This holiday season, are you looking for gift ideas for someone who loves maps or geography? Or are you looking for a unique gift for someone who is hard to buy for? There are all kinds of great gift ideas for map geeks, relating to maps and geography, that we at the Bing Maps API team wanted to share.
Books
Mark Monmonier is the author of several wonderful books that look at the societal impacts of maps. Check out his webpage here, my favorite of his is “How to Lie with Maps”.
Ken Jennings, best known for his impressive winning streak on Jeopardy! in 2004 is the author of several books. His 2011 book “Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks” explores the world of map nerds of the US. It’s a fun fast read that describes Ken’s own obsession with maps and explores the other groups that our over their favorite geographies and maps.
Frank Jacobs’s book “Strange Maps- An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities” explores maps from many centuries that span all continents, geographies, space and maps of imaginary places. As far as gifts for geography lovers go, this isn’t your typical atlas. There is also a blog by the same name Strange Maps that will give you a preview of the maps that are in his book.
The Onion, www.Onion.com, is a humor media publisher on radio, print and online. “Our Dumb World” is a parody of a standard desk atlas and pokes fun at all places in the world. While known for their sarcasm, The Onion’s Atlas generally received positive reviews for its humor and satire and would be a great gift for a geography lover with a sense of humor!
If you’re going to get someone a map-related gift, why not show them the bigger picture? Peter Barber, the head of map collections at the British Library compiled an amazing collection of maps that span centuries. His book “The Map Book” has 175 maps that range from prehistoric times to modern digital maps.
There are many other great books that would be amazing gifts for map and geography lovers, check out the Good Reads site and search for maps or geography.
Games and Puzzles
This is a big category, many video games now use maps as a key component to their story and navigation around the game. Classic board games like Risk, Settlers of Catan and Where in the World all utilize maps and geography as part of the game. Sid Meier’s Civilization is still one of my all-time favorite PC games, there are now several versions of the game on a variety of platforms and it remains a clssic gift for map geeks..
If you are looking for map games, educational and otherwise, check out this link.
Geo-caching: Introduce your map geek to the world of geocaching, or buy them accessories for their quest. Check out Geocaching.com for subscriptions and gear guides.
Electronics
What map geek wouldn’t love a GPS? This can be a confusing proposition to find the right one for the need that you have. Check out resources like Best GPS Reviews, Best Consumer Reviews and Outdoor Gear lab for help.
If your map geek is charting the stars, there is a wide range of telescopes out there that they may love. Much like the GPS, this is an area that has a lot of information to wade through, check out the reviews at Optics Planet.
Many digital cameras now have GPS for tagging the location of photos as well as on-board maps. These cameras allow for photos to be displayed over maps and show the location of the pictures. Check out this article on About.com.
For the active map geek, check out the Microsoft band which helps track your activities and map your runs, hikes, or bikes. Also check out the wide variety of GPS-enabled watches, Runner’s World has a great article that reviews all the different styles and functions.
Think outside the box
Want to take pictures or video of your adventures, check out the variety of quad copters mounted with cameras that will give a unique perspective. Check out the Phantom 4 from DJI.
In the market for a low budget gift for a geography lover? Consider some cost-effective options for T-shirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers at Café Press; search for geography or maps or add your own photo of one of their favorite places! Zazzle also has a great section of map and geography related items.
Do you have a map geek in the family that loves to sew? Check out these cool DIY quilting kits for various cities from Haptic Lab. That will keep them busy for the holidays! If they can’t sew, check out their other collections like handmade cities quilts.
Simply disrupting the traditional diamond supply chain isn’t quite what the founders of Belgian company HB Antwerp are aiming to do. They want a revolution.
The company launched in 2020 with the goal of using technology to bring visibility to the traditionally opaque diamond industry. Its founders hope to establish a new standard for diamonds by providing an end-to-end picture of each stone’s trajectory, from mine to consumer, while ensuring greater equity for diamonds’ countries of origin.
Those efforts center on using blockchain technology and the Microsoft Cloud to create a digital ledger of each diamond’s story — starting with where the stone came from, down to the precise excavation location, and following it as it is sorted, analyzed, transformed from rough stone to sparkling diamond and finally, delivered to the consumer.
HB Antwerp’s mission is focused on empowering local communities to benefit from the diamond industry and have a greater stake in its future.
Those “moments of truth,” as HB Antwerp calls them, will enable diamond-mining countries to see how much value their stones generate, and conscious-minded buyers to know where their diamonds come from. They also create an enormous amount of data — over 3,000 verification points for each stone.
“The main challenge was that it’s never been done before,” says Shai de-Toledo, one of HB Antwerp’s founders.
Realizing the need for a partner capable of scaling the solution to any country, HB Antwerp turned to Microsoft. The companies worked together to develop a blockchain ledger built on Microsoft Azure and an enterprise resource planning system using Microsoft Dynamics 365. Data from each diamond is stored in a proprietary IoT device, essentially a minivault that can’t be opened without documenting that action in the ledger. (See a demo of HB Antwerp’s IoT capsule.)
The HB Antwerp Innovation Lab opened in Botswana in 2021 to train graduate students, particularly women, for careers in its facility there.
The data is then uploaded to Power BI, Microsoft’s data visualization platform, to provide governments and mining companies with a real-time view of their diamonds’ value appreciation. The goal, de-Toledo says, is to make information about each diamond available to consumers through a link to the ledger.
“We are trying to package this entire journey and deliver it to the consumer in a way that will create an environment that others find it very difficult to compete with,” he says. “Having a ledger and a representation of the journey means that for the first time, consumers can ask themselves, ‘Where did the diamond come from? What was its impact? Which people benefited from it?’”
The traditional diamond supply chain, de-Toledo says, has commodified diamonds and diluted their value, with many players involved and little benefit flowing to the countries and people who produce the diamonds.
“For more than a century, the diamond industry has made billions from obfuscating every stone’s journey,” he says. “Where it’s from, who added value to it, how the value is — or isn’t — benefitting local communities, or even what a fair price should be for consumers. We feel it’s done so much harm that simply ‘disrupting’ feels like an evolution. This is a revolution.”
HB Antwerp’s approach to purchasing diamonds has resulted in 40% higher royalties to the Botswana government over the past two years.
A ‘seismic shift’ for Botswana
Integral to HB Antwerp’s mission is empowering local communities to benefit from the diamond industry and have a greater stake in its future. In Botswana, that has meant investing in the country, ensuring a fairer price for its diamonds and creating new opportunities for its people. The HB Antwerp Innovation Lab opened in Botswana in 2021 to train engineering and technology graduate students, particularly women, for careers in its facility there. Additionally, HB Antwerp will soon open an academy in Botswana to train local diamond polishers.
