Recent News – Page 99

Posted on May 6, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Introducing Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, Surface Headphones 2 and Surface Earbuds

Introducing Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, Surface Headphones 2 and Surface Earbuds

The way we work, connect and learn continues to change right in front of us. Our devices have become our window to the world – our office, our school and our social space. To help navigate the current environment people are turning to Windows PCs more than ever. In fact, over 4 trillion minutes are being spent on Windows 10 a month, a 75% increase year on year. It’s not just the pull of the larger screen and better keyboard, but the versatility of a device that runs the software we need and games and entertainment we love, with cameras and mics built in to connect us to the people who matter most. This is what Windows PCs were built to do. This is what we design Surface for.

Posted on May 5, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft to establish its first datacenter region in New Zealand

Latest datacenter region affirms Microsoft’s commitment to enable digital transformation while accelerating innovation and growth in Aotearoa

Auckland, New Zealand, 6 May 2020 – Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to establish its first datacenter region in New Zealand, a major milestone toward delivering enterprise-grade cloud services in the country. The New Zealand datacenter region will be the latest addition to Microsoft’s global datacenter footprint, which totals more than any other cloud provider at 60 regions announced, with Microsoft Azure available in over 140 countries around the world.

With the development of this new datacenter region, Microsoft aims to fuel new growth that will accelerate digital transformation opportunities across New Zealand. The company will also continue its investments in new solutions that support both New Zealand and Microsoft’s sustainability goals. In addition, Microsoft will add support for educational skilling programs to increase future employability opportunities for the people of New Zealand.

“This significant investment in New Zealand’s digital infrastructure is a testament to the remarkable spirit of New Zealand’s innovation and reflects how we’re pushing the boundaries of what is possible as a nation,” said Vanessa Sorenson, general manager, Microsoft New Zealand. “The Fletcher School’s Digital Evolution Index characterises New Zealand as a ‘standout nation’ demonstrating to the world what the future might look like. I’m confident this investment will help accelerate our digital evolution.”

Accelerating digital transformation in New Zealand

Through the development of the new region, public– and private–sector entities, large enterprises, and small and medium-size businesses will be able to use scalable, highly available and resilient public cloud services, while also helping companies meet their data residency, security and compliance needs.

Customers will have access to Microsoft’s cloud services, including:

Microsoft Azure – an ever-expanding set of cloud services that offers computing, networking, databases, analytics, AI and Internet of Things (IoT) services.

Microsoft 365 – the world’s productivity cloud, featuring best-of-breed productivity apps delivered as part of an open platform for business processes with email, collaboration, conferencing, enterprise social networking and business intelligence.
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform – intelligent business applications that enable organisations to grow, evolve and transform to meet the needs of customers and capture new opportunities.
Built-In Trust and Security – an industry-leading portfolio of government and industry certifications and world-class security as well as a commitment from Microsoft to store customer data at rest in New Zealand.

While this new region will deliver local access to cloud services, New Zealand customers and partners are already benefitting from Microsoft’s global scale cloud services.

Fonterra is a New Zealand dairy co-operative, which exports products to over 140 countries. Piers Shore, CIO, Fonterra said, “To meet our strategic goals, which are enabled by efficiency, innovation and sustainability, we look to build strong partnerships with great companies to drive enhanced productivity across the business. Microsoft is one of our key partners in helping us deliver our digital transformation. This is an exciting announcement — it will bring even more cutting-edge technology to our co-operative and the New Zealand technology ecosystem. This in turn will help us leverage technology to create value for our farmer owners and unit holders, and Fonterra customers around the world.”

Spark NZ, a leading digital services organisation and Microsoft cloud customer, enables its customers to quickly and securely innovate and scale operations. “Spark, New Zealand’s largest telecommunications and technology solutions provider, is delighted to partner with Microsoft to empower innovation — two organisations focused on building cloud and digital capability to help New Zealand businesses succeed,” said Jolie Hodson, chief executive, Spark.

