Category: Microsoft news

Microsoft news, features, events, and press materials

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Women belong in tech – celebrating innovation in our industry

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate the potential of women and girls everywhere, and their ideas and innovations that are shaping our future. March is also Women’s History Month in the United States. Introduced in the late 1980s, this month is a celebration of the numerous, but often overlooked, accomplishments by women across history, culture and society. This is a time to reflect — and keep working to close equity gaps.

We know that companies with more diversity generate more innovation[1] and better financial results.[2] Yet less than 2% of enterprise software startups in the U.S. feature a women founder.[3] The COVID-19 pandemic has — and will continue to — disproportionately affect women across the globe, with the time it will take to close the global gender gap increasing by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.[4]

The data is staggering and calls for action.

At Microsoft, our goal is to create and maintain a healthy ecosystem where all employees, partners and customers can thrive. We work with purpose and passion to enable inclusive economic opportunity through the Microsoft commercial marketplace and in our Microsoft partner and startup ecosystem.

Highlighting diverse partner businesses in the commercial marketplace

To help support the growth of diverse businesses within our partner ecosystem, we’re enabling partners to self-attest relevant diversity business classifications in Partner Center. By building this information into our system, it’s easy for customers to discover women-led businesses and their solution offerings in the commercial marketplace and through our co-sell channels.

Supporting the U.N. to empower women across the globe

As a partner to the United Nations, Microsoft has pledged to support its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),[5] a set of 17 initiatives adopted by member states in 2015 focused on creating a more inclusive, sustainable and equitable world by 2030.

Through the Microsoft #BuildFor2030 Initiative, we support SDG 5: achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. We partner with community organizations, like Women in Cloud (WIC), an organization focused on acting with global leaders, corporations and policymakers to help women entrepreneurs create $1 billion in economic access and opportunity by 2030.

Through the WIC accelerator, Microsoft supports women entrepreneurs in building and publishing their solutions to the commercial marketplace. We are proud to celebrate these women-led businesses and their innovative solutions that are driving positive business and community impact, such as:

eKidz.eu: Their educational solution helps parents and educators teach German, English and Spanish to children. Realizing the importance of helping people stay connected to their roots while raising trilingual children, co-creator and CEO Nataliya Tetruyeva set out to create more accessible, personalized language learning. The mobile app leverages artificial intelligence (AI), audio support and visual animation to nurture language development skills like listening, learning, speaking and written expression.

Advocat Technologies: Their solution, Advocat AI, is a conversation-driven, AI-enabled platform that helps make it faster and easier to create and manage legal contracts for in-house legal teams and business users alike. Advocat Founder and CEO Pradnya Desh is a legal advisor and former U.S. diplomat seeking to enable effective business practices that support companies, communities and individuals.

Discover more #BuildFor2030 featured women-led solutions.

Supporting women founders in the end-to-end startup journey

Startups play a pivotal role in a thriving ecosystem, and often are the impetus that push everyone else forward. Despite being vital to innovation and growth, by some estimates, more than 90% of startups will go out of business in their first year,[6] meaning women-founded businesses are fighting an uphill battle.

Earlier this year, we launched a global mentoring program to pair women employees at Microsoft with women founders of startups in the Microsoft for Startups Founder Hub. This new program includes reoccurring safe space talks, monthly role model conferences, and access to VC and investor master classes — and all members of the Hub have access to $150,000 of Microsoft Azure. The Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub is open to anyone with an idea, and we’re seeing an influx of diverse founders including women-led organizations come through.

For example, SciMar ONE, a Microsoft for Startups and Women in Cloud accelerator partner, is using AI technology to speed innovation in drug development through their project management solution, The Scientific Data Engine. A women-owned business, SciMar ONE shifts the time-consuming tasks of clinical data analytics from humans to technology, driving cost savings in R&D.

And Time to Raise helps women founders in Nordic countries with their fundraising journeys from master classes, pitching sessions hosted by Microsoft Reactor, Female Founder networking events supported by Microsoft for Startups to matchmaking connections with participating investors and more.

Speaking of Microsoft Reactor, it partners regularly with ChickTech, an American nonprofit organization empowering people of marginalized genders through tech programs and events. Microsoft Reactor also partners with Women in Data to host collaborative content and events, all with the aim of connecting developers and startups who share the same goals.

Learn more about the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub and sign up to get the support you need to run your business.

Empowering girls to follow their interests in STEM

The path to a career in tech is different for everyone. However, exposure to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning paths and encouragement to follow one’s interests is critical, especially for those who identify as girls.