In 2020, HB Antwerp began implementing its new ecosystem under a partnership with the Lucara Diamond Corporation at its Karowe mine in Botswana. HB Antwerp is purchasing diamonds from the mine based on their value as polished stones, rather than the standard practice of paying for rough product. That has resulted in 40% higher diamond royalties to the Botswana government over the past two years, according to HB Antwerp.
Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi characterized the new approach as a “seismic shift” for the country. “I can tell you we do not want to revert to the standard we had,” he says.
Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, left, with Teresa Hutson, vice president of Microsoft’s Tech and Corporate Responsibility Group, during a U.N. General Assembly event.
At a U.N. General Assembly event in September, Masisi said he thinks HB Antwerp’s approach could be used by other African countries and can help meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by U.N. member states.
“We want to go out and really market this,” he said. “We want to see the relationship between African governments and those who they partner with fundamentally change. There’s no reason to think we’re going to attain the SDGs with (current) models. It just won’t work.”
Ultimately, says HB Antwerp co-founder Rafael Papismedov, the goal is to provide knowledge and training that will enable Botswana and other African countries to have greater ownership over their natural resources and grow their economies.
“We believe the future of this industry is to transform the diamond in the country of origin,” he says. “This mineral belongs to the people, and it’s the people that will be involved in every step of it.”
Since 2013, FoodCloud has redistributed nearly 180 million meals across their two solutions in Ireland, the U.K. and parts of Europe, estimating it has kept more than 75,000 tons of food from going to waste and into landfills.
Tesco, the U.K.’s largest supermarket chain, decided to partner with FoodCloud in a pilot program with Tesco’s 146 stores in Ireland. The 2013 partnership was so successful, Tesco expanded it to its more than 3,000 stores in the U.K. The bulk of Tesco’s surplus food includes fresh fruit, vegetables and bakery products.
FoodCloud continued to refine its technology platform, Foodiverse, so that it was simple for both supermarkets and nonprofits to use, a huge plus for Tesco.
“Where they started from technology-wise to where they are now is light years apart,” says Lorraine Shiels, Tesco Ireland head of corporate social responsibility and internal communications. “They developed a solution that we saw could work and could integrate within our technology,” and it was something that any Tesco employee could easily use.
A Tesco worker scans potential surplus food for donation. Photo by Tesco.
“Simplicity in retail, as in any business, is incredibly important for any sort of sustainability of process,” she says. “And the fact that the app they had developed was incredibly simple but achieved an end goal was really, really important to us.”
Foodiverse is hosted on Azure. Power BI also plays a key role in much of the internal reporting developed by FoodCloud. Now, the nonprofit is also incorporating Dynamics 365 Business Central to unlock other insights, including conducting stock counts and movements live on the floors of FoodCloud’s three hubs, and enabling prompts to highlight where there may be issues to resolve.
Dynamics 365 sped up FoodCloud’s processes significantly and so far has helped contribute to an 11% increase in surplus food redistribution, year over year
FoodCloud is fully integrated into Tesco’s technology systems in stores, Shiels says. “We can look to absolutely every item of food that we scan through in the evening to donate is trackable and traceable, so that we’re fully able to measure end-to-end our donations – the amount of meals that we donate, the kilos, broken down by store, the carbon footprint associated with it. There’s a great level of insight and reporting behind it from a business perspective.”
FoodCloud is also now working with Tesco in central Europe, including the Czech Republic and in Slovakia. It also has partnerships with other supermarket chains including Aldi, Dunnes Stores, Lidl, Musgrave MarketPlace and Waitrose, and international food companies including Kellogg’s.
Kellogg’s began working with FoodCloud in Ireland in 2020, donating surplus breakfast cereals and breakfast bars. The company has a long history of donating food to families and to schools’ “breakfast clubs” in both Ireland and the U.K.
Deliveries are loaded onto a FoodCloud truck at its Dublin warehouse, or hub. Photo by Chris Welsch for Microsoft.
“We know our food is very popular amongst FoodCloud’s beneficiary organizations,” says Kate Prince, senior ESG (environmental, social and governance) manager for Kellogg Europe. “For many families, obviously it’s a very convenient and quick breakfast.”
And it doesn’t require heat to eat, which is becoming more and more important now. “Many people are struggling with rising energy costs, and so for those families, breakfast cereal is a good option,” she says.
Kellogg’s is also doing a “significant rethink” of how to “overcome the challenges facing today’s food system,” Nigel Hughes, Kellogg senior vice president of Global R&D and Innovation, wrote in a recent blog post. “We must move from a linear approach to a circular one that prioritizes regenerative production, reduces resource inputs and aims to ensure recovery for future uses and minimize wastage.”
In the U.K., FoodCloud works with FareShare, the national network for charitable food redistributors. FareShare sorts surplus food in regional warehouses, then distributes it through a network of over 9,000 nonprofits. FareShare has been working with FoodCloud since 2013 when they developed the Tesco back-of-store solution together.
“We have formed an incredibly impactful solution for the U.K. working together to redistribute food from across the retail, wholesale and food service industry,” says Li Brookman, head of FareShare Go, which provides charities and community groups with direct access to surplus food local supermarkets, wholesalers and restaurants.
Aidan McNamara says having FoodCloud’s technology app on his phone makes it easy for him to know when and what food will be on its way to Rosepark Independent Living in Dublin, where he is the manager. Sixteen residents, ranging in age from 64 to 95, live at the nonprofit facility.
McNamara is also the Sunday chef at Rosepark, where fresh meals are prepared daily, including three-course lunches.
Donated vegetables and some yummy menus by the staff mean nutritious meals for residents at Rosepark residential center in Blackrock, a suburb of Dublin. Photo by Chris Welsch for Microsoft.
As a developer, as someone who has been in love with writing code my entire life, I believe it’s time for a new developer experience. Software has advanced in all aspects of our work and life. Running, maintaining and building software for a global population has never been more complex. We are at a turning point. GitHub has built one, integrated platform where the world’s developers can build, create, collaborate and have the best times of their lives doing it. One, integrated platform for one purpose: Putting the developer first. From writing code with Copilot and Hey GitHub, running an ML model in a Codespace, automating your pull requests with Actions and Advanced Security, to the more than 15,000 integrations in our Marketplace that unlock the value of a true platform in GitHub. We have built the place that gives developers everything they need to be creative, to be happier, and to build the best work of their lives. Read the Universe blog below for the latest on how we’re enabling this new developer experience. https://lnkd.in/e-zjdP8g
Trust is essential for people and organizations to use technology with confidence. At Microsoft, we strive to earn the trust of our customers, employees, communities, and partners by committing to privacy, security, the responsible use of AI, and transparency.