Microsoft New Zealand’s diverse partner ecosystem of roughly 2,300 companies, employing over 21,000 people, will further benefit customers by bringing their unique industry expertise to generate new opportunities in customers’ digital transformation journeys. Microsoft partner Computer Concepts Ltd (CCL) delivers customer-focused solutions designed to meet business needs, including specialised data migrations to advanced virtual desktops and data recovery. “CCL is proud to be supporting Microsoft in this venture. It’s a game changer, unlocking the potential of Kiwi businesses to go global, at scale and securely. This is an opportunity to fundamentally change the way we consume technology and level the playing field for disruptive Kiwi innovators like never before,” said Andrew Allan, CEO, CCL.

Continued commitment to sustainability

Microsoft has committed to become carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 remove all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption from the environment since it was founded in 1975. Through its AI for Good initiative, Microsoft combines its technology and expertise in artificial intelligence and data science with the talent and expertise of groups around the world to address humanitarian challenges, preserve cultural heritage, and create a more sustainable, healthier, and accessible world.

New Zealand organisations, including National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and Sustainable Coastlines, are already leveraging Microsoft’s cloud services and resources from this initiative to address global issues.

NIWA was awarded a Microsoft AI for Earth grant to analyse past weather data and major events, such as “The Week it Snowed Everywhere” to help predict future weather patterns. In a world-first project with Microsoft, NIWA is pioneering the use of AI to scan historic weather observations and turn this information into data to help evaluate how our climate is changing over time.

Secondly, award-winning NGO and Microsoft AI for Earth grant recipient Sustainable Coastlines, which launched a Litter Database, makes citizen scientists out of New Zealanders by arming them with data to keep beaches clean. Creators of the Sustainable Coastlines app have been working alongside the Ministry for the Environment, Department of Conservation and Statistics NZ to create an additional first-of-its-kind resource, Litter Intelligence. This resource is developed in alignment with a United Nations Environment Programme methodology, which has the potential to scale globally and benefit other countries’ sustainability agendas. 

Skilling for the future

Microsoft is also working to bridge the skills gap among the IT community and enhance technical acumen for cloud services to support future employability opportunities.

Microsoft has worked alongside Massey University and The Collaborative Studio to launch i4 Accelerator, a public-private education program that addresses skills shortages in primary industries, such as manufacturing and technology. The i4 accelerator supports digital skilling efforts by providing access to training for targeted skills, leadership education and workplace-based training programs to support the adoption of digital technologies. Through this work, i4 Accelerator aims to enable New Zealand logistics and technology companies to build better solutions through co-creation and collaboration.

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

The new datacenter region in New Zealand is subject to approval from the Overseas Investment Office.

Posted on May 5, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Forza Street now available on iOS and Android

Forza Street is now available globally to download on your iOS and Android devices!

This all-new Forza experience lets you jump into the game for quick, under-a-minute races where you compete to unlock new cars and upgrade parts to grow your car collection. We are excited for iOS and Android players to jump into this free to play mobile experience designed to be played anytime, anywhere, and excite anyone who loves cars.

Forza Street was also designed to be an evolving experience. The game is based in a street racing world with interesting characters, mystery, and intrigue, explored through a narrative driven campaign, weekly Spotlight Events, and limited time Themed Events, all of which provide players an opportunity to expand their car collections. For players looking for an additional challenge, weekly Rivals events let them take their collections against other players in the community in leaderboard based asynchronous challenges.

As a special gift to everyone who plays Forza Street between today and June 5 2020, players will receive a 2017 Ford GT and added in-game credits and gold to help you unlock new cars and grow your car collection! Don’t miss out on this chance to get this rare supercar added to your garage.

For gamers joining the fun via the Samsung Galaxy Store, we have two more gifts for you: anyone who downloads through the Galaxy Store on their Samsung devices will receive the 2015 Ford Mustang GT with a custom Galaxy themed paint. If players have the latest Galaxy S20 devices, they will also receive the 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 with a Custom Galaxy, and in-game credits and gold.

Want to play Forza Street across multiple device? We got you covered – Forza Street supports Xbox Live. When you sign in with Xbox Live, players will be able to unlock Xbox Achievements and transfer game progress across your Windows, iOS, and Android devices.

We’re so excited to share this game with the world, and hope you enjoy! To stay up-to-date on the latest, be sure to “like” Forza Street on Facebook. Thank you for all your support, happy racing in Forza Street!