We recognize that tomorrow’s tech talent are today’s students, and that’s why we work with Girls Who Code, TechTogether, and IGNITE (Inspiring Girls Now in Technology Evolution). These organizations are actively and tirelessly inspiring girls to follow their dreams and helping them gain skills across a gamut of technology paths. And the Microsoft DigiGirlz program is our in-house program that offers middle- and high schoolers opportunities to learn about careers in technology, connect with Microsoft employees and participate in hands-on computer and technology workshops.

Historically, girls haven’t had the same level of encouragement to pursue careers in STEM as boys — and that must change. Fostering tomorrow’s talent is a critical component to growing women’s presence in technology.

What you can do

Both International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month remind us to take stock and raise up girls and women. I invite you to join me in supporting women tech entrepreneurs and helping to grow their businesses. What this means looks different to everyone. Here are two ways you can learn how to help women in tech:

Join Women in Cloud and participate in their community engagement opportunities to gain experience, build your network and find ways to support economic access for women.

And register for the May 6 #WICxMicrosoft Lunch and Learn session where I’ll be the keynote speaker for a session about empowering access and driving inclusive economic opportunity.

Though we’re talking specifically about women’s impact in tech, the equity gaps that exist are not solely the responsibility of women to solve. Everyone has a stake in this effort, and it takes all of us to continue to make progress. Through our collective action, we can grow and support diverse representation in our partner and startup ecosystem together.

[1] Diversity during COVID-19 still matters | McKinsey
[2] How diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) matter | McKinsey
[3] Female Founders in Short Supply at Enterprise Tech Startups – WSJ
[4] Global Gender Gap Report 2021 | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
[5] https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/
[6] How Many Startups Fail and Why? (Investopedia.com)

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Somali and Zulu languages added to Microsoft Translator

Image: A group of boys play soccer at sunset near aqals of the town of Hargeysa, Somalia.

Today, we’re adding two new languages to Translator’s ever-growing list of languages—Somali and Zulu! Somali and Zulu text translation is available now in the Microsoft Translator apps, Office, and Translator for Bing. Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service you can add Somali and Zulu text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting. You can also use Translator with Cognitive Services such as Speech or Computer Vision to add additional capabilities such as speech-to-text and image translation into your apps.

The Somali language

The Somali language is spoken throughout the horn of Africa by more than 21 million people in Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and northern Kenya. The language is in the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It is related to languages such as Oromo, Afar, and Hadiyya.

Here are some useful phrases in Somali:

English Somali
Hello Haye
My name is… Magacaygu waa…
I’m from… Waxaan ahay reer…

Learn more about Somali on Bing.

The Zulu language

The Zulu language is spoken by 12 million people in South Africa and neighboring countries. The Zulu language is in the Bantu language family, related to languages such as Swahili and Xhosa.

Zulu is a home language of South Africa and is recognized as one of South Africa’s 11 official languages. The Zulu people are known for their intricate beadwork, which is used as both decoration and as a form of communication to convey information about the wearer.

Here are some useful phrases in Zulu:

English Zulu
Hello Sawubona
My name is… Igama lami ngingu…
I’m from… Ngivela e …

Lean more about Zulu on Bing.

What you can do with Microsoft Translator

At home
Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android.  Learn more

At work
Globalize your business and customer interactions with customizable text and document translation using Azure Cognitive Services Translator.  Learn more

In the classroom
Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding.  Learn more

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Separated by an ocean, two people connect through gaming, similar passions and a rare disease

As a child, Megan Shaw was always falling. She bruised easily, seemed to be accident-prone and fainted a lot. As a teenager, she found out she had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare genetic condition that affects connective tissue. But at 23, she focuses on what she can do, not what she can’t.

A native of Scotland, she loves “wild” (in other words non-pool) swimming in nearby lakes (including Loch Ness) with friends and family. In the winter, she uses a wetsuit, but she doesn’t need to wear braces or tape in the cold water, which soothes her joints. Mountain hikes are also part of her routine – though her backpack comes with a feeding tube. She’s also six months out of medical school, doing a vascular surgery rotation as a junior doctor (the equivalent of a medical residency program in the U.S.). She intends to pursue a career as a pediatric physician.

“In pediatrics it’s very much about helping children live with what they have,” she says. “It’s about getting their symptoms controlled to a point where they can do the things they want to do.”

This is a philosophy that also drives her own approach to the disease she lives with.