At Microsoft Research, we take on this challenge by creating and using state-of-the-art tools and technologies that support a proactive, integrated approach to security across all layers of the digital estate.
Threats to cybersecurity are constant and they continue to grow, impacting organizations and individuals everywhere. Attack tools are readily available and well-funded adversaries now have the capability to cause unprecedented harm. These threats help explain why U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in 2021 calling for cybersecurity improvements. Similarly, the European Union recently called for stronger protection of its information and communication technology (ICT) supply chains.
Against that backdrop, Microsoft Research is focused on what comes next in security and privacy. New and emerging computing frontiers, like the metaverse and web3, will require consistent advances in identity, transparency and other security principles, in order to learn from the past and unlock these technologies’ potential. Developments in quantum computing and advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence offer great potential to advance science and the human condition. Our research aims to ensure that future breakthroughs come with robust safety and privacy protections, even as they accelerate profound changes and new business opportunities.
At Microsoft Research, we pursue ambitious projects to improve the privacy and security of everyone on the planet. This is the first blog post in a series exploring the work we do in privacy, security and cryptography. In future installments, we will dive deeper into the research challenges we are addressing, and the opportunities we see.
Spotlight: On-Demand EVENT
Microsoft Research Summit 2022
On-Demand Watch now to learn about some of the most pressing questions facing our research community and listen in on conversations with 120+ researchers around how to ensure new technologies have the broadest possible benefit for humanity.
Digital identities
While the internet was not originally built with an identity layer, digital identities have grown to become foundational elements of today’s web and impact people’s lives even beyond the digital world. Our research is aimed at modernizing digital identities and building more robust, usable, private and secure user-centric identity systems, putting each of us in control of our own digital identities.
This work includes researching cryptographic algorithms that enable privacy-preserving open-source user-centric identity systems. Such systems would let people present cryptographically signed electronic claims and selectively choose which information they wish to disclose, while preventing tracking of people between presentations of the claim. Our approach would preserve an individual’s privacy and work with existing web protocols to provide easy and safe access to a wide range of resources and activities.
Our research also includes investigating innovative ways for people to manage their identity secrets reliably and safely without having to provide any centralized party with full access to them. Success in this area will also require scalable and verifiable methods to distribute identity public keys, so people can know who exactly they are interacting with.
Advances in graphics and machine learning algorithms have enabled the creation of easy-to-use tools for editing. While useful in many ways, this technology has also enabled fraud and manipulation of digital images and media – or deepfakes. Early fakes were easy to spot, but current versions are becoming nearly impossible for machines or people to detect. The potential proliferation of fakes that are indistinguishable from reality undermines society’s trust in everything we see and hear.
Rather than trying to detect fakes, Microsoft Research has developed technology to determine the source of any digital media and whether it has been altered. We do this by adding digitally signed manifests to video, audio or images. The source of these media objects might be well-known news organizations, governments or even individuals using apps on mobile devices.
Since media creation, distribution, and consumption are complex and involve many industries, Microsoft has helped standards organization to stipulate how these signatures are added to media objects. We are also working with news organizations such as the BBC, New York Times, and CBC to promote media provenance as a mitigation for misinformation on social media networks.
Hardware security foundations
To promote cyber-resilience, we are developing systems which can detect a cyberattack and safely shut down protecting data and blocking the attacker. The systems are designed to be repaired quickly and securely, if compromised. These systems are built with simple hardware features that provide very high levels of protection for repair and recovery modules. To enable reliable detection of compromised systems, we are also developing storage features that can be used to protect security event logs. This makes it harder for attackers to cover their tracks.
Security analytics
Modern-day computers and networks are under constant attack by hackers of all kinds. In this seemingly never-ending cat-and-mouse contest, securing and defending today’s global systems is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. Managing the massive quantities of security data collected is increasingly challenging, which creates an urgent need for disruptive innovation in security analytics.
We are investigating a transformer-based approach to modeling and analyzing large-scale security data. Applying and tuning such models is a novel field of study that could change the game for security analytics.
Privacy-preserving machine learning
A privacy-preserving AI system should generalize so well that its behavior reveals no personal or sensitive details that may have been contained in the original data on which it was trained.
How close can we get to this ideal? Differential privacy can enable analysts to extract useful insights from datasets containing personal information even while strengthening privacy protections. This method introduces “statistical noise.” The noise is significant enough that AI models are prevented from compromising the privacy of any individual, but still provide accurate, useful research findings. Our recent results show that large language models can be particularly effective differentially private learners.
Another approach, federated learning, enables large models to be trained and fine-tuned on customers’ own devices to protect the privacy of their data, and to respect data boundaries and data-handling policies. At Microsoft Research, we are creating an orchestration infrastructure for developers to deploy cross-platform, cross-device federated learning solutions.
Protecting data in training or fine-tuning is just one piece of the puzzle. Whenever AI is used in a personalized context, it may unintentionally leak information about the target of the personalization. Therefore, we must be able to describe the threat model for a complete deployment of a system with AI components, rather than just a single part of it.
Read more about our work on these and other related topics in an earlier blog post.
Confidential computing
Confidential computing has emerged as a practical solution to securing compute workloads in cloud environments, even from malicious cloud administrators. Azure already offers confidential computing environments in multiple regions, leveraging Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) available in multiple hardware platforms.
Imagine if all computation were taking place in TEEs, where services would be able to access sensitive data only after they had been attested to perform specific tasks. This is not practical today and much research remains to be done. For example, there are no formal standards to even describe what a TEE is, what kind of programming interface a TEE cloud should have, or how different TEEs should interact.
Additionally, it is important to continuously improve the security guarantees of TEEs. For instance, understanding which side-channel attacks are truly realistic and developing countermeasures remains a major topic for research. Furthermore, we need to continue researching designs for confidential databases, confidential ledgers and confidential storage. Finally, even if we build both confidential computing and storage environments, how can we establish trust in the code that we want to run? As a cloud provider, our customers expect us to work continuously on improving the security of our infrastructure and the services that run on it.
Secure-by-design cloud
In the future, we can imagine Azure customers compiling their software for special hardware with memory tagging capabilities, eliminating problems like buffer overflows for good. To detect compromise, VM memory snapshots could be inspected and studied with AI-powered tools. In the worst case, system security could always be bootstrapped from a minimal hardware root of trust. At Microsoft Research, we are taking a step further and asking how we can build the cloud from the ground up, with security in mind.
New cryptography
The advance of quantum computing presents many exciting potential opportunities. As a leader in both quantum computing development and cryptographic research, Microsoft has a responsibility to ensure that the groundbreaking innovations on the horizon don’t compromise classical (non-quantum) computing systems and information. Working across Microsoft, we are learning more about the weaknesses of classical cryptography and how to build new cryptographic systems strong enough to resist future attacks.