Apple: Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

Google: Android, Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.

Posted on May 5, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft Quantum researchers pin down largest quantum speedup for unstructured problems

The promise of quantum computing is that it could help us solve some of the most complex challenges facing our world. It’s commonly told that addressing global issues, like climate change, would take our classical computers of today billions of years to solve, whereas a quantum computer could find solutions in mere weeks, days, or hours.

This speedup over classical computing comes when researchers develop algorithms that can harness the unique principles of quantum mechanics—superposition and entanglement—to process highly complex calculations more quickly on scaled-up quantum hardware.

To prepare for this scaled-up quantum future, researchers have been discovering which problems will be well suited for quantum computing and how big of a speedup we can expect over classical counterparts—whether polynomial or exponential.

Shor’s algorithm, for example, is a famous quantum algorithm that we know will yield exponential speedups on a scaled quantum computer. This understanding from research has already had a significant impact on the security industry, reshaping the way we encrypt and protect our data for years to come.

But for other types of common problems, the maximum impact quantum can have has remained an open question for decades—until now.

Robin Kothari, a Senior Researcher on the Microsoft Quantum Systems team, and fellow collaborators Scott Aaronson, Shalev Ben-David, and Avishay Tal, have discovered a breakthrough in two common problems that have been open for over twenty years, resolving conjecture about the speedup that is obtainable by quantum algorithms over classical algorithms.

The problems the team explored appear in almost every type of industry—analyzing massive sets of unstructured data and understanding the connections and patterns within a large graph or network. The researchers showed that the best possible speedup is quartic, meaning to the fourth power, for unstructured problems in quantum query complexity. Previously, in 1998 it was only proven that, at most, a sixth power speedup was the best possible. The proof technique they used also resolves a question having to do with quantum speedup for graph problems.

By definitively answering the question of the largest possible quantum speedup for these problems, the team has enabled fellow researchers and organizations across the industry to better understand both the opportunities and limits of these algorithms and to continue focusing on problems that hold promise for future quantum impact.

You can learn more about the research in a Microsoft Research Blog post by Robin Kothari and read Quantum Implications of Huang’s Sensitivity Theorem published on arXiv.

Posted on May 5, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft announces $1B plan for Poland, including access to local cloud services with first datacenter region

Plan combines investments in long-term talent upskilling, strong local partnerships, support for digital transformation and latest cloud technology to help realize vision of “Polish Digital Valley” and boost digitalization and innovation for companies, government and citizens

WARSAW, Poland – May 5, 2020 – Microsoft Corp. announced today a comprehensive $1 billion investment plan to accelerate innovation and digital transformation in the “Polish Digital Valley.” Foundational to this multifaceted plan is the opening of a new Microsoft datacenter region in Poland as part of its global-scale cloud to provide the country’s broad ecosystem of startups, entrepreneurs, enterprises and government access to secure, enterprise-grade cloud services. Microsoft and the domestic cloud provider Chmura Krajowa have signed a strategic agreement to provide digital transformation expertise and broad access to cloud solutions across all industries and enterprises in Poland.

The plan builds on Microsoft’s nearly 30-year track record of working successfully with Polish organizations and businesses of all sizes and with a network of more than 6,000 local partners. The initiative extends over the next seven years and combines extensive digital transformation expertise with a strong focus on upskilling local talent with the latest cloud-based competencies to empower local organizations to drive and accelerate their digital transformation, boost competitiveness and support employment opportunities in market.

“I deeply believe that Microsoft’s investment in Poland will be important for enterprises, public institutions and the education system and will enable them to digitally transform and implement new work standards. Our primary goal is to accelerate Poland’s transformation into a technological hub for the region of Central and Eastern Europe,” said Mateusz Morawiecki, prime minister of Poland.

“I am proud to announce our $1 billion dollar investment in Poland’s continued digital transformation and the development of the ‘Polish Digital Valley.’ Today’s announcement builds on our nearly 30-year presence in the country. Microsoft’s global-scale cloud in Poland will allow an ever-wider use, faster implementation and more benefits to those public institutions and businesses in critical sectors along with Poland’s thriving start-up community. This investment will also provide strong support for the continued success of Poland’s developer talent pool and beyond, creating critical skilling and learning opportunities for an estimated 150,000 employees, partners and students. Our mission is to empower the people and organizations of Poland to achieve more,” said Jean-Phillippe Courtois, executive vice president and president, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing and Operations.

