windows 10 and the new Microsoft Edge browser.” The benefit of this built-in aspect is that there’s no additional software to install. Learn more here.
Microsoft is committed to cost savings –you’re not going to find a better, more cost-effective security product with a company bigger or more agile behind it.
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For a more comprehensive overview of the changes that Microsoft announced, check out the list of Microsoft Inspire updates in their 2020 Book of News.
The amount of announcements can be overwhelming – let’s discuss how these changes can affect your Microsoft investment and your business vision. Get started.