She has never met anyone in person who also has this rare disease – though she had perused some online support forums – but recently she connected with a teenager in the U.S. who is also living with Ehlers-Danlos. They star in “Beyond Xbox: A Player Like Me,” the next film in the Xbox “Beyond” series, which began with “Beyond Generations.”

“It was actually really easy to talk to him. It was almost like I was talking to myself a few years ago,” says Shaw, who chatted with Jordan Strong, 15, through a headset while the two played the auto racing game Forza Horizon 5. Shaw played from her home, while Strong used a GO Kart (Gamers Outreach Kart) system outfitted with an Xbox Series S at a facility where he does physical therapy every other week.

The two spent hours getting to know one another as they played the game.

“I’m not that much older than him, but I didn’t know whether we would have anything in common,” Shaw says. “But it turns out we have quite a lot in common.”

They share a love of music. She plays the piano; he sings in choirs. They both have siblings who are able to do things they wanted to do but couldn’t: baseball for him, diving for her.

There was good-natured ribbing too, as Strong joked about Shaw’s driving skills as they played the game. (In her defense, she notes that they do drive on the other side of the road where she lives.) They both spent time trying to find each other on the Forza map, too. Their conversation ebbed and flowed naturally, but in-between the fun chats, they also talked about some serious topics.

A boy with headphones plays a video game
Jordan Strong playing Forza Horizon 5 while chatting with Megan Shaw

“We talked about how sometimes you get medical advice, but at the end of the day you know your own body. You’re the one who has to live with it,” Shaw says. “It’s just nice talking to someone who understands. I think at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that they are a different age from you or they’re in a different country. My friends or family are really supportive, but it’s quite a difficult thing to understand if you’ve never experienced it.”

Strong, a high school freshman in a small town in Georgia, had never even talked to someone else who had Ehlers-Danlos. Though he and Shaw have different sub-types of the disease, he still found a lot of value in their conversation – and hoped to connect again.

“It was really cool to see beyond Ehlers-Danlos that we share common interests and understand each other, more than just what are you going through,” says Strong, who admired Shaw’s active and outgoing life. “That was surprising, how she could put aside the risks a little bit.”

The film emerged as the next in Xbox’s experimental storytelling series that focuses on how gaming can be an important medium for connecting to others, especially during the pandemic. “Beyond Generations,” which debuted in December 2020, showed how a U.K.-based grandfather and grandson separated by lockdowns kept in touch over their headsets and through games.

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Announcing Office 365 Government Secret cloud to help secure classified data

Since announcing the general availability of Azure Government Secret and Top Secret clouds, our mission has been to support all US government agencies, departments, municipalities, and public sector employees with the most advanced, secure, and compliant productivity and collaboration tools. Today, we’re excited to announce the upcoming launch of a new US Government cloud environment: Office 365 Government Secret which is currently in government review pending accreditation and targeting availability starting mid-2022. This environment is built to support the US Federal Civilian, Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and US government partners working within the Secret enclave with our best-in-class software as a service (SaaS) capabilities.

With the launch of this new environment supporting Impact Level 6 (IL6), we’re adding to the comprehensive set of Office 365 Government cloud offerings to help meet the full spectrum of government data needs.

Microsoft 365 Government tree demonstration how it meets the full spectrum of government data needs through Government Community Clouds, D o D Cloud, and Secret clouds.

Driving mission resiliency with cloud productivity and collaboration

Governments face many challenges in today’s globally connected workspaces, including increasing employee engagement and productivity with the latest tools, securing and controlling sensitive data, and managing multiple applications, devices, and workloads. When governments factor in the increasing demands on security and the importance of protecting highly sensitive workloads across an expansive network of government agencies and partners, it becomes increasingly important to provide government employees with secure, productive, and efficient cloud options to help them achieve their missions.

To support the mission-critical workload shift from on-premises to the cloud, it requires us to work closely with the government to provide a secure and trusted infrastructure. This new environment will run the latest enterprise-grade Office 365 Government productivity, security, compliance, and collaboration applications. We have a comprehensive approach to build, test, onboard, and audit our products to be compliant with government regulations, which will help ensure security and compliance for the environments. We work to drive efficiencies internally and with government regulatory bodies to help improve the timeliness of products to market. With this shift to the secure cloud, it’s critical that we work closely with government agencies and partners on their resiliency needs in enabling the innovative enterprise-grade tools and capabilities that will support their missions.