Our active participation in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Post-Quantum Cryptography projects has allowed Microsoft Research to examine deeply how the change to quantum-resistant algorithms will impact Microsoft services and Microsoft customers. With over seven years of work in this area, Microsoft Research’s leadership in quantum cryptography will help customers prepare for the upcoming change of cryptographic algorithms.
We’ve joined with the University of Waterloo and others to build a platform for experimenting with the newly proposed cryptographic systems and applying them to real-world protocols and scenarios. We’ve implemented real-world tests of post-quantum cryptography, to learn how these new systems will work at scale and how we can deploy them quickly to protect network tunnels. Our specialized hardware implementations and cryptanalysis provide feedback to the new cryptosystems, which improves their performance, making post-quantum cryptosystems smaller and stronger.
ElectionGuard is an open source software development kit (SDK) that makes voting more secure, transparent and accessible.
Advances in cryptography are enabling end-to-end verifiable elections and risk-limiting audits for elections. Our open-source ElectionGuard project uses cryptography to confirm all votes have been correctly counted. Individual voters can see that their vote has been accurately recorded and anyone can check that all votes have been correctly tallied—yet individual ballots are kept secret. Risk-limiting audits use advanced statistical methods that can determine when an election audit has hit a pre-determined level of confidence with greater efficiency than traditional audits.
The cryptography tools that enable verifiable voting are Shamir Secret Sharing, Threshold Encryption, and additive Homomorphic Encryption. The math is interesting, and we will explore that in future blog posts, but there’s much more than math to ElectionGuard.
Securing the future
Through our work, we aim to continue to earn customer trust, striving to ensure that Microsoft’s products and services and our customer’s information will remain safe and secure for years to come.
Forthcoming entries in this blog series will include more details on the areas covered in this post and more. Much of our work is open-source and published, so we will be highlighting our GitHub projects and other ways you can interact directly with our work.
Have a question or topic that you would like to see us address in a future post? Please contact us!
Organizations worldwide seek reliability in their supply chains to meet the demand of their customers. If there is anything that companies have learned from the years past, it’s to plan for the unexpected. Using history to make decisions for the future no longer works. Customer demand is constantly changing, whether it’s influenced by the economic climate or making environmentally conscious purchase decisions.
At the Microsoft Supply Chain Reimagined digital event, you heard how conversations about supply chains have been elevated to the board room as they are pivotal to gain a competitive advantage for any organization today. We heard from supply chain practitioners, both within Microsoft and from our customers, on the need to address the fragmented ecosystems of supply chain technologies. This is critical for enabling end-to-end visibility of supply chains in near real time. Without this visibility, customers are struggling to unify data to proactively predict and mitigate disruptions.
Microsoft Supply Chain Center
Earlier this week, we announced the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform to help address these challenges. An open, extensible, and adaptive platform enables companies to unify experiences across different planning and execution systems. At the core of the Supply Chain Platform is the Microsoft Supply Chain Center, which introduces a ready-made command center for users to manage disparate supply chain data. Microsoft Supply Chain Center is now available in preview.
Watch the video:
Connect your ecosystem
Most organizations rely on legacy systems and one-off “best-in-breed” applications to manage their supply chain rather than a single, integrated platform, which puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
Recent research from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services commissioned by Microsoft shows that 65 percent of executives cite lack of access to real-time supply chain data as a technological obstacle to their supply chain operationsand only 11 percent have a modern, integrated digital solution for their supply chain.*
We are helping companies address this challenge with the Supply Chain Center. Its data manager harmonizes data across existing and new enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain systems in the company. For example, it can unify and harmonize data from Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Oracle, Overhaul, C.H. Robinson, FedEx, FourKites, and many more. An open, flexible platform helps maximize their existing investments without needing to replace them. Now companies can have better data visibility in near real time across their entire supply chain to better assess risks.
Microsoft customers, like Kraft Heinz, joined the discussion during the Supply Chain Reimagined event to share how the Supply Chain Platform will empower them to gain reliability and scalability by identifying trends faster than ever before. Kraft Heinz can not only assess risks faster but also collaborate efficiently across its teams and suppliers to mitigate those risks proactively.
With Supply Chain Center, we want to make it easy for companies to adopt new supply chain solutions in an incremental manner to digitally transform different functional areas of their supply chain while ensuring that those new solutions adopted in the future are interoperable with their existing landscape to achieve faster time to value. It’s all about doing more with less.
Enhance supply chain visibility
Once companies overcome the challenge of data visibility, the Supply Chain Platform enables them to generate actionable insights from this unified data to predict stockouts or shipment delays and prevent overstocking. Companies can track orders all the way until they reach their end consumer and proactively mitigate any constraints along the way to meet customer commitments. This type of end-to-end visibility is only possible with a unified platform approach.
Customers like Daimler Truck North America manage hundreds of thousands of parts across their global supply chain. Using the AI-powered supply and demand insights capabilities of the Supply Chain Center, which harnesses data flowing from the rest of the platform, they predict any parts shortages in their supply chain ahead of time so that they can proactively mitigate them and deliver on their promises to their customers, dealerships, and partners.
Another customer, iFIT, leverages Supply Chain Center to generate intelligent insights that will enable it to place products closer to where its customer demand is rather than just relying on history. It was able to improve efficiency from 30 percent to 75 percent in its forward stocking inventory, which means it can fulfill customer demand in two days versus two weeks, resulting in more satisfied customers.
The research with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services also finds that nearly one third of the companies struggle with poor collaboration between internal supply chain teams and external partners.*
The best part about leveraging the Microsoft ecosystem is that the supply chain team can rapidly act on these recommendations by collaborating internally or with external suppliers with built-in Microsoft Teams capabilities right from within the Supply Chain Center without having to toggle between multiple systems.
Gain agility to meet market demands
The Supply Chain Platform helps companies adapt to changing business needs with ease. Companies like GN Group, which offers brands like Jabra and Resound, are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, a market-leading solution of the Supply Chain Platform, to future-proof its business and gain the flexibility to adapt to changing needs. Other customers like ChemTreat, Inc. are able to improve proactive planning with Dynamics 365 to mitigate part shortages. With Dynamics 365, organizations can shorten delivery lead times by running material resource planning (MRP) frequently throughout the day in a matter of minutes, optimize inventory with a real-time view of inventory across channels, and fulfill order promises by reserving inventory for high priority orders.
Companies can gain flexible capacity by rapidly deploying pop-up warehouses with robotic automation to meet seasonal demand more effectively, and the warehouse employees can gain additional agility using the mobile warehouse app to execute the warehouse processes.
