Your Microsoft Inspire day 1 recap is here.
Microsoft Inspire is finally here! The entire Pax8 Microsoft team gathered at the Pax8 headquarters in Denver so we could watch together and break down all the highlights.
Key highlights and announcements
Microsoft shared a lot of great insights into the future of the industry and how AI will be incorporated. The industry is undergoing another platform shift with the next generation of AI This shift is happening in two dimensions. The first relates to user interface and how these human-computer interfaces are becoming more intuitive and natural to interact with. The second dimension is about digitizing people, places, and things. By digitizing your data, AI makes it possible to start with a draft of any task you want to complete with full predictive capabilities.
In alignment with the many AI announcements made today, Microsoft announced new Azure tools and Azure funding opportunities for partners. These include:
- Azure Boost is a new system that offloads virtualization processes, traditionally done by hypervisor and the host OS to next-gen hardware, to deliver the next level of performance and security for your workloads.
- Extended Security Updates (ESU) enabled by Azure Arc seamlessly deploy and manage ESUs on-premises and in multi-cloud environments, providing flexibility with monthly pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and no upfront commitments.
- Expansion of Azure Migrate and Modernize and Azure Innovate incremental investment to assist partners in helping their customers migrate to the cloud while maximizing earning opportunities.
AI
The core theme of Inspire day 1 centered on artificial intelligence. The era of AI has arrived, and Microsoft stressed the importance of organizations becoming AI-ready. With data fragmentation plaguing many organizations, it is business-critical for organizations to review how their data is managed. To unlock the full potential of AI and deliver on the promise of advanced AI capabilities, it is imperative for organizations to migrate to the cloud to manage their data better.
To support organizations in their effort to implement AI, Microsoft has announced key partnerships that further drive AI across platforms:
- Microsoft ❤️ OpenAI — Microsoft announced the third phase of their partnership with OpenAI, which extends their current collaboration across AI computing and research and expands the availability of Azure OpenAI services in North America and Western Europe, while opening availability in Asia for the first time.
- Microsoft ❤️ Open Source — Microsoft announced their AI partnership with Meta to bring Llama 2 to the Azure AI model catalog and Windows. The Azure AI model catalog serves as a hub of foundation models and empowers developers to customize and deploy large, pre-built AI models.
Process intelligence is changing the way organizations optimize and develop their current processes. Starting August 1, 2023, Power Automate Process Mining will become generally available. Power Automate Process Mining, infused with next-generation AI, enables organizations to understand their business processes, maximize process insights, and drive process improvement with automation and low-code apps.
To further assist partners in their AI learning journey, Microsoft announced they will begin hosting Azure OpenAI and Copilot Sales Bootcamps starting this September alongside their existing Modern Workplace, Security, Business Applications, and Azure offerings.
Copilot
During last year’s Inspire, Microsoft announced Copilot, and this year they doubled down with a Copilot offering for every cloud experience.
Microsoft announced that Bing Chat Enterprise launched today, July 18, 2023, for organizations that want to utilize Bing Chat while keeping their business data secure. Bing Chat Enterprise will be included with Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3, and Microsoft 365 E5. A standalone SKU will be made available at a later date.
Microsoft 365 Copilot will also soon be offered as a paid add-on for customers with Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3, and Microsoft 365 E5.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enters general availability starting September 1, 2023, with further enhancements and capabilities coming soon, which enable organizations to use data across Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Marketing.
As an evolution of last year’s Viva Sales, Microsoft announced Microsoft Sales Copilot. Microsoft Sales Copilot will empower organizations to gather insights from their business data by summarizing email threads, drafting new emails, updating customer records, adding new contacts automatically, summarizing the customer journey, and asking Copilot for updates on sales opportunities.
With the expansion of AI and Copilot capabilities, Microsoft is prioritizing security for their AI tools. With Gartner predicting that 60% of customers will rely entirely on MSPs for security by 2025, Microsoft has pushed a 50% increase in partner investment into security to enable partners to build security practices. Microsoft Security Copilot will defend at machine speed and automatically enable responses within minutes. Microsoft Security Copilot will offer early access this fall of 2023. Partners interested in joining the Security Advisory Council should visit aka.ms/securitycopilotpartner.
Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program
Microsoft announced their new Microsoft Cloud Partner Program (MCPP) last year to build a more expansive and diversified community. Today we learned about the next iteration of the MCPP — the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. Alongside this new program, Microsoft has also announced three new designations and three new specializations.
These new designations provide opportunities for partners to differentiate their technical capabilities and demonstrate customer success. This includes:
- New training services designation for learning partners
- ISV designations for partners building solutions aligned with the Microsoft Cloud and industry clouds
- Support services designation
The new specializations announced today are centered on AI and partners’ AI capabilities. These include:
- Build and modernize AI apps with Microsoft Azure specialization
- Intelligent automation specialization
- Business intelligence specialization
See you for day 2
Day 1 was jam-packed, and we can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings! Stay tuned to our Microsoft Inspire page to catch all our day 2 insights.
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