Start your deployment plan now to prepare for the new cloud opportunities

If you plan to deploy Office 365 Secret environment, Microsoft highly encourages customers to engage with our onboarding teams right away to be prepared for when the environment is authorized for use. This includes working with different support groups (like Microsoft FastTrack, Microsoft Consulting Services, and deployment partners) to plan out remediation activities for identity, networks, devices, on-premises server upgrades, and a pilot plan for migrations. Developing these plans early on will help ensure unique environment transition challenges can be addressed and mitigated before a more comprehensive rollout. If you have any questions or would like help on these next steps, please reach out to your internal organizational mission partners and your Microsoft account team today.

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The metaverse is coming. Here are the cornerstones for securing it.

Beneath the buzz, the metaverse is arriving in both predictable and unexpected ways.

Some new experiences using headsets and mixed reality will be in your face – quite literally – but other implications will be harder to spot. As with all new categories, we’ll see intended and unintended innovations and experiences, and the security stakes will be higher than we imagine at first.

There is an inherent social engineering advantage with the novelty of any new technology. In the metaverse, fraud and phishing attacks targeting your identity could come from a familiar face – literally – like an avatar who impersonates your coworker, instead of a misleading domain name or email address. These types of threats could be deal breakers for enterprises if we don’t act now.

Because there will be no single metaverse platform or experience, interoperability is also crucial. Trust cannot end at the doorway of a virtual meeting space, for example – it must extend to the interactions and apps within – otherwise security uncertainty will hobble people wondering what to say or do in a new virtual space and create gaps that can be exploited.

Which brings us to the importance of these early days for the metaverse: We have one chance at the start of this era to establish specific, core security principles that foster trust and peace of mind for metaverse experiences. If we miss this opportunity, we’ll needlessly deter the adoption of technologies with great potential for improving accessibility, collaboration and business. The security community must work together to build a foundation to safely work, shop and play.

So what can we expect — and how can we create a trusted environment in the metaverse?

It’s important to remember that history often repeats itself
Technology shifts have a way of seeping in while we’re looking the other way. Consider the fact that real estate booms in virtual worlds aren’t new – coveted dot-com domain names were hot with brokers and speculators in the 1990s.

The early World Wide Web would indeed revolutionize commerce, but it would do so in ways many did not fully anticipate in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the ease of setting up a website also led to a gold rush of fraud with knock-off domains impersonating banks, government agencies and household brand names. These problems persist to this day.

We have seen this cycle play out again and again. When Wi-Fi was first available on laptops, corporate security teams were wary of embracing it. Before long, you could not buy a laptop without Wi-Fi –whether your organization accounted for wireless in security policies, or not.

When the iPhone and Android phones exploded onto the scene, they became a massive catalyst for BYOD (bring your own device) policies in the workplace. Almost overnight, personal devices became a new category and organizations had to catch up. We can logically expect metaverse-influenced features and experiences to arrive at enterprises in much the same fashion.

Let’s learn from these lessons and stay ahead of the curve
We’ve long known that security is a team sport, and no single vendor, product or technology can go it alone in protection. The culture of information-sharing and collaboration in the defender community today has been a monumental achievement that did not happen overnight. Today ISPs, cloud providers, device manufacturers — even industry rivals in these markets — recognize the need to work together on security issues.

Sitting now at the gateway of a new dimension in technology, it’s critical to align on key priorities to help secure the metaverse for generations — and identity, transparency and a continued sense of unity among defenders will be key.

Identity is where intruders strike first
For years fraudsters have claimed to be deposed princes with fortunes to share, or sweepstakes hosts desperately trying to reach you, but the advent of email and text messaging re-franchised these schemes for the digital world.

Play this forward, and picture what phishing could look like in the metaverse. It won’t be a fake email from your bank. It could be an avatar of a teller in a virtual bank lobby asking for your information. It could be an impersonation of your CEO inviting you to a meeting in a malicious virtual conference room.

This is why solving for identity in the metaverse is a top concern. Organizations need to know that adopting metaverse-enabled apps and experiences won’t upend their identity and access control. This means we have to make identity manageable for enterprises in this new world.

Constructive steps include making things like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and passwordless authentication integral to platforms. We can also build on recent innovations in the multicloud arena, where IT admins can use a single console to govern access to multiple cloud app experiences their users rely on.

Transparency and interoperability will be key
There will be many providers of platforms and experiences in the metaverse, and true interoperability can make the gaps between them seamless and more secure — while enabling exciting new scenarios. Think of bringing your virtual PowerPoint presentation into a client’s virtual meeting room, even if it’s operating on a different platform.

Transparency can help enable this every step of the way. New platforms usually run a tough gauntlet once they arrive in enterprises at scale — that is often when security researchers really begin probing code, features and product claims.