A new cloud partnership for the “Polish Digital Valley”
To support local organizations in their transformation and innovation with the new cloud datacenter region, Microsoft and Chmura Krajowa have signed a partnership agreement to support Polish public institutions and businesses in critical sectors such as government, health, education, manufacturing, retail, energy, finance, insurance and more.

“Today, we are celebrating the signing of a strategic partnership between Chmura Krajowa and Microsoft, a great global technology player. One of the biggest. This is another important step on the road to digitization and accelerating the development of the entire Polish economy. A special step in the face of irreversible changes that are taking place before our eyes in the socio-economic ecosystem. Digital transformation is a great opportunity to deal with the current crisis faster and more effectively. Cloud technology is the future that we want to pursue today,” said Zbigniew Jagiełło, CEO of PKO Bank Polski, one of two founders of Chmura Krajowa.

“Poland has the opportunity to be the digital heart of Europe. This is why today we are announcing a partnership with Chmura Krajowa, and one of the biggest investments in digital technology in Poland ever of $1 billion investment in skilling, digital transformation support, and building a Microsoft global-scale and trusted cloud region, giving our customers and strong local partner ecosystem access to our world-class digital technology and innovative cloud solutions all located here in Poland,” said Mark Loughran, general manager, Microsoft Poland.

Through this partnership, Microsoft and Chmura Krajowa are providing the latest developments in cloud technology for the good of their customers and society, increasing competitiveness and innovative solutions to serve customers across many industries in Poland and across the globe.

Skills for the future: Talent and technology
An important pillar of today’s announcement is the robust and long-term skilling program to expand employment opportunities for local professionals and youth. Microsoft aims to boost the digital competencies of an estimated 150,000 business employees and IT professionals, educators, students and citizens to support the digital transformation of organizations. In doing so, the company seeks to increase competitiveness of Polish businesses and individuals in the market and empower Polish employees to successfully innovate and implement the cloud-based digital transformation strategies of their organizations.

The skills development program will include trainings, e-learning programs, workshops and hackathons covering cloud computing, developing with AI and machine learning technologies, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT). Within this effort, accessibility is important to Microsoft to ensure people with disabilities also have access to the technologies and the tools that allow them to be educated, informed and increase employment opportunities.

Trusted, global-scale cloud
Today’s announcement will pave the way for local companies, startups and institutions to fully utilize the potential of cloud computing, while maintaining the highest cybersecurity, data residency and compliance standards, especially those with specific data storage and processing requirements.

The new cloud datacenter region joins Microsoft’s global footprint of cloud regions, now totaling 59 regions announced, with Microsoft Azure available in over 140 countries, and will provide companies local access to Microsoft’s full set of cloud services, all built on a foundation of trust:

Microsoft Azure, an ever-expanding set of cloud services that offers computing, networking, databases, analytics, AI and IoT services.
Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud that delivers best-of-breed productivity apps integrated through cloud services and delivered as part of an open platform for business processes.
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, the next generation of intelligent business applications that enable organizations to grow, evolve and transform to meet the needs of customers and capture new opportunities.
Compliance, security and privacy: Microsoft offers more than 90 certifications and spends $1 billion every year on cybersecurity to address security at every layer of the cloud. Microsoft’s Poland datacenter region will help companies comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and will also help customers store data at rest in Poland.

Posted on May 4, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Chief Product Officer Panos Panay: Accelerating innovation in Windows 10 to meet customers where they are

Three months ago, I took on the role of leading Windows and Devices. What excited me about this was the opportunity to bring together our incredible teams to work on a product that a billion people all over the world rely on every day to work, learn, create and have fun. Since taking on the role, the world has changed in a way that many of us are still adjusting to. I am adapting to working from home, collaborating with our teams remotely and having my four children learning from home.

