Microsoft news – Page 128

Posted on March 3, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

New IDC report shows big opportunities to transform higher education through AI

In this blog, Microsoft talks about ways to address the top challenges to AI adoption through empowering inclusion, expanding access to accessible and affordable technology, supporting faculty and staff with skills, training, and resources, and partnering on long-terms AI strategies.

Artificial intelligence is transforming higher education, according to a new study released today by IDC and commissioned by Microsoft. The report details the expected opportunity with AI in higher education and the challenges institutions must overcome to realize results.

The study covered 509 higher education institutions in the US, and found that nearly all respondents—99.4 percent—say AI will be instrumental to their institution’s competitiveness in the next three years. Fifteen percent called AI a “game-changer,” and 54 percent of higher education institutions in the US have started to experiment with AI, while 38 percent have adopted AI as a core part of their business strategy.

With the primary goals of improving student outcomes, enabling the workforce of the future, and accelerating innovation, higher education institutions are bullish on the role AI will play in realizing success. The report showed an expected twofold increase in competitiveness, funding, and innovation over the next three years.

In the short term, AI-enabled solutions that don’t require a big data strategy will begin to transform learning. The IDC study found that modernized learning and classrooms top the list of use cases for AI-enabled solutions over the next 12 to 18 months. Modernized learning refers to personalized learning enabled at scale, accessibility, and inclusion features for learners of all abilities, as well as AR/VR for blended learning. Modernized classrooms, likewise, refer to virtual workspaces and labs, as well as smart classrooms.

The top hurdles standing in the way of higher education goals that leverage AI include solution cost and lack of skills: 57 percent of institutions listed cost as the top challenge they face in adopting AI-enabled solutions today. Lack of skills, resources, and continuous learning came in second for employees. And nearly half of organizations said they’re planning to invest equally in developing AI solutions and closing the employee skills gap. The study also revealed a widespread lack of data strategy as well as gaps in data governance policies, quality, and availability. This indicates that many institutions need to better understand and plan for what is needed to support AI-enabled solutions in the long term.

So, what does the research mean for students and educators, and how is Microsoft working to help? Let’s take a look.

Empowering inclusion of all learners

Inclusion is core to everything we do at Microsoft. We believe educators and technology leaders like Microsoft have a responsibility to help bridge the growing skills gap—not only to ensure a skilled workforce in the future, but also to support economic growth and innovation across the world and for future generations. To achieve these goals, strategies need to be inclusive of every individual, and in particular of people who face the challenges of living with physical or learning disabilities.

There are more than 1 billion people globally living with a disability, or around 15 per cent of the world’s population. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, in the US alone, 19.3 percent of people between the ages of 16 and 64 with a disability were employed in 2019. In contrast, the employment-population ratio for persons without a disability was 66.3 percent. Persons with a disability are less likely to have completed a bachelor’s degree or higher than those with no disability.

Children with disabilities are less likely to attend school, and education completion gaps are found across all age groups in all settings, with the pattern more pronounced in poorer countries. But people of differing abilities are just one example of learners with special needs. In 2017, 258 million people (or 1 out of every 30 people) were living outside their country of birth, with children making up over half of all refugees. The education and assessment needs of refugee and migrant children are complex and differ enormously.Today, 9.6 percent of US public school enrollees are non-native English learners. Overcoming the language barrier can be a major challenge for students, leaving them struggling to keep up.

For these reasons, inclusion is a critical component of both modernized learning and modernized classrooms, and a core part of Microsoft’s mission to empower every learner on the planet to achieve more.

Accessible, affordable technology

At Microsoft, we believe technology needs to be affordable and more accessible for everyone to use. Microsoft is prioritizing accessibility in our products and services, building diverse teams, and seeking input from the accessibility community in the development process. Products like Microsoft Teams help provide an inclusive classroom environment, while built-in accessibility tools—such as Microsoft Translator for Education— boost inclusivity for all language speakers, helping people of all abilities and backgrounds participate fully in their education.

Educators and businesspeople alike need access to tools that help them be more effective in their jobs. Microsoft is enabling anyone to build AI-enabled solutions at a lower cost with off-the-shelf tools. In a recent LinkedIn post, Satya Nadella referred to this concept as building a new category of “citizen developers” with the goal of equipping domain experts in every sector with low-code or no-code tools to create solutions that solve their unique needs.

Some recent announcements illustrate how Microsoft is putting this into practice. At Ignite in November, Microsoft announced new capabilities in Microsoft’s Power Platform, including newly named Power Apps and the new Power Virtual Agents. Power Apps help drive innovation across an institution by enabling faculty or staff to quickly build low-code apps, such as those that deliver actionable insights in real time.

The new Power Virtual Agents enable institutions to easily create and maintain intelligent chatbots without having to code, enabling conversational engagement with students and employees. For example, Professor David Kellermann of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has built an intelligent Question Bot that gets smarter and is capable of supplying answers on its own to students, which allows for greater student independence and supports personalized learning. And, as evidenced in this example, these tools can all be incorporated into a single Teams environment for users to access everything in one place, enabling a collaborative, inclusive classroom.

Skills and continuous learning

According to Satya Nadella’s LinkedIn post, there are more than 800 million people today who need to learn new skills for their jobs. Further, two-thirds of students today will eventually apply for jobs that do not yet exist. In today’s world, it is critical that employees continuously update their skills to keep up with technology and its power to drive change, and institutions need to provide students with skills that prepare them to meet the opportunities of tomorrow’s careers.