Companies like Barnas Hus, a leading children and baby product retail chain in Norway, worked with KPMG to implement the warehouse management capabilities of Dynamics 365 to power its new state-of-the-art warehouse that utilizes robotics to accurately pick, sustainably pack, and ship products to its stores, giving it the inventory visibility that it always needed.
Another customer, Peet’s Coffee, uses the advanced warehouse management capabilities of Dynamics 365 to serve multiple channels: direct-to-consumer, retail coffee bars, customer warehouses, e-commerce customers, and direct store delivery (DSD) warehouses. Dynamics 365 provides Peets Coffee the flexibility it needs to support a diverse range of channels.
Improve efficiency and productivity
For many manufacturers, the current state of their operations is disconnected and rigid. With the Supply Chain Platform, companies can take advantage of intelligent automation to reduce costs, maximize operating margins, and improve employee experiences. With Dynamics 365, companies can build connected and intelligent manufacturing processes with an intuitive, touch-friendly production floor execution interface. New process advisor capabilities in Microsoft Power Automate provide customers with deep insights to identify bottlenecks in processes to drive optimization and efficiencies with low-code automation.
The Supply Chain Platform has enabled customers like Jansen to extend Dynamics 365 with Power Apps and Power Automate to create bespoke processes on the production floor that get the right information to the right operator with the least amount of manual intervention. The power of unifying all data in Dynamics 365 has enabled production planners at Jansen to provide more efficient production sequences, minimizing materials and equipment changeovers so that they can meet customer orders on time by reducing time and enhancing operator productivity.
Organizations can further enhance the visibility on their production floor with native integration to any manufacturing execution system (MES) without replacing it. They can optimize the use of equipment and resources with AI-driven, capability-matching production scheduling.
Another customer, Alterra Mountain Company, has increased asset utilization and gained complete visibility into asset costs and conditions across its ski resorts in North America. It performs proactive maintenance to decrease unplanned asset downtime and downstream disruptions and optimize maintenance spend and spare parts inventory.
The research with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services also showed that more than 30 percent of the companies struggled with finding the right talent with supply chain skills and expertise.*
The Supply Chain Platform keeps frontline workers safer while accelerating upskilling, reducing errors, and increasing yield with step-by-step holographic work instructions. Use mixed reality and built-in Teams capabilities to collaborate in real-time with experts, improving productivity and reducing environmental impact from unnecessary travel.
Enhance security and sustainability
Organizations are encountering increased volumes and more sophisticated threats to their environments than ever before. Unmanaged Internet of Things (IoT), industrial control system (ICS), and operational technology (OT) devices are a force driving new advances in the industry but have also tripled the size of the attack surface area. Securing these devices is a mission-critical objective for any organization. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform helps organizations create a secure supply chain by detecting and preventing any cyber threat by improving cyber security, physical management, and endpoint security across their entire supply chain network with multiple levels of security and continuous updates and patches.
The Supply Chain Platform also helps accelerate sustainability initiatives all the way from sustainable design, to sourcing, to manufacturing, and fulfillment. With Supply Chain Center order management capabilities, retailers can streamline returns sustainably with out-of-the-box connectors to FedEx. They can implement boxless returns with supporting carriers for less packaging waste and fewer consolidated trips instead of individual customer returns.
The rules-based fulfillment orchestration engine in Supply Chain Center enables organizations to fulfill orders sustainably while meeting their customer’s order promise. For instance, rules-based setup allows companies to balance miles travelled from fulfillment center to customers to minimize their emissions with service-level agreements (SLAs) to ensure on-time delivery.
Companies can establish ethical and sustainable sourcing practices with Dynamics 365. Sustainability scoreboards help them make data-driven decisions about supply chain changes to improve their metrics and further their sustainability goals.
Another way to operate sustainably is to drive circularity. Essentially—instead of throwing away goods at the end of their life, finding ways to reuse or recycle them to reduce carbon emissions. This could also be a new revenue stream for companies.
Our own Microsoft Circular Centers have a unique process to optimize warehouse routing and management systems to process decommissioned servers from Microsoft datacenters. By leveraging the low-code Microsoft Power Platform solutions, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management was extended to build a reverse logistics solution that helped reuse, resale, and recycle the decommissioned data center assets. This is helping to put Microsoft on the path to achieving its sustainability goals by 2030.
To further support organizations to achieve their sustainability goals, last month at Microsoft Ignite we introduced new capabilities in Sustainability Manager, a Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability solution that enables organizations to store and reduce indirect value chain emissions (also known as “Scope 3” emissions—the supply chain of your suppliers), which account for a disproportionate share of most organizations’ carbon footprints. The solution includes prebuilt calculation methodologies for more than half of the 15 categories of Scope 3.
Partner to empower customers in supply chain transformation
With the Supply Chain Platform, partners can bring their industry and domain expertise to create integrated solutions leveraging Microsoft Supply Chain Center, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Azure, Teams, and Microsoft Power Platform. We will continue to support our customers with a rich partner ecosystem, including advisors and implementers like Accenture, Avanade, EY, KPMG, PwC, and TCS. In addition, to help customers find the best solution for their supply chain needs, we’ll continue working with solution providers such as Blue Yonder, Cosmo Tech, Experlogix, Flintfox, inVia Robotics, K3, o9 Solutions, SAS, Sonata Software, To-Increase software, and many more.
Ready to take action?
Take a free trial of Microsoft Supply Chain Center, which is now in preview.
If you’re one of the nearly half of holiday shoppers looking to scoop up gifts on sale this season, we have great news – Microsoft Store’s Black Friday sale starts today, Nov. 17. Savings on everything from Surface devices, Xbox consoles, tech accessories, digital games and more make finding something for everyone on your list a breeze. And if you’re stumped, take the guesswork out and book a free, online personal shopping appointment with a Microsoft product expert. Bring us your hard-to-shop-for family and friends, and we’ll help you find the perfect gifts.
When you shop the Microsoft Store, you can start purchasing early and be confident you’re getting a great deal. The Microsoft Store Promise gives shoppers extra peace of mind with extended holiday returns through Jan. 31, flexible payment options and a lower price when you buy with us.
Don’t miss out on top Microsoft Store Black Friday savings and visit Xbox Wireto learn more.
Save $500 on the Surface Laptop 4 + Surface Pen and 3-year Complete Protection Plan bundle: Even the trickiest person on your list will love this device that has it all, with a perfect balance of sleek design, speed, immersive audio and a battery life that will last through the workday or even a long study session. For added peace of mind, the Microsoft Complete Protection Plan gives you extended coverage and support on your new Surface, including accidental damage protection.