Metaverse stakeholders should anticipate security questions and be prepared to jump on any updates. There must be clear and standard communication around terms of service, security features like where and how encryption is used, vulnerability reporting and updates.

Transparency helps accelerate adoption — it speeds the learning process for security.

Our strongest defense is working together
The problems of yesterday’s and today’s Internet — impersonation, attempts to steal credentials, social engineering, nation state espionage, inevitable vulnerabilities — will be with us in the metaverse. And it will take the same security community of good faith, norms and teamwork to anticipate and respond to them.

The strides we’ve made across the tech industry in cooperating against threats as the stakes have risen in recent years remains a cornerstone for security as metaverse platforms and experiences begin to shape the future.

Security researchers, chief information security officers and industry stakeholders also have an opportunity to understand the terrain of the metaverse as adversaries do — and use it to our advantage. Metaverse platforms will likely create and generate entirely new data streams with the potential to improve authentication, pinpoint suspect or malicious activity or even revisualize cybersecurity to help human analysts make decisions in the moment.

As with any new frontier, high expectations, fierce competition, uncertainty and learning on the fly will define how the metaverse evolves — and the same is true for securing it. But we do not need to predict the ultimate impact of the metaverse to recognize and embrace the security and trust principles that make the journey a safer one for all.

Let’s make the lessons we’ve learned about identity, transparency and the security community’s powerful collaboration our top ideals to enable this next wave of technology to reach its full potential.

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EU-US data agreement an important milestone for data protection, Microsoft is committed to doing our part

Today, the European Commission and the U.S. government announced an important agreement governing the transfer of data between the EU and the U.S. This new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework is designed to rebuild and strengthen the data protection bridge between the EU and the U.S. by addressing the concerns of the Court of Justice of the European Union when it invalidated the original Privacy Shield framework in 2020. Microsoft applauds the European Commission and the U.S. government for achieving this important milestone. We greatly appreciate the enormous effort required for this important step, and we look forward to doing our full part to support these new measures and ensure that the new framework’s fundamental privacy protections are fully realized.

Microsoft is committed to embracing the new framework and will go beyond it by meeting or exceeding all the requirements this framework outlines for companies. We will do this through enhancements to how we handle legal requests for customer data and providing further support for individuals concerned about their rights.

This is how it will work:

First, Microsoft will confirm that any demand for personal data from the U.S. government complies with the newly announced Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy and Security Framework. If we believe the demand is not compliant, we will use all lawful means to challenge it.

Second, Microsoft will support the redress process under the new agreement by putting our full legal resources to work and seeking to actively participate in the judicial review of an individual’s claim of harm related to Microsoft’s public sector and commercial cloud services.

Our new commitments build upon our existing Defending Your Data protections, through which we will challenge – on all legal bases – any government demand for personal data we hold on behalf of our public sector and commercial customers, and we will provide monetary compensation if such data is disclosed unlawfully in response to a government request.

What’s new in the EU-U.S. framework for trusted data transfers

This framework addresses two concerns of the Court of Justice in the EU related to U.S. surveillance laws: (1) the scope and proportionality of permissible U.S. national security surveillance activities; and (2) the availability of redress mechanisms for Europeans whose personal data is improperly collected and used by U.S. intelligence agencies. The new framework rightfully makes clear that U.S. surveillance practices must be both necessary and proportionate. And critically, it creates an independent data protection review court to provide effective review and redress for Europeans impacted by improper surveillance.

Microsoft’s solutions provide greater customer protection

As a company, we will continue to advance solutions that further strengthen customer trust in our services, particularly for those customers who want more control over their data.

We will offer enhanced residency capabilities for processing and storing our public sector and commercial cloud customers’ personal data through our EU Data Boundary program. We will also continue to offer state-of-the-art encryption for data at rest and in transit for our Microsoft Cloud products in Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. In addition, we will continue to protect customer data through Microsoft’s unparalleled public cloud cybersecurity protections and solutions. By analyzing more than 24 trillion signals daily, Microsoft provides our government and commercial customers with global visibility into cybersecurity threats that cannot be matched by other cloud providers.

Microsoft supports global solutions

Microsoft will continue to support additional efforts to establish consensus around the globe on the appropriate balance between privacy and security, including through engagement at the OECD and in other global forums. We are committed to helping develop durable global solutions.

The new framework agreed to by the EU and the U.S. sets a very high standard for how governments should seek to access Europeans’ personal data and contains important rights for individuals to obtain redress if their data is accessed inappropriately. It is a welcome development and an important achievement for the data protection rights of Europeans.