Last October, we announced the free online AI Business School for Education to enable education leaders to lead their organizations into the age of AI. In launching the school, Microsoft VP of Education Anthony Salcito talked about the opportunity for higher education institutions to provide truly personalized, accessible learning and experiences to all students around the world through technology and AI.

Leading institutions are doing this today. Case in point: Syracuse University’s I-School is partnering with businesses and government to drive experiential learning for its students while building AI solutions with Microsoft technology that help solve real-world problems, such as the solution from Our Ability that helps people with disabilities gain employment. Check out the video to see how Syracuse University is both skilling its students and helping build inclusive technology with AI.

Partnering for a long-term AI strategy

Artificial intelligence runs on data. But 37 percent of respondents in the IDC study said that data strategy and data readiness—including a comprehensive governance plan—were not seen as strategic priorities for their institution, indicating a lack of clarity on what’s needed to execute against an AI strategy.

When it comes to strategic initiatives across areas such as recruitment, retention, graduation, and fundraising in higher education, a more holistic data strategy is required to use AI to drive insight and improvement. Institutions seek agility and iteration, while integrating data from multiple sources and assuring that the data is managed securely and governed responsibly. This can be a long, arduous process.

Microsoft is working to help close this gap by providing a comprehensive data platform with Azure and Power Platform. We also provide guidance and help with execution of data strategy, governance, and readiness through Microsoft Consulting Services and Microsoft partners. Microsoft Consulting Services can help apply machine learning and AI to existing business processes, creating an intelligent model that allows institutions to be proactive in tackling top challenges like strategic planning, transformation initiatives, outcomes assessment, and student success.

Start working with AI and accessibility tools today

The research shows not only the potential returns that institutions stand to gain from AI initiatives, but also that the technology needed to begin realizing that value already exists. The AI Business School is Microsoft’s starting point for guidance to understand AI and build workable short- and long-term strategies. Microsoft Consulting Services can help any organization put data and AI initiatives into practice.

Teachers, schools and education systems also can:

Microsoft’s Power Platform also has built-in accessibility to help anyone take advantage of the tools. Today, Microsoft provides a number of learning paths to develop skills on the Power Platform.

For more information on how to get started with AI today, see the Include all learners with AI one-pager .

Again, make sure to check out the full IDC report here, including where institutions are today on the readiness scale.

And remember that students and educators at eligible institutions can sign up for Office 365 Education for free, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and now Microsoft Teams, plus additional classroom tools. All you need is a valid school email address.

Posted on March 3, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft and the NFL expand partnership to accelerate digital transformation across the League

REDMOND, Wash. — March 3, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. and the National Football League on Tuesday announced an expansion of their deep technology partnership. The multiyear expansion aims to help the entire NFL, including its coaches and players, be more efficient through enhanced communication and collaboration via Microsoft Surface devices and Microsoft Teams, the hub for teamwork in Office 365.

“Since 2013, Microsoft has helped transform the NFL through technology around our game,” said Renie Anderson, chief revenue officer and executive vice president of NFL Partnerships. “Microsoft Surface has quickly become an authentic tool to the game of football and is vital during all NFL games for coaches, players and NFL Officials. And now by working together to integrate Microsoft Teams across the League, together we aim to improve on communications and collaboration in a modern way.”

“We’re inspired to continue to help the NFL accelerate its digital transformation,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president, Modern Life, Search and Devices, Microsoft. “We’ve worked together to innovate the way the game is played with Surface devices to power Instant Replay and in-game play review for players and coaches on the sidelines. And by combining Surface and Microsoft Teams deeper into the fast-paced workflow of the League, we have an incredible opportunity to bring together the power of hardware and software to help everyone be more productive.”

As part of the partnership expansion, Microsoft and the NFL will now work together on modern collaboration technology to further empower the League using the new Microsoft Teams platform. Designed to work seamlessly across Windows, iOS and Android devices, Microsoft Teams brings together chat, calling, meetings, files, document collaboration and workflow into a single app. Rather than use separate apps for those experiences, NFL teams and the entire organization can collaborate and stay constantly and securely connected on Microsoft Teams.

Clubs across the NFL are already taking advantage of the Microsoft Teams platform. The New York Jets use Microsoft Teams to ensure key messages such as the teams’ draft selection are being transmitted accurately in real time. Super Bowl Champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, use Microsoft Teams to coordinate travel schedules among the club’s on-the-road scouts. And the Miami Dolphins used Microsoft Teams to plan Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium.

“The Miami Dolphins rely on Teams for all cross-functional strategic projects. In Teams we can easily collaborate on files, manage shared calendars, host meetings, and use existing integrations. Teams made cooperation with the NFL possible throughout the regular season and with Super Bowl planning,” said Kim Rometo, vice president and chief information officer for the Miami Dolphins.

Microsoft continues to deliver exceptional performance to the NFL with the Microsoft Surface Sideline Viewing System (SVS), bringing near-real-time images and game data, such as down, distance and yard line information, to the players and coaches on the sidelines and to the coaches in the coach’s booth. In addition, Microsoft Surface Instant Replay (MSIR) brings mobile instant replay to the officials on the field, helping improve pace of play. With more than 2,000 Surface devices and 170 Windows Servers deployed across 35 global stadiums, Microsoft technology powers 333 events each year for the NFL on game day.

Beyond the sideline integration, Microsoft works with every NFL team and their partners to develop unique business and consumer-facing integrations to deliver real-world productivity solutions. Ranging from Surface devices serving as playbooks, to film reviews being conducted on the Surface family of devices, to in-stadium usage on gamedays, to business operations teams using Surface devices in their front office, it is clear that NFL teams have embraced Microsoft as a true technology partner.