Save 20% on the Surface Laptop Go 2 with Mobile Mouse and 3-year Complete Protection Plan bundle: Sleek and portable, this device is an all-around crowd pleaser for a commuting student, an adult who already has a home PC and everyone in between. Featuring a 12.4-inch vibrant touchscreen, great typing experience and an ultra-portable mouse, this bundle is sure to bring holiday cheer to any recipient.
Save up to $200 off select Surface Pro 9(starting Nov. 20): Get your loved one who’s always on the go a flexible tablet that’s as powerful as a laptop and features a virtually edge-to-edge 13-inch PixelSense touchscreen that makes working, streaming and playing from anywhere effortless. Offer ends Nov. 28.
Save up to $300 on select Surface Laptop 5(starting Nov. 20): Give the student in your life the gift of the perfect school-to-study-break device equipped with exceptional picture quality, cinematic sound and enhanced camera experiences that’ll bring their gaming, movie watching and video conferencing to a whole new level. A variety of colors help your student stand out from the crowd: Platinum, Matte Black, Sandstone and (new this year) Sage. Offer ends Nov. 28.
Save $50 off Xbox Series S: Share next-gen speed and performance with a gamer in your life and let them choose from thousands of games while making the most of every minute with Quick Resume, lightning-fast load times and gameplay at up to 120 FPS* – all powered by the Xbox Velocity Architecture. While supplies last.
Save up to 67% on select Xbox games including Deathloop, FIFA 23 X1, Gotham Knights and Forza Horizon 5 Standard: Treat the gamer who already has a full Xbox setup to new titles that will keep them entertained well into the new year. Offer ends Nov. 30.
Save up to 70% on select PC games including Big Farm Story and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy + Marvel’s Avengers: Delight the PC gamer in your life with some of the year’s best games at great prices. Offer ends Nov. 30.
Save up to 50% on select movies and TV shows including Jurassic World Dominion – Extended Cut, The Batman + Bonus and John Wick Triple Feature + Bonus: Bring the family together with a great selection of the latest hit movies and commercial-free TV shows. Offer ends Nov. 30.
Microsoft Store helps take the stress out of holiday shopping all season long
The Microsoft Store Promise gives shoppers extra peace of mind whether you start early or need some last-minute gifting help! Enjoy fast and free 2-3-day shipping, flexible payment options, extended free holiday returns and an extended holiday low-price promise that gets you a lower price product on a physical product you purchase from Microsoft Store. **Terms apply.
If you’ve got other online shopping to do, you can save even morethis holiday season (and year-round) with the Microsoft Edge web browser’s built-in shopping tools, which help you save time and money across multiple devices (including your phone and computer). Features like Coupons in Microsoft Edge find discounts and promo codes on retail websites before you check out. Plus, you can get cashback in more stores on Microsoft Edge compared to extensions. Also, save time by tackling your shopping list with Collections, found at the top right-side of the browser, for an easy way to save and organize all your links in one spot to reference as you shop throughout the holiday season.
Don’t forget to check back on microsoft.com for more savings all season long, happy shopping!
*120 FPS requires supported content and display; use on Xbox Series S as content becomes available.
**Available with eligible consumer purchases only made between 10/3/22 – 12/31/22 at Microsoft Store online in the United States (including Puerto Rico) and Canada and at the Microsoft Experience Center in New York, NY. Purchases can be returned through January 31, 2023. Business, commercial, and reseller customer purchases not eligible. Items purchased from Microsoft Store can be returned by following instructions for return for refund on the returns page or by visiting the Microsoft Experience Center in NY. Items purchased from Microsoft Experience Center can only be returned by visiting the Microsoft Experience Center in New York during the return period. Applicable return policy applies to each purchase. Please see Microsoft Terms of Sale for terms applicable to Microsoft Store purchases. Promotional items given, or discounted products bought with, a qualifying product are not valid or must be returned if the qualifying product is returned. For Surface purchases, you may be entitled to additional benefits under the Microsoft Store Promise for Surface; the Microsoft Experience Center honors the Microsoft Store Promise for Surface. Microsoft reserves the right to modify or discontinue offers at any time.
Today we are pleased to announce sign language view, a new meeting experience in Microsoft Teams that helps signers – people who are Deaf/hard of hearing, interpreters, and others who use sign language – keep one another prioritized on center stage, in a consistent location, throughout every meeting.
As a Deaf person who uses Teams for several meetings a day, I am all too familiar with the challenges that virtual meetings pose to Deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) users. I face them too. About a year ago, I took on the role of Accessibility Architect for Microsoft Teams Calling, Meeting and Devices, and one of my primary responsibilities has been to build out the vision for creating a best-in-class experience for the D/HH community in Teams. The most important piece of that work has been making our efforts in this space more community-driven. Inclusive design starts with the community telling us how they want to be able to use the product – not us telling you how to use it. In order for us to learn, we have talked with many of you, listened to your feedback, and built out a roadmap that I’m excited about as both a creator and a user. We are grateful for every bit of feedback you have shared. And we’re announcing availability of one of the first elements of that vision today: Sign language view, which will enable you to prioritize up to two other participants’ videos so they stay visible and in a consistent location throughout the meeting.
Sign language view is a first step toward addressing several asks from the D/HH community, including:
Keeping interpreters and other signers’ video feeds in a consistent location,
Ensuring that video feeds are an appropriate shape and size for sign language to be visible,
Empowering participants to have up to two other signers in view throughout each meeting, and
Reducing repetitive meeting setup tasks like pinning interpreters and turning on captions at the start of each meeting.
When sign language view is enabled, the prioritized video streams automatically appear at the right aspect ratio and at the highest available quality. Like pinning and captioning, sign language view is personal to you and will not impact what others see in the meeting. And it adapts to whatever your needs are: you can enable sign language view on the fly in a meeting or as a setting that persists across all y….
With sign language view turned on, the video feeds of the individuals you have designated stay visible on center stage as long as their video is on. Other participants can also be pinned or spotlighted without encroaching on the sign language interpreter.
When someone shares content in the meeting, the prioritized signer video shifts positions, but remains high quality and at a larger size than the video feeds of other participants.
And finally, we’ve made preferences sticky – no more fiddling with features and views when you join a meeting. In the new Accessibility pane in the Settings menu you can turn sign language view on by default across all your meetings, and pre-identify a set of preferred signers that you work with inside your organization on a regular basis – for example, your regular interpreters (or for interpreters, your regular clients). The pane also provides an option to toggle captions on across all your meetings. Setting these preferences in advance makes it easier to join calls more quickly, so you can catch those first few minutes of chitchat or dive right into a deeper conversation.