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Celebrating 9 years of ID@Xbox

When we started the [email protected] program (almost nine years ago!), we really didn’t know much. We knew that independent developers were driving the pace of video game innovation faster than we’d ever seen, and we knew the work they were doing was incredibly progressive and important. We also knew that our players on Xbox loved the artistry and diversity delivered by these developers, and that to make sure our players got the best, most diverse array of games possible, we had to do everything we could to help developers maximize their success on the Xbox ecosystem.

So, we did a lot of listening – directly learning from developers what they wanted, and what they needed. They were never shy about telling us what worked, and what didn’t. Innovations like cross-play across other consoles, for example, came directly from [email protected] partners. Stemming from their feedback and requests, we made a lot of changes to our back-end publishing systems and even our app framework. These changes may seem mundane but are really important as we seek to enable independent developers to ship their game easily across Xbox and PC.

The results have exceeded our wildest dreams. Since the program’s inception, independent developers have earned more than $2.5 billion in royalties and total revenue generated by [email protected] partners on Xbox almost doubled over the last three years. These are staggering numbers, and it speaks to the power of independent developers. 

We’ve also paid developers and publishers across Xbox hundreds of millions of dollars in Game Pass license fees. There are amazing games out today on Xbox (and other platforms!) that would never have existed without the support of Game Pass members, and that’s really been an incredible phenomenon. Ensuring that millions of Game Pass members get to experience some of the best independent games ever created has been transformational for Xbox players and developers.

We know talent is universal, and supporting developers of all sizes, from start-up, single-person studios to veteran indies with multiple successful games in the market is crucial. We’re proud that more than 4,600 developers from 94 countries worldwide are looking to deliver experiences to players via Xbox, including more than 1,000 creators who signed up to the [email protected] program over the last two years.

Even with over 3,000 games from independent developers on Xbox, we still have a long way to go. One area we talk to developers and players about a lot is “discoverability.” Teams across Microsoft work every day to help solve discovery challenges so players can find games they love, and in turn, ensure developers find the audience for their games. Whether it’s helping announce games like WrestleQuest or Escape Academy to millions of viewers in a /[email protected] Showcase with /twitchgaming, providing opportunities for creators to highlight their games on Xbox channels or including their titles in themed sales and promotion, we’re always looking for ways to connect creators with new audiences.

Game Pass is another avenue that helps encourage Xbox players to discover new genres and games. After joining, the average member plays 30% more genres and plays 40% more games, with a majority of those games being outside of Game Pass.

Beyond that, we’re investing a lot in marketing and merchandising programs all the time to ensure that Xbox players anywhere discover the more than 3,000 independent titles available on Xbox.

This GDC, Microsoft also introduced a new program that was born out of feedback from developers – [email protected] It’s led by Nick Ferguson, Director of [email protected], (who was an original [email protected] team member back in 2013, when we were just a virtual team with an idea), and it’s for developers on any platform, from iOS and Android to Switch, PlayStation, and PC (and Xbox, of course!) who want to use Microsoft’s cloud gaming services in their games. If you’re a developer, please check it out at http://www.azure.com/id

Nine years ago, we made a promise to independent developers that we’d work as hard as we could on their behalf, because we knew Xbox players would be stoked to support their work. We don’t by any means consider that promise fulfilled, because we see our work as an ongoing commitment from Xbox to independent developers. But through [email protected], the launch of [email protected], our work with Game Pass and beyond to help developers bring their games to Xbox, and with the community response to the amazing games we’re seeing come to the platform, we feel we’re making progress in the right direction. 

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“These people aren’t statistics. Their stories need to be told.” This story illustrates the agonizing missing persons’ tragedies that too many Indigenous people…

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Microsoft and SAP advance partnership

Today, we are announcing that Microsoft and SAP are advancing our partnership by deepening our commitment to each other’s platform. Microsoft will be the first public cloud provider to adopt the RISE with SAP solution internally to transform some of its large SAP ERP deployments. This takes place on the one-year anniversary of our partnership with SAP to offer the Microsoft Cloud as one of the infrastructure options for the RISE with SAP solution. This move deepens an already strong partnership and will allow Microsoft to accelerate our own SAP S/4HANA® modernization while enabling us to develop greater expertise and best practices to better serve our customers.