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com

Alex Riethmiller, NFL, (310) 840-4681, alex.riethmiller@nfl.com

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.

Posted on March 3, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Name that owlet! Xbox to host March 10 Ori and the Will of the Wisps celebration at San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Xbox and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park are teaming up to ring in something magical that we’re pretty excited by. To celebrate the worldwide launch of Ori and the Will of the Wisps on March 11, on Xbox One, Windows 10 PC and with Xbox Game Pass, we’re bringing you a special livestream event. Maybe the most exciting part is that you, and the entire community, can help pick the name of one of the Safari Park’s soon-to-hatch, burrowing owls. Tune in on Tuesday, March 10 at 12:00 p.m. PT for the 2-hour live show on mixer.com/xbox, broadcast from the world-famous San Diego Zoo Safari Park in California.

In Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the little spirit Ori embraces and welcomes Ku, a young owl who is born into Ori’s adoptive family, and now you can help us name the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s next owlet during the live show. Then, you can watch with anticipation in the coming weeks as hatching day approaches through the exclusive Mixer Burrowing Owl Cam pop-up channel. Our friends at the Safari Park have helped us narrow down the list of potential names to Ku, Kuro, Shriek and Ori, inspired by Ori’s magical world. But you don’t have to wait until the special event to begin voting! Go to twitter.com/xbox to vote for your favorite name today.

Packed with special
guests – like Mixer star Ewok, who will show us the ropes as she plays the Ori
and the Will of the Wisps live inside the Park – Wildlife Care Specialist talks,
gameplay, giveaways and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s very own burrowing owls
with their soon-to-hatch egg, this is a special event you won’t want to miss! During
the live show, you can also engage with Ori and the Will of the Wisps
and the Safari Park’s burrowing owls with exclusive stickers, follow emotes and
SFX buttons based on the new Ori soundtrack and real-life burrowing owl sounds.

Players around the globe can pre-order Ori and the Will of the Wisps for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC ahead of the game’s worldwide release on Wednesday, March 11. The game will also be available with Xbox Game Pass on day one of its global launch. In the meantime, you can play Ori and the Blind Forest and over 100 high-quality console and PC games with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate today. Stay tuned to Xbox Wire for the latest updates on the game!

Posted on March 2, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

News reporting grantee winner shines a light on the power of data to improve children’s health

Verah Okeyo’s father earned about $30 a month as a supervisor at a flower farm near Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Her mother was a midwife whose work included educating expectant and new mothers about health and sanitation. The family were provided their own house. The flower farm’s owners made sure Verah and her three siblings were provided with education and healthcare.

Okeyo lost her parents when she was 16 years old – her mother from an illness, her father not long after, from the heartbreak of his wife’s passing. Despite that, looking back, 15 years later, Okeyo realizes she had a relatively privileged life growing up compared to many children in Kenya who have much less – especially when it comes to healthcare.

So when Okeyo became one of the data journalism grantees winners in the Microsoft News grant program in collaboration with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), she used the opportunity to learn more about child mortality rates in Kenya. It is a topic she often covers as a health care reporter for The Nation, the largest daily independent newspaper in Kenya, and part of the Nation Media Group, which operates in East and Central Africa. She wanted to know why, over time, mortality rates have declined in some of Kenya’s 47 counties but increased in others.

“In Kenya, if you belong to the have-nots, which is more than 70% of the population, your rights, particularly for health, are going to be trampled on a lot,” she says. “I grew up without much, but I was never denied health care, and health care with dignity.”

She learned that early on when, as a student journalist in college, she went to report a story at a maternity ward in a public hospital.

“I remember seeing three women in a bed, so I told the nurse, ‘Those three women must be very good friends for them to stay in one bed like that.’ The nurse looked at me and she rolled her eyes, and she said those three women were in that bed because there were no other beds. And that they had just had surgery. And I found that so appalling. Everybody was looking at me, as if ‘Why are you surprised? This is how public health in Kenya works.’”

It was her “aha” moment.

“People sleep on the floor sometimes in public hospitals, they share beds sometimes, there’s no running water in some hospitals,” she says.

Part of Okeyo’s project involved digging through demographic data going back to 1965, two years after Kenya won its independence from Britain. She learned that pneumonia is a primary cause of death for children in remote areas of the country, and diseases such as rabies, kala azar (transmitted by the bite of a female sand fly) and African sleeping sickness are often the leading causes of mortality in children ages 5 and younger.

Those diseases are part of a health classification known as “neglected tropical diseases” because they are exactly that – ignored in terms of education and attention around the world, yet they can also be fatal if they go untreated.

“Neglected tropical diseases are not only neglected by funding organizations, but by health care workers who do not even know about some of them,” Okeyo says. “You find these diseases among the poorest of the poor, because many of the diseases are brought about by not having proper food, access to clean water and to sanitation. These diseases kill people.”

Her work in public health follows in the footsteps of her mother. “She used to go to very, very difficult-to-reach areas, and tell them things like if they wash their hands, they will not get diarrhea. For me, this is continuing the work my mother had started.”

To tell the story, Okeyo used Power BI to visualize the data, county by county. During the process, the data led her to poor and remote areas of the country, something Okeyo felt was important for the investigative team to do to interview people beyond “the usual counties” near Nairobi.