From hitting the milestone of 1 billion Windows 10 monthly active devices to announcing the May 2020 Update that is coming soon, I feel a tremendous sense of pride and gratitude to see the team’s relentlessness and growth mindset culture at work to push forward supporting our customers and each other.

As a team we have been spending a lot of time with our customers, OEM partners and teams inside and outside of the company listening and learning. The feedback we are hearing is energizing, and if one thing is clear it is that Windows plays a critical role in helping people navigate the times we are in. Customers are using Windows PCs to stay productive, connect and learn in this time. In fact, over 4 trillion minutes are being spent on Windows 10 a month, a 75% increase year on year.

As the world and people’s routines are changing, it is important that we focus on meeting our customers where they are now and helping them get to where they want to be in the future.

Shipping the Windows 10 May 2020 Update

A great step the team is taking to meet customers where they are is with the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, coming free, as always, to every Windows 10 PC starting this month.

In this update, we are going to make some things easier and faster for our customers like introducing a more streamlined way to pair Bluetooth devices in Windows. With my full house, I am thrilled to have anything that makes connecting my family’s devices easier, like my noise cancelling headphones to focus while working from home. We are bringing practical improvements in the bigger things, like an improved tablet experience when you detach your 2-in-1’s keyboard, allowing you to keep the familiarity of your desktop while at the same time optimizing for touch*. As always, we are continuing our focus on empowering everyone with Windows, and with the May 2020 Update we are bringing “drag and drop” to those who use our Eye Control functionality**. We are even bringing in some fun, like making more kaomoji available directly in the Windows emoji keyboard. ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)

For those of you who are Windows Insiders, you have gotten to try many of these new features even sooner. Thank you for helping us shape the future of Windows. If you are not a Windows Insider yet, we invite you to join us.

Accelerating innovation in Windows 10

The May 2020 Update is just the first step though. As a team, we are committed to delivering meaningful innovation in ways that matter most to the billion people around the world relying on Windows right now. That is why, in this holiday and the next, we are going to accelerate innovation in Windows 10 to ensure that Windows devices are the best way to work, learn and play. We are going to make important improvements in every one of those areas.

With that increased focus comes a shift in priorities for Windows too. The world is a very different place than it was last October when we shared our vision for a new category of dual-screen Windows devices. As we continue to put customers’ needs at the forefront, we need to focus on meeting customers where they are now. Our customers are leveraging the power of the cloud more than ever, and we believe the time is right to lean into this acceleration in a different way.

With Windows 10X, we designed for flexibility, and that flexibility has enabled us to pivot our focus toward single-screen Windows 10X devices that leverage the power of the cloud to help our customers work, learn and play in new ways. These single-screen devices will be the first expression of Windows 10X that we deliver to our customers, and we will continue to look for the right moment, in conjunction with our OEM partners, to bring dual-screen devices to market.

Invitation to Build

At Build later this month, the team will share the next steps we are taking to empower the Windows developer community even further. We are going to share how we will reduce complexity for developers by making it easier than ever to build for all 1 billion Windows 10 devices, all at once. We will share how we will enable developers to build applications that seamlessly enable cloud-powered virtualization. Most importantly, even though we will not be in the same room this year, we are going to connect as a Windows community to look to the future together.

We invite you to join us there from May 19-21 for this 48-hour digital experience. Registration is now open, at no cost, to learn new skills, solve problems and build together.

We have an incredible opportunity and responsibility in front of us to build more seamless experiences across software and hardware for our customers around the world. I am pumped for what the team has in store. So much more is coming; this is just the beginning.

Panos

* Coming in a future servicing update to the Windows 10 May 2020 Update in early summer

** Additional peripheral devices required

Editor’s note – May 4, 2020 – The post above was updated to clarify that the improved tablet experience is expected to come in a future servicing update in early summer.

Posted on May 4, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How one Microsoft mom inspired health care companies to embrace the life-saving potential of AI

Family of four — The Mulholland family at home: Kyle, Conor, Melissa and Emma. (Photo by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

Conor, now 5, is already benefitting from AI in his life. After undergoing 12 surgeries by the age of 2 to deal with the effects caused by PUV and related issues, he was diagnosed with autism at age 3, and has had difficulty speaking. He is working with speech therapists, and is also benefitting from an app called Helpicto that uses AI to convert spoken words into a series of images.