As part of its transformative journey and to gain operational efficiencies, SAP will optimize its IT operations for some critical internal business systems using the RISE with SAP operations model on Microsoft Azure. Customers and partners have experienced early success in accelerating their business transformation and simplifying their path to the intelligent enterprise. For example:

Company logos beginning at the left for the N B A, Atos, Fressnapf, and Wolverine Wordwide.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) chose to migrate its SAP® solutions and other IT resources to Microsoft Azure and leverage the RISE with SAP offering to facilitate its ongoing cloud evolution. The NBA has gained flexibility, scalability, and access to a wide range of data and AI services in Azure that will help the league deliver best-in-class fan engagement through data consolidation and reduced IT management overhead. “The RISE with SAP bundle is really strategic for the NBA,” says Puneet Toteja, Senior Director at NBA.

“With the built-in AI, data warehouse, and personalization capabilities of Azure, we can generate fan-centric experiences that bring together business, game, and fan data to enhance the ways people can enjoy interacting with the NBA,” remarks Sahil Gupta, Senior Vice President and Head of Application Development at NBA.

Fressnapf, the leading pet product retailer in Europe, has gained greater flexibility, scalability, and reliability using the RISE with SAP solution on Azure, which brings together the best-of-breeds: SAP as its central business platform and Azure as its scalable infrastructure platform.

“Microsoft always gave us open and honest advice and we could tell—they are in for the long game! We have chosen the partner closest to our heart,” says Benjamin Beinroth, CIO at Fressnapf.

Footwear, apparel, and accessories marketer and retailer Wolverine Worldwide made a commitment to migrate its data centers to Microsoft Azure in parallel with an upgrade to the RISE with SAP solution hosted on Azure. Wolverine Worldwide is moving to the cloud to support growth, improve agility, enhance employee experience, and improve speed to market.

Not only do customers prefer the Microsoft Cloud for their RISE with SAP solution implementation, but our ecosystem partners do as well. Atos, a global leader in digital transformation with 105,000 employees worldwide, has chosen Microsoft Cloud for its RISE with SAP solution implementation.

“We chose Azure to increase flexibility and scalability, with a system that we can adjust as required.  In addition, we have easier interoperation with the services on offer, like Teams and Power BI, and technologies like AI, machine learning, and chatbots,” explains Frédéric Aubrière, Group CIO at Atos.

Customers and partners choose Microsoft Cloud for their SAP solutions because of the ease of integration, breadth of advanced services and innovation, and the highest level of security and compliance. Microsoft offers the broadest set of connectors and APIs to enable quick integration into SAP solutions—whether improving productivity by integrating SAP applications and Microsoft Teams or enhancing data analytics with Power BI and SAP Analytics Cloud solution or automating and integrating SAP apps with other cloud data. These comprehensive services, tools, and capabilities have accelerated our customers’ and partners’ business transformation.

SAP and Microsoft: Integrate and co-innovate

We constantly strive to improve the user experience, simplify the automation and integration of SAP S/4HANA on the Microsoft Cloud, and accelerate customers’ business transformation. This partnership puts both SAP and Microsoft in a strong position to continue driving the best outcomes for customers with solutions from SAP in the public cloud.

We’re achieving this by focusing on addressing the needs of various SAP users:

SAP Business User

Microsoft Teams has become one of the most used applications on desktops and mobile apps for collaboration and communication. We have come a long way since we announced the expanded partnership between SAP and Microsoft to integrate Microsoft Teams across SAP solutions. This has enabled more scenarios, including SAP Business ByDesign, SAP Sales Cloud, and SAP SuccessFactors solutions, among others. Check out how Doosan created the Delightful Digital Workplace for its employees and how you can benefit from the integration of SAP SuccessFactors solutions and Microsoft Viva.

Developers

The innovation for SAP developers includes improvements in SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to increase availability and accelerate the development of SAP extensions. As part of our global expansion plan, we launched support in the Australia East region last year, making SAP BTP on Azure available in six regions, with more to be added in the coming months. We continue to add access to new security features in the cloud. SAP BTP now supports Azure Private Link, offering excellent private network connectivity between applications running on SAP BTP, Azure native services, and resources running in our customer’s subscription.

To architect for scalable and robust enterprise applications in the cloud, event-driven architectures are the strategic path forward. We are happy to announce the upcoming integration between the SAP Event Mesh capability and Azure Event Grid. This collaboration will greatly facilitate the integration of event-based architectures between Microsoft’s and SAP’s technology stacks. This bidirectional integration will enable scenarios such as Azure Logic App to be triggered by an event in SAP S/4HANA or an SAP software workflow triggered by an event in the Azure platform. This is further enhanced by improved integration of SAP Cloud Identity Services and Azure Active Directory, allowing for easier identity flows.