Posted on March 2, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Introducing 2 new Xbox Wireless controllers: Phantom Magenta Special Edition and Arctic Camo Special Edition

For many of our Xbox fans, collecting new Xbox Wireless Controllers and expressing yourselves with unique gaming gear is a way of life. We share the same passion and are excited to announce two new Special Edition Xbox Wireless controllers to add to your collection: the Xbox Wireless Controller – Phantom Magenta Special Edition and the Xbox Wireless Controller – Arctic Camo Special Edition.

Xbox Wireless Controller – Phantom Magenta Special Edition

The Xbox Wireless Controller – Phantom Magenta Special Edition is the third controller in our Phantom Series. The design is rooted in sci-fi, influenced by the type of aesthetics found in “Ex-Machina” and “Ghost in Shell,” and blended with mysterious luxury to create totally unique designs. Highlighted by an ultra-saturated magenta color effect transitioning to translucent, the Xbox Wireless Controller – Phantom Magenta Special Edition joins the Phantom Series in a bold way. You can add Phantom Magenta Special Edition to your collection for $69.99 beginning March 17 or pre-order yours today at Microsoft Stores, online and in-person, and select online retailers worldwide.

Xbox Wireless Controller – Arctic Camo Special Edition

The Xbox Wireless Controller – Arctic Camo Special Edition is the second in our Camo series, the Xbox take on a very classic and iconic look. Specifically, the Xbox Wireless Controller – Arctic Camo Special Edition puts a technical twist on the popular Winter Camo white and grey color scheme. By using frosted transparent resin in the camo pattern, the controller camouflages itself from the inside-out. The diamond-texture on its triggers helps maintain a level of extra technical precision in this series. The Arctic Camo Special Edition will be available in May (for USA, exclusively at Microsoft Stores and Walmart). If you want to lock yours down before then, you can pre-order yours today, worldwide, at Microsoft Stores and select online retailers.

Designs so stunning deserve to be showcased, and what better way than to combine form and function with Controller Gear’s Phantom Magenta and Arctic Camo Xbox Pro Charging stands. Designed for Xbox, Controller Gear’s Xbox Pro Charging Stands are built with the same high-quality material as Xbox Wireless controllers, so it’s always an exact match, and the magnetic contact system ensures a perfect fit and secure charge every time. Each Xbox Pro Charging Stand comes with a premium charging stand, battery cover, rechargeable battery, and 6-foot power cord. The Phantom Magenta and Artic Camo Xbox Pro Charging Stands will be available in North America for $49.99. You can pick up the Phantom Magenta Xbox Pro Charging Stand beginning March 17 at your local Microsoft Store, in person and online, and at select online retailers. The Arctic Camo Xbox Pro Charging Stand will be available April 27 at select online retailers.

Like all Xbox Wireless Controllers, both the Xbox Wireless Controller – Phantom Magenta Special Edition and the Xbox Wireless Controller – Arctic Camo Special Edition are compatible with the Xbox One family of devices. These new controllers will also work with Xbox Series X, Window 10, and mobile devices (when using your Xbox controller with a mobile device, your performance may vary depending on the device and the mobile operating system version). You can also take advantage of the custom button-mapping feature through the Xbox Accessories app. In select markets, these controllers come with 14-day trials for Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass.

Visit Xbox.com or your local retailer, including Microsoft Store, for more information.

Posted on March 2, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft Power Automate to add robotic process automation in April

In case you missed our announcement at Ignite 2019, we launched the preview of UI flows, the new robotic process automation (RPA) capability in Microsoft Power Automate.

Today we’re announcing that UI flows will be generally available worldwide on April 2.

Power Automate already helps hundreds of thousands of organizations automate millions of processes every day. With the addition of RPA, Power Automate will help these organizations to also automate their legacy apps and manual processes through UI-based automation. The key Power Automate capabilities we are announcing today include RPA general availability for attended and unattended scenarios, along with a flexible business model to support any business scenario.

Automate legacy and modern apps on one platform

Power Automate—the most comprehensive cloud-based automation platform—unlocks analog data with AI, automates UI with RPA, and automates cloud applications and databases with built-in connectors. This comprehensive set of capabilities represents the next generation of automation and will be accessible to everyone in an organization including coders and non-coders alike through a low code development environment and uniquely affordable licensing.

With Power Automate, we’re putting automation into the hands of all workers so that everyone can automate repetitive tasks across legacy and modern applications, and simplify how they work in a scalable, more secure way.

Completing the low-code automation portfolio with robotic process automation

Across the software industry, numerous technology solutions help people do their job. But the widespread adoption of technology also means that businesses can end up with disconnected solutions that require them to patch together processes across siloed applications. In the past, joining disparate systems together was difficult or too costly because it required professional developers, especially when some of the data could still be on paper or locked in decades-old Windows or web applications.

Power Automate provides a single solution for end-to-end automation that spans on-premises systems and the cloud. This approach addresses three primary areas:

Intelligent understanding of data: Structured and unstructured data from paper-based invoices to images can be easily understood and integrated with other critical business applications. With AI-driven capabilities like forms processing in AI Builder, end users can parse data from analog sources.
Connecting to over 300 modern apps and services: It is easy to work with information stored in the cloud or on-premises apps and databases. We offer native connectivity to common apps or a company’s APIs with over 300 connectors out-of-the-box and a no-code way to connect to any internal services.
RPA connects to enterprise applications without APIs: Some applications are too old or expensive to support API connectivity. With UI flows, end users can automate their work in these applications by recording manual tasks such as mouse clicks, keyboard inputs, and data entry, and then automate the replay of these steps to integrate with more complex process automations.

The ability to use AI, API connectors, and RPA make Power Automate the most comprehensive automation platform available in the cloud today.