Created by French company Equadex, the app, too, came from the heart – several of the company’s employees have personal experiences with autism. Equadex created Helpicto using Azure Cognitive Services and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

“It’s very hard to have a child not be able to speak or communicate with you,” Mulholland says. “He was 4 when he first said, ‘Mama.’ When he did, it was amazing to hear it.”

Conor also learned how to say “Dada” and “Amma,” or Emma, for his 7-year-old sister, who dotes on him.

“It’s really sweet to see how caring she is and how much she wants him to be successful,” Mulholland says. “She helps him practice on words. I can see her being in a field of study someday that’s very focused on helping others, whether it’s as a teacher or doctor, or something along those lines. Her life will be forever changed because of having a brother like him.”

Mulholland says she is “humbled” by all the support she has had – from her husband, Kyle, an accountant who stays at home with Conor, to Microsoft for giving her a platform to tell her story, to the companies that want to hear and embrace it.

“I always encourage people, ‘Don’t pigeonhole yourself, think of ways that you can really harness technology to drive greater good, because sometimes those solutions are right in front of you,’” she says. “And imagine how great of a world we could live in if we had more stories like this.”

Top photo: Melissa Mulholland with son Conor. (Photo by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)

Posted on May 4, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Next evolution of Azure VMware Solution announced

Today, I’m excited to announce the preview of the next generation of Azure VMware Solution, designed, built, and supported by Microsoft and endorsed by VMware.

With the current economic environment, many organizations face new challenges to find rapid and cost-effective solutions that enable business stability, continuity, and resiliency. The new Azure VMware Solution empowers customers to seamlessly extend or completely migrate their existing on-premises VMware applications to Azure without the cost, effort, or risk of re-architecting applications or retooling operations. This helps our customers gain cloud efficiency and enables them to innovate at their own pace with Azure services across security, data, and artificial intelligence, as well as unified management capabilities. Customers can also save money with Windows Server and SQL Server workloads running on Azure VMware by taking advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefits.

Microsoft first party service

The new Azure VMware Solution is a first party service from Microsoft. By launching a new service that is directly owned, operated, and supported by Microsoft, we can ensure greater quality, reliability, and direct access to Azure innovation for our customers while providing you with a single point of contact for all your needs. With today’s announcement and our continued collaboration with VMware, the new Azure VMware Solution lays the foundation for our customers’ success in the future.

Sanjay Poonen, Chief Operating Officer at VMware commented, “VMware and Microsoft have a long-standing partnership and a shared heritage in supporting our customers. Now more than ever it is important we come together and help them create stability and efficiency for their businesses. The new Azure VMware Solution gives customers the ability to use the same VMware foundation in Azure as they use in their private data centers. It provides a consistent operating model that can increase business agility and resiliency, reduces costs, and enable a native developer experience for all types of applications.”

These comments were echoed by Jason Zander, Executive Vice President at Microsoft, who said, “This is an amazing milestone for Microsoft and VMware to meet our customers where they are today on their cloud journey. Azure VMware Solution is a great example of how we design Azure services to support a broad range of customer workloads. Through close collaboration with the VMware team, I’m excited that customers running VMware on-premises will be able to benefit from Azure’s highly reliable infrastructure sooner.”

The new solution is built on Azure, delivering the speed, scale, and high availability of our global infrastructure. You can provision a full VMware Cloud Foundation environment on Azure and gain compute and storage elasticity as your business needs change. Azure VMware Solution is VMware Cloud Verified, giving customers confidence they’re using the complete set of VMware capabilities, with consistency, performance, and interoperability for their VMware workloads.

Access to VMware technology and experiences

Azure VMware Solution allows you to leverage your existing investments, in VMWare skills and tools. Customers can maintain operational consistency as they accelerate a move to the cloud with the use of familiar VMware technology including VMWare vSphere, HCX, NSX-T, and vSAN. Additionally, the new Azure VMware Solution has an option to add VMware HCX Enterprise, which will enable customers to further simplify their migration efforts to Azure including support for bulk live migrations. HCX also enables customers running older versions of vSphere on-premises to move to newer versions of vSphere seamlessly running on Azure VMware Solution.

