What I Learned at Microsoft Ignite

At final calendar week's Microsoft Ignite conference, I heard a lot well-nigh Open Data; even more about security, including both tools and operations; and much about how Office 365 is evolving.

But in that location were as well some broader themes I establish interesting.

AI is Everywhere, and Being Used More Than You Recollect

It seems like AI has been the focus of every trade show and every vendor briefing this year, and Ignite was no exception. And, similar many vendors, one of the big trends at Ignite was the "democratization of AI."

At Ignite, a big theme was "Everyday AI." It was visible in the new tools in Office, such as the Designer tools in PowerPoint, which propose new looks for your presentation; the ideas in Excel that advise different chart formats; and the Focused Inbox feature within Outlook.

The try is mostly aimed at developers. Dave Forstrom, Microsoft's Senior Managing director of Communications for AI, told me that 1.2 million developers have used ane or more of Microsoft'due south cognitive services and 340,000 developers take used bot services. One big focus is making these tools available to denizen developers, so that they likewise tin can enable AI features, be these connections to services such as natural language processing or access to an organization's "knowledge graph" with only a few lines of lawmaking.

Zo.ai

Microsoft has a particular focus on chat bots reached via social media, such every bit Xiaoice, which Forstrom said had 200 million users in Prc, or Zo, which is in preview in the US. These conversational bots are "semantic machines," and while the technology is not fully rolled out, Forstrom said 25 to thirty customers have actually launched client-facing bots today.

Further upward the spectrum is Azure ML, and in this expanse there is a push toward automated machine learning that aims to identify the almost efficient algorithms and to optimize models, including tuning some of the labels. Microsoft has emphasized openness in AI, and to that cease it is working with Facebook and Amazon Web Services on the Open Neural Network Commutation (ONNX) ecosystem. This includes new hardware acceleration for FPGAs, and a Python SDK for the service, which a number of developers take requested.

Information Is Notwithstanding the About Important Thing

In session after session, information technology was clear that when it comes to AI and analytics, having the right information, in the right format, is crucial. This is not but true for motorcar learning, but likewise for more traditional kinds of analytics. While many of the attendees I spoke with were excited near AI and auto learning, the vast majority were only as concerned about more traditional analytics.

Microsoft appear a diversity of new tools, including a preview of SQL Server 2022—which is focused on building-in "big data"—versions of Spark and the Hadoop Distributed File Arrangement packaged together, likewise every bit connectors to other databases. The idea seems to exist to plough SQL Server into a data warehouse for multiple kinds of projects.

Azure Data Explorer, also in preview, is an indexing and query system designed to help users quickly find larger event information. Additionally, the Cosmos DB distributed database has been improved with multi-master support, a Cassandra API, and reserved capacity.

Of grade, in that location are many other databases available likewise, in both cloud services and on Microsoft's platform. I'm impressed past some of the capabilities in Snowflake, a information warehouse production that started on Amazon Web Services and has since been generally released on Azure. Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia, who used to run Microsoft'south Server and Tools division, talked most how Snowflake has a dissimilar architecture compared to other cloud databases, and emphasized that this enables "multi-cluster shared information," and then customers tin can securely share information with other customers.

How AI and IoT Work Together Is Important

It's non a new idea, but I heard several speakers talk almost how AI is increasingly being used in edge or Internet of Things (IoT) applications to make devices smarter. In his keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called out ane such application, noting how agricultural auto maker Buhler is using computer vision to look for toxins in the food supply.

Buhler Principal Digital Officeholder Stuart Bashford later on explained to me how his company has been working on diverse projects to help make the food supply safer and more efficient. The visitor brought its new LumoVision grain sorter to the testify, in which sensors rapidly analyze grains of corn and remove those that have aflatoxin. This automobile uses a hyperspectral camera to obtain a 3D view of the kernels and Microsoft'due south ML Studio for the processing; the whole operation runs on internal FPGAs and DSPs to brand a determination within 80 microseconds.

Buhler is currently working with Whitworth Brothers, a large U.Thou. miller, on a blockchain solution to runway grain from the subcontract to the store. It sounds similar to a blockchain initiative promoted by Walmart and IBM, but he said this is different in that it isn't controlled by a single shop and is designed to piece of work with very inexpensive bolt, such as wheat.