Ingram Micro, one of the world’s largest distributors and IT leaders in technology products, is using Power Automate to improve and automate workflows spanning multiple systems and functions such as new account creation and onboarding, management of customer credit lines, transportation optimization, event management, and integration of external partner data into their internal processes and workflows.

“With Power Automate, we’ve been able to improve the customer and internal associate experience, and at a much faster rate than before, with 75% of Power Automate projects completed in less than 30 days. We are excited to see that Microsoft is investing and delivering in the area of RPA as Power Automate has been an important factor in modernizing our business and we look forward to exploring opportunities with the new RPA capabilities coming this spring.” – Jim Annes, Vice President of US Business Operations and Transformation, Ingram Micro

Democratizing automation for all organizations with attended and unattended RPA

Power Automate offers both attended and unattended RPA. This means you can record and playback actions with or without human interaction (attended and unattended, respectively). And, just as we democratized access to app development with Microsoft Power Apps, and BI with Microsoft Power BI, we are democratizing RPA with Power Automate.

RPA capabilities will be licensed as part of two new Power Automate offers that provide organizations with the flexibility to address a range of attended and unattended scenarios. UI flow authoring and bot orchestration and management are included in both offers, with no add-ons required.*

Attended RPA

The per user with attended RPA plan provides the ability for users to run an attended RPA bot on their workstation. Priced at $40 per user/month, the plan is optimized to span legacy and modern applications by enabling users to combine UI and API-based automation. Additionally, attended RPA includes access to several AI Builder capabilities like forms processing, object detection, prediction, text classification and recognition, and more.

Unattended RPA

An unattended RPA add-on will be available for the new per-user plan with attended RPA, as well as the existing per-flow plan. Each unattended RPA bot is priced at $150 per month, and organizations can choose to scale the number of bots running autonomously as needed.

Both the Power Automate per-user plan with attended RPA and the Power Automate unattended RPA add-on will be available early April. Visit our pricing page to learn more.

Get started now!

Watch an overview of RPA in Power Automate and visit the UI flows web page to learn more about getting started with the RPA preview by clicking ‘Try preview‘. Be sure to stay tuned to the blog for updates like these and future updates to Power Automate and the Power Platform.

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*All pricing information provided is intended solely to be a non-binding estimate as of the date this guidance is provided. It does not constitute an offer by Microsoft. The actual pricing will be reflected on the EA Price List, when this offering becomes available.

Posted on February 28, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft for Healthcare at HIMSS 2020: What to look for at March 9-13 event

Health professionals sitting around a table looking at clipboards and tablets

Our Microsoft for Healthcare team and partners are excited to join health organizations, leaders, and experts at the HIMSS 2020 Conference to build a brighter future for the global health ecosystem so that everyone, everywhere has access to care that works. Join us for 20-minute health talks at our Microsoft Learning Hub, sponsored by LinkedIn Learning and delivered by subject matter experts on a variety of topics including AI as part of your diversity and inclusion plan; Transform patient experiences across your care teams; Using LinkedIn to connect with global health communities, and so much more. Additionally, you can sign up on the HIMSS 2020 event page for a one-on-one meeting with Microsoft executives, or onsite Envisioning sessions that are designed to help you reimagine the possibilities in your transformation journey.

The rate of disruption for health continues to accelerate. Healthcare organizations worldwide have implemented a breadth of technology solutions to transform how they enable personalized care for their patients, empower care teams and employees, secure and protect health information and use data insights to improve operational outcomes.

At Microsoft, we refer to that as tech intensity and believe that it’s not only about what technology health organizations want, but also what capabilities they can build to support access to value-based care into the future. The focus is the move from using the cloud to increase economies of scale to extracting insights from data that can encourage innovation and create an informed and empowered community of providers, payors, innovators, and individuals that will enable an ever-improving state of health throughout the world.

In the healthcare industry, we’re beginning to see steps to make that possible with the establishment of interoperability standards like Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), the rise of data-driven technologies like AI, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as ways of promoting data transparency, such as blockchain. At Microsoft, we’ve made investments like Azure API for FHIR to enable health system interoperability and sharing data in the cloud. This year we reaffirmed an interoperability commitment along with leading cloud providers to enable the frictionless exchange of health care data for patients and the industry. We continue to accelerate the ability to integrate health care data from medical devices and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to empower those working with data from medical devices to securely ingest and transform that data into the FHIR standard. Finally, we are committed to enabling our partners and customers to create new use cases and workflows using an FHIR-based data model.

The ability to unlock data is foundational to any healthcare organization’s digital transformation. Organizations achieving the greatest success are doing more than just implementing existing tech, they are developing their own digital capabilities and proprietary solutions that use data and AI to address the challenges faced by their communities, and seizing new opportunities to reimagine healthcare throughout the patient care journey. In essence, they are becoming change agents and, in the process, placing themselves at the forefront of innovation in this industry.

Examples of change leaders can be seen through customer stories, such as Providence St. Joseph Health creating personalized patient experiences; Northwell Health using data insights to improve operational outcomes; St. Luke’s University Health Network transforming clinical collaboration through their secure, cloud-connected workforce; Humana who’s using AI and predictive care solutions to reimagine health for aging populations and their care teams; and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), who’s reimagining the delivery of health care services by delivering innovative platforms that enable next-generation health networks, integrated digital and physical health care experiences and new care management solutions.