Sign language view and the accessibility settings pane are currently available in Public Preview, and will be rolling out to GA for the Teams desktop and web clients for commercial and GCC customers in the coming weeks. Public preview can be enabled on a per-user basis, though the option to turn on public preview is controlled in an admin policy. For detailed instructions on how to enable, please refer to Public preview in Microsoft Teams on Microsoft Learn.
Help us continue to improve
These features are just the beginning – one step along a much longer road. We are committed to creating a Teams meeting experience that is not just accessible, but delightful, for Deaf and hard of hearing participants. And for that, we need your input and engagement. The simplest way to provide feedback is via the Help menu within Teams itself. U.S. customers can also provide feedback and get assistance in ASL – on any Microsoft product, not just this one – through the Disability Answer Desk (DAD) via videophone at (+1 503-427-1234). Or, if you’d like to engage more directly with the people behind the product, we’d welcome you to join us for an AMA – “Ask Microsoft Anything” – on the the topic of Teams accessibility for D/HH participants, here on the here on the Tech Community on December 13 at 9 AM Pacific time. The team working on these features will be available at that time to address questions, concerns, and feedback directly. We look forward to continuing the conversation.
Earlier this year, we announced our vision to empower any developer to become a space developer through Azure. With over 90 million developers on GitHub, we have created a powerful ecosystem and we are focused on empowering the next generation of developers for space. Today, we are announcing a crucial step towards democratizing access to space development, with the preview release of Azure Orbital Space SDK (software development kit)—a secure hosting platform and application toolkit designed to enable developers to create, deploy, and operate applications on-orbit.
By bringing modern cloud-based applications to spacecrafts we not only increase the efficiency, value, and speed of insights from space data but also increase the value of that data through the optimization of ground communication.
Many of the fundamental technological improvements that have accelerated the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) in the past decade remain untapped by space development missions today. With the Azure Orbital Space SDK, we will help bring those improvements to space through modern agile software deployment, container-based development, use of higher-level languages, and cloud-managed networking. Extending the power of the Azure cloud into space means that spacecraft development will take less time, cost less, and bring more people into the space development ecosystem.
What is the Azure Orbital Space SDK?
The Azure Orbital Space SDK was created to be able to run on any spacecraft and provide a secure hosting platform and application kit to create, deploy, and operate applications on-orbit. This “host platform” runs onboard the spacecraft including a containerized, scalable compute infrastructure with resource and schedule management capabilities.
The application kit provides a set of templates, samples, and documentation to make it easy to get up and running as a space developer with template applications for common workload patterns, such as earth observation image processing. There is also a “virtual test harness” that allows developers to easily test their applications on the ground against an instance of the host platform.
How the Azure Orbital Space SDK is changing what’s possible
By moving the application onboard the spacecraft through the Azure Orbital Space SDK, we enable time and cost savings while radically altering and expanding the capabilities of the spacecraft.
Remote sensing
Remote sensing from space provides the perspective we need to better understand our world and powers commercial, economic, humanitarian, intelligence, and military scenarios—from damage assessments after weather events, to vessel detection, to crop monitoring and land classification.
Most remote sensing satellites have limited connectivity windows and bandwidth to communicate data back to the ground. As the fidelity of sensors increases, the amount of data they generate eclipses the available bandwidth. Being able to prioritize images that are useful, or even being able to send insights rather than the raw data down to the ground significantly reduces costs, accelerates speed, and fundamentally increases the value of the satellite.
Through the Azure Orbital Space SDK, developers can write and host more intelligent applications on-board satellites, meaning that they can capture data and use time more efficiently, and even autonomously reconfigure applications at the ultimate edge. Instead of building a unique solution each time developers deploy a spacecraft application, the Azure Orbital Space SDK creates a common template for performing imaging tasks, making it easier to transfer models and applications from one satellite configuration to another.
Communications
Satellite communications is one of the most well-known and widely used space capabilities. It allows us to watch live events around the world, provides internet and cloud connectivity to remote locations both on earth and in space, and supports the backbone of cellular networks. By bringing applications and intelligent computing on board satellites through the Azure Orbital Space SDK, we enable a more sophisticated management of satellite communications – resulting in lower costs and higher efficiency for satellite-based communication networks
Telecommunications networks have transitioned to software-defined networks and application–centric approaches to manage their communications infrastructures. The inclusion of satellites in 5G standards is the push for satellite networks to follow the same digital transformation. The Azure Orbital Space SDK will provide a compute fabric with networking capabilities for hosting telecommunication workloads, allowing operators to move applications more easily from ground-based cell sites to satellites in orbit, enabling better resiliency and network utilization.
Ultimately, by combining the Azure Orbital Space SDK with our portfolio of Azure Orbital products, we are bringing the power of cloud networking to the edge in space.
Azure Orbital Space SDK Partnerships
In April, we launched the Azure Space Partner Community and unveiled our initial cohort of space community partners, including Loft Orbital, Ball Aerospace and Thales Alenia Space. Today, we are announcing the newest member of our partner community—Xplore—who will help us continue to shape the future of space technologies and services.
Xplore
Xplore provides unique data including optical, video, and hyperspectral imagery via the XCRAFT, its highly capable, multi-sensor satellite. The XCRAFT’s sophisticated sensors produce terabytes of data per day and will utilize powerful compute, storage, and communication solutions to deliver the unique insights derived to customers.
Microsoft and Xplore are partnering to use Azure Orbital Space SDK to gather new insights into how edge computing solutions can better enable both government and commercial customers to achieve their mission objectives. Together, our teams will investigate numerous on-orbit compute use-cases from downlink optimization to multi-sensor data fusion.
Loft Orbital
Loft Orbital is a space infrastructure and services company providing customers rapid, reliable, and simplified access to space. Loft has developed a highly modular satellite platform that enables them to provide a truly plug and play path to orbit for customer payloads and missions.
The Microsoft and Loft Orbital partnership will enable developers to easily develop, test, and deploy software-only “virtual payloads” to the Loft Orbital infrastructure. Together we are developing new technologies and products that will enhance the flexibility of on-orbit operations and provide seamless connectivity to the terrestrial cloud.
Earlier this year Microsoft and Loft conducted a successful test of demonstrating the integration of Loft spacecraft with the Azure Orbital Ground station. Next year, we’ll build upon this success with the launch of YAM-6, a dedicated free-flying orbital testbed for customers to explore how our joint space infrastructure, connectivity, and on-orbit compute technologies will make access to space even easier than before.
Ball Aerospace
Ball Aerospace is a systems integrator with a heritage of designing and building government satellite programs and mission applications. Ball continues to innovate on behalf of its customers by combining their long expertise in exquisite satellite systems with modern tools and processes, enabling a more agile approach to space mission development and operations.
