‘Do more with less’ was the slogan of this year’s Microsoft Ignite, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote advocating that—with the exciting advances in cloud technology—we could all be spending “less time, less cost, less complexity” while achieving “more innovation, more agility, and more resilience.” Here are the five key imperatives that permeated the conference, and other top highlights from Microsoft Ignite 2022.
5 key imperatives of Microsoft Ignite 2022
1. Be data-driven and optimize with Azure
Moving to the cloud is the most cost-effective way to ensure you’re doing more with less. In fact, a recent survey, shared by Nadella, found that Microsoft Azure provided 80% more savings to its end-users, compared to competitor cloud platforms. And naturally, Microsoft is keen to build on this success, helping organizations further leverage these savings and innovate even more.
That’s where Azure Arc comes in. Acting as a ‘bridge’, it extends the Azure platform, so you can build applications with Azure that run across on-premises, edge, and multi-cloud environments.
Among other exciting updates, Microsoft Ignite 2022 also saw the reveal of Azure’s Elastic SAN—the industry’s first cloud-native, fully-managed area network service, as well as the brand new open-source Azure Managed Confidential Consortium Framework, which leverages the isolation and attestation capabilities of Trusted Execution Environments.
To find out more, we recommend watching the session Ask the Experts: Innovate on your terms using Azure Arc to bring cloud-native technologies anywhere from cloud to edge.
2. Deliver efficiency with automation and AI
AI is the ultimate amplifier when it comes to doing ‘more with less’ and data scientists and machine learning engineers can already use Azure Machine Learning to build, train, and deploy large-scale projects. Since last year’s Microsoft Ignite, there have been significant advances in Microsoft’s own AI, with the cloud vendor having successfully trained Turing for rich language understanding, Z-code for hundreds of language translations, and Florence for breakthrough visual recognition. Microsoft is also working with Open AI to train GPT family of models for human-like language generation, DALL-E for realistic image generation and editing, and Codex for advanced code generation in over a dozen programming languages. Watch the session below to find out more.
3. Innovate with a cloud developer platform
According to Gartner, by 2025, 70% of new enterprise applications will be built using low-code or no code at all, which is a huge jump compared to just 25% in 2020. The initial findings of the innovative GitHub Copilot project reveal that developers are able to write code 55% faster with the Copilot, and are reporting feeling more fulfilled as they go along.
Microsoft’s vision is to empower everyone—not just web developers—to create workflows, applications, and a range of web features that can propel your company forward. So, Microsoft is bringing the same principles and capabilities behind GitHub Copilot to their own Power Platform, with lots of exciting new features that allow you to describe what you want to create in natural, human language, letting the AI do the rest, particularly in the area of building automated workflows.
Another exciting feature is Microsoft Syntex. Every organization uses a range of content, from legal documents to presentations, to invoices, and more. Often, finding what you need can be time-consuming, impacting your productivity. Microsoft Syntex empowers people across the organization by automating this, bringing the right type of content into the process flow exactly when and where they’re most needed. What’s more—it does so in a host of languages.
To find out more about the full potential of these features, and how they could benefit your business, we recommend watching Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Innovating with Power Apps and Azure talk.
4. Re-energize your workforce and empower people to work in new ways
It’s no secret that we work in a very different way than we used to, being so digitally connected, and Microsoft Ignite 2022 revealed a host of new features and updates to Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Viva, all designed to enable teams to work effectively in this digital and hybrid era. Find out more in the session Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Microsoft 365 and next-gen collaboration.
Embracing 'data over dogma' when it comes to productivity
What’s more, Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index identifies a number of priorities for organizations that want to stay ahead of times (and ahead of their competitors) in today’s tough job market.
By now, we know that remote and hybrid working works. And yet, only 12% of leaders have full confidence that their employees are being productive. In his keynote, Nadella advocated that we need to end the ‘productivity paranoia’ and start embracing ‘data over dogma’ as 80% of employees said they were just as (or even more!) productive since their work shifted to a fully remote or hybrid model.
And, while some leaders still see the return to the office as a top priority, they need to recognize that, for employees, the main motivation for doing this isn’t policy—it’s social interaction. As many as 84% of respondents’ main motivator to come into the office was the ability to socialize with their colleagues.
Providing ongoing career development and upskilling opportunities
Leaders should also be making efforts to continually ‘re-recruit’ their existing employees long after they’ve accepted the job offer. 76% of employees surveyed reported that they would stay at the job longer if they had more learning opportunities. So, in a job market as competitive as the cloud, leaders need to make every effort to provide ongoing learning, professional development, and upskilling opportunities for their employees.
Announcing Microsoft Learn Career Connected
On that note, Revolent has been selected to be part of Microsoft Learn Career Connected—a new employability program that is helping to address the cloud skills challenge. As a partner, we are thrilled to be part of this exciting new program, helping individuals step into exciting Microsoft careers and working to develop pipelines of certified, business-ready talent. If you’re looking for a workforce development partner to secure the Microsoft cloud talent you need, simply get in touch to see how Revolent can help.
5. Protect everything, everyone, everywhere
As cybercrime rates accelerate, security should be a top priority for any organization. Microsoft’s answer to one of their customers’ main pain points—using multiple disconnected solutions from different sources that don’t integrate all too well—is a natively-integrated security solution. It includes Microsoft Entra, Purview, Priva, Intune, Defender, and Sentinel—each covering a different key area of security, providing a seamless and secure solution.
Learn more about the cyber security landscape of today, what it could mean for your business, and how AI can be used to empower security teams across your business by watching the session below.