Healthcare organizations looking to drive change in their health ecosystem have turned to Microsoft and our vast partner ecosystem to help them transform. We believe it’s not just about what technology they want from Microsoft, but also what culture and unique capabilities they are building to take their healthcare organization into the future. It’s about having a technology partner you can trust to make you independent with your own technology. Our mission as a company to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more is fundamentally centered on how we increase the tech intensity of every organization that we work with. At Microsoft, we are honored to be a partner in this exciting transformation and I’m excited to showcase Microsoft’s and our partner solutions at HIMSS 2020.

Posted on February 28, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

PIM, PAM, MIM, MAM… Check out our guide to identity acronyms

As a security advisor working with one to three Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) each week, the topic of identity comes up often. These are smart people who have often been in industry for decades. They have their own vocabulary of acronyms that only security professionals know such as DDoS, CEH, CERT, RAT, and 0-Day (if you don’t know one or several of these terms, I encourage you to look them up to build your vocabulary), but they often find themselves confused by Microsoft’s own set of acronyms.

This is the first in a blog series that aims to lessen some confusion around identity by sharing with you some of the terms used at Microsoft. Terms like MFA, PIM, PAM, MIM, MAM, MDM, and a few others. What do they mean and how do they relate to each other?

Multi-Factor Authentication or MFA

Let’s start with what identity means to Microsoft. Identity is the ability to clearly and without doubt ensure the identification of a person, device, location, or application. This is done by establishing trust verification and identity verification using what Microsoft calls Multi-Factor Authentication or MFA. This is a combination of capabilities that allow the entity to establish trust and verify who or what they are.

MFA is an authentication method in which a computer user is granted access only after successfully presenting two or more pieces of evidence (or factors) to an authentication mechanism: something the user and only the user knows (such as a password or PIN), something the user and only the user has (such as a mobile device or FIDO key), and something the user and only the user is (a biometric such as a fingerprint or iris scan).

Microsoft does this with technologies such as Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) in the cloud combined with Windows Hello. Azure AD is Microsoft’s identity and access management solution. Windows Hello is a Windows capability that allows a user to verify who they are with an image, a pin, or other biometric. The person’s identity is stored via an encrypted hash in the cloud, so it’s never shared in the clear (unencrypted). A cryptographic hash is a checksum that allows someone to proof that they know the original input (e.g., a password) and that the input (e.g., a document) has not been modified.

Privileged Identity Management or PIM

What is Privileged Identity Management or PIM? Organizations use PIM to assign, activate, and approve privileged identities in Azure AD. PIM provides time-based and approval-based role activation to mitigate the risks of excessive, unnecessary, or misused access permissions to sensitive resources.

Key features of PIM include:

Just-in-time privileged access to Azure AD and Azure resources.
Time-bound access to resources.
An approval process to activate privileged roles.
MFA enforcement.
Justification to understand why users activate.
Notifications when roles are activated.
Access reviews and internal and external audit history.

Privileged Access Management or PAM

What is Privileged Access Management or PAM? Often confused with PIM, PAM is a capability to help organizations manage identities for existing on-premises Active Directory environments. PAM is an instance of PIM that is accessed using Microsoft Identity Manager or MIM. Confused? Let me explain.

PAM helps organizations solve a few problems including:

Making it harder for attackers to penetrate a network and obtain privileged account access.
Adding protection to privileged groups that control access to domain-joined computers and the applications on those computers.
Providing monitoring, visibility, and fine-grained controls so organizations can see who their privileged admins are and what they are doing.

PAM gives organizations more insight into how admin accounts are being used in the environment.

Microsoft Identity Manager or MIM

But I also mentioned MIM… What is this? Microsoft Identity Manager or MIM helps organizations manage the users, credentials, policies, and access within their organizations and hybrid environments. With MIM, organizations can simplify identity lifecycle management with automated workflows, business rules, and easy integration with heterogenous platforms across the datacenter. MIM enables Active Directory to have the right users and access rights for on-premises apps. Azure AD Connect can then make those users and permissions available in Azure AD for Office 365 and cloud-hosted apps.

OK, so now we know that:

PIM is a capability to help companies manage identities in Azure AD.
PAM is an on-premises capability to manage identities in Active Directory.
MIM helps organizations manage users, credentials, policies, and on-premises access.

Mobile Application Management or MAM

What’s left… Oh yes: Mobile Application Management or MAM. MAM is important because if organizations can only manage identities—but not the apps then they miss a key aspect of protecting data. MAM is connected to a Microsoft capability called Microsoft Intune and is a suite of management features to publish, push, configure, secure, monitor, and update mobile apps for users.

MAM works with or without enrollment of the device, which means organizations can protect sensitive data on almost any device using MAM-WE (without enrollment). If organizations enable MFA, they can verify the user on the device. MAM also helps manage that apps the trusted user or entity can access. If you add in the Mobile Device Management or MDM feature of Intune, you can force enrollment of devices and then use MAM to manage the apps.

It’s well known that Microsoft has a lot of acronyms. This is the first in a series of blog posts aimed to assist you in navigating the acronym forest created by companies and industry. The Microsoft Platform includes a powerful set of capabilities to help encourage users to make the right decisions and gives security leadership, like you, the ability to manage and monitor identities and control access to critical files and network assets.

Posted on February 28, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Cryptography in the era of quantum computers

The promise of quantum computing is that it will help us solve some of the world’s most complex challenges. When designed to scale, quantum systems will have capabilities that exceed our most powerful supercomputers. We’re seeing this begin to take shape even today, with early breakthroughs in material design, financial risk management, and MRI technology. As the global community of quantum researchers, scientists, engineers, and business leaders continue to collaborate to advance the quantum ecosystem, we expect to see quantum impact accelerate across every industry.