Together, Ball Aerospace and Microsoft are collaborating on the execution of series of on-orbit testbed satellites showcasing this highly agile future. These missions will leverage the Azure Orbital Space SDK to demonstrate modular and reconfigurable on-orbit processing technologies, necessary to support the complex missions for the United States Government. The new software and hardware technologies demonstrated in these testbeds will unlock new capabilities for customers, granting the ability to support future concepts for smaller, agile, multi-mission capabilities across all federal space programs.
Thales Alenia Space
Thales Alenia Space is a leader in orbital infrastructures and is developing high-power, edge-computing solutions for space.
Microsoft is partnering with Thales Alenia Space to demonstrate and validate on-orbit compute technologies for multiple remote-sensing applications. Our team’s future orbital testbed, launching to the International Space Station (ISS) in late 2023, brings together Thale’s edge computing hardware and Microsoft’s Azure Orbital Space SDK platform with visible and hyperspectral sensors, empowering the next generation to explore how space and on-orbit compute can improve our world. Developers on our platform will explore different on-orbit compute use cases, from AI-based hyperspectral image processing and to multi-sensor fusion algorithms, both computationally demanding workloads that benefit from Thales Alenia’s high-performance edge compute architecture.
In collaboration with Microsoft Research (MSR), Microsoft, and Thales Alenia Space, we are reducing the barriers for research in space through a range of outreach initiatives. One such initiative is the new Azure Space Academic Outreach program, that will work with research teams in remote sensing, computer vision, and climate science to demonstrate the potential of next-generation on-orbit compute for Earth observation. The first pilots exploring this program are the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center; however, we hope to open this up to more participants over the coming year.
What we’ve done and what’s coming next
The Azure Orbital Space SDK is a key part of the Azure Space portfolio and joins our investments together to create a value chain that is unique in the industry today—from space to ground to cloud. Over the past two years we’ve moved from a vision of combining the power of the cloud with the possibilities of space, into a reality with the launch of our our Azure Orbital Ground Station, the recently announced Azure Orbital Cloud Access, and today the Azure Orbital Space SDK. Integral to Microsoft‘s approach across these announcements has been partnership, and we have partnered with space industry leaders to deliver incredible value to our customers, with most recently the partnership with DIU to support their hybrid space architecture and the development of the internet of space.
The Azure Orbital Space SDK will change what is possible onboard spacecraft, but also more importantly change the applications and insights we gather on earth and inform critical decisions and communications across the planet.
Stepping out of her comfort zone was a big decision for Nelly Lee. The Singapore native and single mother built a successful 20-year career in the travel industry, where she was considered an expert in her field. Still, Lee felt the urge to reinvent herself, one that was accelerated by the global disruption of the travel industry in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“I was thinking I should give myself a chance to see I could do something different to take care of my daughter and my parents,” Lee said. “Yes, in my previous job, the knowledge and stability was all there. But I wanted to show myself that even though I don’t have a degree in tech, that didn’t matter.”
Changing careers mid-stream can be tough for anyone. There’s an even higher degree of difficulty when moving into the technology field, where other applicants and co-workers have years of knowledge and hands-on experience. Generation Singapore wants to help level the playing field so everyone has a chance at a better career.
In 2020, Microsoft and Generation Singapore co-created #GetReadySG, a national skills initiative in partnership with several Singaporean government technology organizations. The initiative is designed to upskill and/or reskill up to 1,000 job seekers over a two-year period and then match them with meaningful employment opportunities in tech. The program is designed for young professionals and mid-career switchers who want to gain in-demand digital skills at a subsidized cost.
As Lee considered making her career change, she learned about Generation Singapore. She consulted with her brother, a software engineer, before her second interview to find out more about the program. Soon after, Lee was admitted into #GetReadySG, where she began learning skills that would benefit her move into the tech sector.
“When I got into the course, it was so alien to me,” Lee recalls. “I didn’t know what a virtual machine was. I would screen share with my brother to help me get a better understanding. I’d ask him, ‘What is this?’ ‘What is that?’ But I started to slowly digest things.”
In addition to the classroom work, Lee learned valuable skills during her internship, which all participants in the program must complete.
“This program is very different from others where you take a course and at the end of the day you go and search for your own job,” Lee said. “Because of the apprenticeship you get a six-month chance to learn and adapt to the working world.”
Nelly Lee decided to switch careers in order to make enough money to eventually buy a new home for herself and her young daughter. Photo by Ore Huiying for Microsoft.
The #GetReadySG program also provides participants with the opportunity to be mentored by tech industry professionals as they approach the start of their internship and plan for full-time work. Lee was paired with Sindhu Chengad, an Azure and Open Source business leader in Microsoft’s Singapore office, and they developed a relationship that proved valuable for both parties, especially because it can be difficult for women to have female role models.
“We’ve been working together for the last six months,” Chengad said. “I know how challenging it can be to keep a career on track, and I’ve always found it helpful when people have taken a chance on me and helped guide me. Nelly’s story is such an inspiring story. For a mom to think about disrupting her own career to come into a completely new space and to upskill yourself is super challenging. I’m super proud of where Nelly started and where she is today.”
As Lee worked through her internship, she set her sights on a full-time job, one in which she could earn a better salary with the goal of moving into her own home. She quickly landed a DevOps position supporting a large international technology company that allows her to work from home and take on a variety of technical challenges.
“I wanted to do something more technical because I find it more interesting,” Lee said. “I do a lot of server work, deployment, fixing bugs. There’s still a lot of learning going on. But my team is very patient and they explain many things. It’s very comforting and it makes me feel like I can contribute more.”
The #GetReadySG program has placed hundreds of graduates in several tech companies throughout Singapore, giving well-trained individuals a chance to fill the gaps in human resources that many companies in the country have been dealing with over the past few years.
“There’s a tremendous amount of commitment and resilience that every graduate brings into this program. It’s indeed a tough journey to break barriers in switching to a new career, that’s why I’m really proud of them,” said Prateek Hegde, CEO of Generation Singapore. “We might have a well-designed program and supported them all the way, but majority of the credit goes to every individual who persevered throughout every process and gave their best. I hope to witness more women follow Nelly’s footsteps.”
For Lee, the decision to switch careers was life-changing, and she urges others in her position to consider betting on themselves and learning the skills needed to enter the tech industry.
“This is totally out of what people think of me,” Lee said. “Many people didn’t think I would make this step. But I am very happy. It’s an achievement for myself.”
Top image: Nelly Lee took advantage of GetReadySG, a national skills initiative co-created by Microsoft and Generation Singapore, to retrain for a career in technology after 20 years in the travel industry. She now works in DevOps supporting a large international technology company. Photo by Ore Huiying for Microsoft.