We will continue to build and share joint SAP and Microsoft reference architectures so customers can access best practices and guidance on how to deploy our new capabilities.

Administrators

The SAP Cloud Appliance Library tool has been a way to accelerate the creation of test and development systems for customers starting their journey to the cloud with SAP S/4HANA. Setting up production quality installations of SAP S/4HANA and implementing best practices to achieve performance, security, and cost optimization may still be challenging. Thanks to the partnership between SAP and Microsoft, it is now possible for customers to deploy production systems with SAP Cloud Appliance Library on Microsoft Azure. This functionality for production systems is currently only available in Azure and is a major productivity gain. With SAP Cloud Appliance Library, administrators can use a wizard with a simple UI flow to deploy an SAP and Microsoft approved SAP S/4HANA landscape, that is based on customer individual software stack definitions (via Maintenance Planner), SAP instance sizing, and high-availability options. Moreover, it benefits not only greenfield implementations, but in combination with the new “DMO to Azure” tool, it supports the conversion from on-premise SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA Cloud on Microsoft Azure.

Lastly, customers can further enhance productivity by integrating SAP applications with Azure native services. The recently launched Azure Blob Storage Connector for the SAP Information Lifecycle Management service is a great example of how we facilitate life-cycle management using Azure’s scalability, security, and cost benefits.

Respecting the customer’s choice

Microsoft understands that every customer is different. Each one has their own set of requirements and priorities, and when it comes to their SAP systems, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The RISE with SAP solution offers the choice of Azure infrastructure, allowing customers to take the best path for their business. We are thankful for our deep, 25-year-long relationship with SAP and look forward to delivering more joint innovation to our customers.

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How Microsoft is using an internal carbon fee to reach its carbon negative goal

A tree grows in green meadow during spring in the United Kingdom.

From wildfires to floods, the catastrophic impacts of climate change threaten to outpace our global ability to adapt, as the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has told us. This reinforces the importance of companies and people doing all they can to reduce their carbon emissions.

Microsoft has committed to becoming carbon negative—meaning, we will reduce our carbon emissions deeply and remove more carbon than we emit—by the year 2030. By 2050, our goal is to remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted since it was founded in 1975.

Evolution of our carbon fee

We’ve been working to reduce our carbon emissions since 2009, through energy efficiency, renewable electricity, and low-carbon transportation. Our efforts address all scopes of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol: Our direct emissions (scope 1), such as from company vehicles; our purchases of electricity (scope 2); and our indirect emissions from supply chain and product use (scope 3).

One of our key tools for reduction is an internal carbon fee—a way to accelerate decarbonization internally and generate funding for carbon reduction and removal efforts. Starting in 2012, our initial carbon fee focused on scope 1, scope 2, and business air travel. The proceeds from the fee provided funding for our carbon-neutral commitment at the time. In 2020 we began charging our internal business groups for all scope 3 emissions and, in parallel, worked with our suppliers to help them understand their carbon contributions and how to reduce them.

We track all our emissions across scopes: direct operations, electricity, procurement, supply chain, product energy use, plus categories such as business travel and employee commuting. We aggregate that information, and each year charge our business groups a certain amount in carbon fees. Determining how much is a balancing act, enough to encourage meaningful change.

None of this could be called easy. Our progress in reducing carbon output has not been a straight line. Plus, like any company, we seek to grow. We have seen revenue growth of as much as 22 percent, year over year, since 2018. While we are very proud of that, we’re cognizant of the fact that growth almost inevitability demands more energy usage.

Attend a webinar on our carbon fee

Now in 2022, we have redesigned and increased our carbon fee to accelerate scope 3 emissions reduction and match the underlying costs of carbon abatement. For example, the scope 3 business travel fee will increase to $100 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent in our next fiscal year to better support the purchase of sustainable aviation fuel. And we will continue to increase the annual fee at an accelerated rate through FY30. Learn more by watching the on-demand webinar “Accelerated Sustainability with an Internal Carbon Fee.”  

In the webinar, you’ll learn more about the history of our carbon fee, how it works, how we measure scope 3 emissions, and more.

Partnering for climate progress

As a leading technology provider of sustainability solutions, Microsoft is supporting our customers and partners as they move toward a net-zero, environmentally sustainable future. In addition to sharing our experience implementing carbon-reduction projects, our carbon fee model serves as one example of how a large enterprise can reduce carbon output.

Read more about our progress and learnings on the journey to meeting our 2030 company commitments and find out how we are helping customers take their own path through our Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability solution.