However, this same computing power that will unlock solutions to complex challenges will also break some of today’s most sophisticated cryptography. By anticipating the technology of the future, Microsoft Research – in collaboration with academic and industry partners – is getting ready to accept the challenge it poses by preparing customers for a post-quantum world, today.

Cryptography today

Cryptography – the science of encrypting and decrypting data – ensures the confidentiality of the private communications of individuals and organizations online. Encryption is used to protect everything from sending text messages to your friends, to banks transferring billions of dollars to other banks, and these transactions happen in a matter of milliseconds. Online encryption scenarios typically use a combination of two techniques: symmetric-key cryptography and public-key cryptography. In symmetric-key cryptography, the sender and the recipient must know (and keep secret from everyone else) a shared encryption key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the messages to be sent. Public-key cryptography, in contrast, allows two parties to send and receive encrypted messages without any prior sharing of keys. It was the discovery of public-key cryptosystems (by Merkel, Diffie, and Hellman in 1976 and Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman in 1978) that allows us to connect securely with anyone in the world, whether we’ve exchanged data before or not, and to do it so fast that we don’t even realize it’s happening.

Classical vs. quantum computing

The public-key cryptosystems that we use today are based on certain hard mathematical problems. For example, the security of the RSA public-key cryptosystem rests on the difficulty of factoring products of two large prime numbers – if we take two 300-digit prime numbers we can easily multiply them together to get a ~600-digit product, but if we start with just the product it is difficult to figure out the two smaller factors, no matter how much classical computing power is available for the task.

In the early ’90s, Dr. Peter Shor at AT&T Bell Laboratories discovered an algorithm that could factor products of two large prime numbers quickly, but his algorithm requires a quantum computer in order to run. Now known as “Shor’s Algorithm,” his technique defeats the RSA encryption algorithm with the aid of a “big enough” quantum computer. A quantum computer with enough stable qubits to use Shor’s Algorithm to break today’s public-key cryptography is fairly far out, but the risk is on the horizon. Further, an adversary could be recording encrypted internet traffic now for decryption later, when a sufficiently large quantum computer becomes available. In this way, future quantum computers are a threat to the long-term security of today’s information.

Post-quantum cryptography

To address this threat, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – whose charter is to promote innovation and industrial competitiveness across a broad spectrum of technologies and endeavors, including cybersecurity – has begun the process of standardizing new public-key cryptographic algorithms that cannot be attacked efficiently even with the aid of quantum computer. With participants from around the globe, this project’s goal is to identify new cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to attacks by quantum computers and then standardize them for broad use.

NIST’s initial call for proposals attracted sixty-nine total submissions from around the world for key exchange and digital signature algorithms, including four proposals co-submitted by Microsoft Research. In January 2019, NIST selected twenty-six of those proposals to move forward to Round 2 of the selection process, including all four of the Microsoft Research co-submissions. Here’s a list of the proposals in which Microsoft Research is a partner:

Key encapsulation mechanisms (KEMs):
Digital signature schemes:
- Picnic: A digital signature scheme based on zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge and multi-party computation.
- qTESLA: A lattice-based signature scheme.

How do we protect our customers?

It will be several more years before NIST finishes its process of selecting and standardizing new post-quantum algorithms. In the meantime, we need to get to work today to begin protecting our customers and their data from future attacks. We know it will take time to migrate all of today’s existing services and applications to new post-quantum public-key algorithms – replacing cryptographic algorithms in widely deployed systems can take years and we need a solution that can provide protection while that work is ongoing.

One approach Microsoft Research is exploring is applying the new post-quantum cryptography to network tunnels. By using both current algorithms and post-quantum algorithms simultaneously – what we call a “hybrid” approach – we comply with regulatory requirements such as FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) while protecting against both today’s classical attackers and tomorrow’s quantum-enabled ones.

To test this technology, Microsoft is turning to Project Natick, a years-long research effort to investigate manufacturing and operating environmentally-sustainable, prepackaged datacenter units that can be ordered to size, rapidly deployed and left to operate, lights out, on the seafloor for years. While tunneling can certainly be tested in dry environments, by putting this technology to the test under more difficult circumstances (underwater), on non-production data (safe to test), we have a good representation of what an actual data center customer experience would look like, under stress.

Photograph of Project Natwick underwater datacenter — Project Natick underwater datacenter

As Karen Easterbrook, Senior Principal PM Manager at Microsoft Research says, “If we can get this to work underwater, then we can get this to work anywhere… We want post-quantum cryptography to be running on every link between every Microsoft datacenter and ultimately between every Microsoft datacenter and every Microsoft customer. And this is a necessary first step toward being able to make that happen.”

Getting ready for a post-quantum world

Dr. Brian LaMacchia, Distinguished Engineer and Head of the Security and Cryptography Group at Microsoft Research, says, “The best way to start preparing is to ensure that all current and future systems have cryptographic agility – the ability to be easily reconfigured to add quantum-resistant algorithms.”

By working in partnership with collaborators around the world to develop post-quantum cryptographic algorithms and then applying them to common internet security protocols and use cases, we can use the power of quantum computing to tackle the large-scale problems facing our planet while also ensuring that all of our information remains safe and secure.

Learn more about quantum computing, quantum algorithms including Shor’s algorithm, and Microsoft Quantum:

Posted on February 28, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

What’s new to Microsoft 365 in February: improved collaboration across apps, customized experiences

We live in exciting, but busy, times. As we try to navigate a rapidly changing and complex workplace, little things can make or break our experience—including the tools we rely on. At Microsoft, we get it, and we’re listening. We’re working hard to incorporate your feedback and requests—from simple tweaks to new tools—into the Microsoft 365 experience. It’s all about building the best productivity service to help you and your organization get more done, and we’re committed to making sure your experience only gets better with time.