Microsoft announced a number of new features in this surface area. Among the near interesting were new tools for creating "digital twins"—or digital replicas of spaces and infrastructure—using the cloud, AI, and IoT to assist reduce the need for maintenance and energy consumption, and the Azure Data Box Edge appliance, designed to brand it easier to capture and transform data earlier it gets to the cloud. Azure Sphere, Microsoft's edge security device, which had been announced, is now in public preview.

The Surface Hub is a Rotating, Multi-User Electronic Whiteboard

On the hardware front, Microsoft teased forthcoming versions of its Surface Hub reckoner, designed to be used equally a big whiteboard (with video) for group collaboration in Teams.

In fact, the house showed two unlike devices. The more than basic Surface Hub 2S is due to transport in the second quarter of 2022, and is considerably sleeker than the existing unit. Information technology has a 50.v-inch 4K display, a ameliorate camera, and is low-cal plenty and so that it can be moved easily (and indeed, Steelcase has a stand for just that purpose). New features include one-touch on log-in, so you tin can log into a meeting similar you would a computer, and a number of improvements to the whiteboard characteristic.

The more than interesting machine is the 2X, which was first demonstrated in the Ignite keynote and which has multi-user back up then that multiple people can log into the same screen and each share their files, or etc. The 2X volition also support tiling and rotation, and Microsoft demoed how the text on the screen stays in the right position as you rotate the machine from horizontal to vertical. The new Surface Hub line includes a calculator within a cartridge that slides into the back of the screen, so you will be able to easily upgrade from the 2S to the 2X. Even though Microsoft wasn't set to share hardware specifications, these are the highest-end whiteboards that I've seen, and they look great.

The company saved its introductions of the new Surface Studio 2, Surface Pro six, Surface Laptop ii, and Surface Headphones for this week. These are prissy-looking devices, and Microsoft has washed a skillful chore integrating them with Windows, though there are a number of great-looking Windows laptops out there. Still, there'southward nothing else quite like the Studio, which has an astonishing screen, the Dial hardware, and the ability to lay flat. It'southward pricey, simply I tin can certainly imagine that it would be a big hit in design departments.

Microsoft Is Serious Most Teams, and Many Partners Agree – Only It Still Has a Way to Go

Microsoft spent a lot of time talking about Teams, its latest collaboration platform, which currently has many of the conversation features of a product like Slack, along with connections into much of the rest of the Microsoft Function 365 suite. Many of the talks demonstrated how Microsoft is working to integrate more features into Teams, such equally making Yammer, an earlier conversation tool, a tab within teams, or linking Teams and Skype for Business organization.

On the show floor, I saw I lot of companies pushing Teams integration. Crestron, which has long been known for devices for integrated media in conference rooms and similar locations, at present offers a more traditional phone headset that'south designed for Teams, with software command hosted in Azure.

Plantronics had a dock that turns your mobile telephone into a more traditional phone, also for employ with Teams.

It's not all that sexy, simply it is useful. The concept behind Teams makes sense, and Microsoft seems pretty committed to the idea, only in that location are even so a number of missing (simply promised) features to come, so we'll take to run into how well information technology actually works in do. I have seen Microsoft talk about unified communications for a long time—I remember products similar the Office Communications Server, Lync, and Skype for Concern—and am a fleck skeptical.

Ecosystems Win

The need for platforms and ecosystems has been a key part of the computer industry since the heyday of Windows (and arguably going back to the IBM 360), merely it'southward become even more than important in an era when most companies desire a "360-degree view" of their customers. To that stop, Microsoft announced an Open Data Initiative, and Nadella brought upwards SAP CEO Pecker McDermott and Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen. The idea is to share information, primarily relating to the customer feel, using the principal that each system should take full control over their ain data; the hope is to break downwards silos.

Of course, other companies empathise the importance of alliances as well. During its conference the aforementioned week, Salesforce appear a partnership with Amazon Web Services to simplify how customers can share and synchronize data, and to link multiple services together. Of form, at that place are lots of other partnerships, as seen on the show floors at all of these kinds of events (not simply Ignite and Dreamforce, only also AWS RE-Invent, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Open Globe, IBM Call back, and others). It's clear that no i company will have all the answers, or all the data, and working together is, and will be, a key part of the engineering science that everyone needs today—and tomorrow.