This month, we’re introducing capabilities to help you work on the go, collaborate on content more easily, interact with apps in more ways, and customize your productivity experiences. The new Office app is now generally available for Android and iOS. We added collaboration capabilities to PowerPoint comments and brought coauthoring and Microsoft Teams integration to Visio. Word now has an improved speech-to-text functionality that supports more languages, while added inking features and Dark Mode make it easier to capture and read notes in OneNote for Android. Meanwhile, organizations can now customize their employees’ productivity experience—from search results pages and All Company Yammer feeds to a private preview of the new Microsoft Fluid Framework.

Read on for all the exciting Microsoft 365 updates this month. And for a deeper dive into the news, be sure to check out the second episode of the Modern Workplace podcast. This month, host Alex Bradley and I go in-depth on teamwork, the new Microsoft Fluid Framework, and more.

Be productive on the go

Work from anywhere with the new Office app—The Office app is a fully redesigned experience to help you be more productive from anywhere. It combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app, adds new capabilities to help you create content in uniquely mobile ways, and has integrated Actions that help you accomplish common mobile tasks. The result is a simpler, yet more powerful, Office experience for mobile devices. Read this blog post to learn more about the new Office app, now generally available worldwide on Android and iOS.

Improve collaboration across your favorite apps

New tools in PowerPoint and Visio make it easier for teams to work together.

Collaborate more fluidly in PowerPoint—Starting next month, we’ll roll out an updated comments feature in PowerPoint. Team members can now anchor comments to objects, use @mention notifications, discover and add comments more easily, and more. The new comments experience will be available to all Office 365 users with the latest update.

Coauthor Visio drawings in more ways—Visio for the web now allows collaborators to create, edit, and comment on drawings simultaneously. With live coauthoring and a simple presence indicator, teams can work seamlessly together to brainstorm and develop their ideas. Visio Plan 1 and Plan 2 users can visit visio.office.com to create and share Visio files today.

Team members can also use these capabilities directly in Teams. Now you can share your Visio drawings with colleagues, since files stored in your Team’s file library are accessible to every member—making it easy for colleagues to edit and comment on your work. To get started, click the Files tab above the conversation window in your Teams channel and select New > Visio drawing.

Personalize the way you work

Updates to Word and OneNote let users work the way they want.

Save time and simplify work with improved speech-to-text—It’s now easy to create content with your voice in Word thanks to a new dictation toolbar, suggestions experience, and auto-punctuation support. You can also now work in six new preview languages: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Japanese. The new Voice Dictation in Word for the web is rolling out to all Office 365 users now.

Capture and take notes with ease—OneNote for Android phone and tablet now supports Dark Mode, enabling you to switch from bright white to a more subtle black and dark gray color scheme for easier reading. Additionally, we refreshed the inking experience to support bright new colors and continue leveraging pen types, highlighters, and erasers. And don’t miss the Lasso tool, which resizes and repositions objects on the page. These updates are rolling out to all OneNote users on Android phones and tablets.

Customize user collaboration experiences

New capabilities help you tailor your productivity tools to fit your enterprise brand and environment.

Create custom search results pages for Microsoft Search—You can now create custom search results pages in SharePoint Online. Use this new feature to control the layout and design of search results to tailor your SharePoint Online experience for your enterprise environment. The new feature will be available to all SharePoint Online subscribers. To get started, choose the site area where you would like to configure a custom results page and select Site Collection Settings > Search Settings.

Choose which “What’s new” features are visible to your users—You can now manage which features are shown or hidden from users in the “What’s New” Office desktop app. This content highlights a list of new features, accompanied by descriptions and guidance to help customers use the features. You can access this management tool using the Microsoft 365 admin center and the Office 365 Client Configuration Service.

Begin creating fluid collaboration experiences today—Microsoft Fluid Framework is a new component-based document model designed to enable new ways to collaborate on content creation. Now anyone with an Office 365 Enterprise subscription can check out the early preview. To get started, simply sign in with your organizational account ID at fluidpreview.com.

Strengthen your enterprise branding in Yammer—New capabilities in the current Yammer experience allow you to customize the All Company feed name, upload a community cover photo, land key messaging, welcome new members, promote organizational initiatives, and reinforce company values. Pair this with custom avatars to bring your branding and culture into your All Company feed. These new capabilities will be available to admins soon.

Manage Yammer eDiscovery from within the Microsoft 365 admin center—Yammer now supports eDiscovery for networks in Native Mode. Now admins will have access to all messages and files posted in their Yammer networks through the same eDiscovery tools they use to manage data throughout the rest of the Office 365 suite. This simplifies eDiscovery tasks and streamlines compliance obligations. To get started, make sure your Yammer network is running in Native Mode and then navigate to the eDiscovery module of the Security and Compliance Center.

Additionally, now all new files uploaded to Yammer communities connected to Office 365 are stored in SharePoint. With this change, your files will adhere to the rich security and compliance features policies that you’ve implemented for SharePoint—including eDiscovery, data loss protection, in-geo residence for files at rest, and others.

Also new this month

Navigating work and life today requires great tools that are constantly evolving and improving. Our goal is to build the productivity experiences that enable you and your organization to succeed. We can’t do it without you, so please reach out with feedback, requests, or questions. We’re here to help.