Seamless Azure integration

Through integration with Azure management, security, and services, Azure VMware Solution provides the opportunity for customers to continue to build cloud competencies and modernize overtime. Customers maintain the choice to use the native VMware tools and management experiences they are familiar with, and incrementally leverage Azure capabilities as required.

As we look to meet customers where they are today, we are deeply investing in support for hybrid management scenarios, and automation that can streamline the journey. We are excited to announce more about future hybrid capabilities as they relate to Azure VMware Solution, soon.

Leverage Azure Hybrid Benefit pricing for Microsoft workloads

Take advantage of Azure as the best cloud for your Microsoft workloads running in Azure VMware Solution with unmatched pricing benefits for Windows Server and SQL Server. Azure Hybrid Benefit extends to Azure VMware Solution allowing customers with software assurance to maximize the value of existing on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server license investments when migrating or extending to Azure. In addition, Azure VMware Solution customers are also eligible for three years of free Extended Security Updates on 2008 versions of Windows Server and SQL Server. The combination of these unmatched pricing benefits on Azure ensures customers can simplify cloud adoption with cost efficiencies across their VMware environments.

In addition, at general availability Reserved Instances will also be available for Azure VMware Solution customers, with one-year and three-year options on dedicated hosts.

Global availability and expansion

The Azure VMware Solution preview is initially available in US East and West Europe Azure regions. We expect the new Azure VMware Solution to be generally available in the second half of 2020 and at that time, availability will be extended across more regions. Plans on regional availability for Azure VMware Solution will be made available here as they are disclosed.

To register your interest in taking part in the Azure VMware Solution preview, please contact your Microsoft Account Representative or contact our sales team.

Learn more about Azure VMware Solution on the Azure website.

Posted on May 1, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft partners: This year’s Microsoft Inspire will be July 21-22 — all digital, no cost

The
partnerships we share with you create the foundation of our Microsoft mission
to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
As we strive to adapt to these unprecedented times, keeping you informed is a
top priority. Many of you have reached out to us, sharing how excited and
curious you are to find out what is planned for Microsoft Inspire this year.
Here are quick responses to your most-asked questions:

Microsoft Inspire will be a digital-only event experience
The event dates are July 21–22 (aligned to the Pacific Time Zone)
Registration will open in June
There will be no cost to attend

Microsoft
Inspire is our largest and most comprehensive partner networking event year
after year, allowing partners from around the world to create connections,
empower possibilities, and celebrate success. We will continue sharing
information as more details are confirmed.

Now, hear a few words from Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner, about our exciting new digital event.

[embedded content]

Thank you for your partnership. Take care, be safe, and we’ll see you—virtually—in July!

Posted on May 1, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Satya Nadella: Crisis requires co-ordinated digital response

This article is a part of a series in which the Financial Times asks leading commentators and policymakers what to expect from a post-Covid-19 future

The writer is chief executive of Microsoft

Society’s deepest concerns are rooted right now in two connected questions: how do we protect public health and how can we promote an economic recovery that is inclusive? A third question is becoming more important because intensive use of technology has become so central to the other two: how do we preserve the privacy and cyber security needed for trustworthy computing? The past two months have seen digitisation progression that would ordinarily take two years generated by the demands of remote working and the need for accurate data and intelligence.

Neither the public nor the private sector alone can provide the answers. The challenges we face demand an unprecedented alliance between business and government. Too often we celebrate the ideal of a maverick working alone in a garage solving all our hard problems. We do need those mavericks, but we also need more co-ordinated combinations of government and industry that respond and innovate. That’s true for this pandemic and it is true for global warming, homelessness and other pressing concerns.

As a software platform and tools company, we at Microsoft view ourselves as digital first responders when the true first responders call from the front lines. Microsoft works for the heroes who are putting their lives at risk and must bring them everything we have to offer.

Here’s what I mean. In healthcare, data is an indispensable tool for decision-making. We’re working at every level of government to help standardise data, provide it for healthcare workers and to support scientific efforts to discover treatments and vaccines.

Working remotely is a new reality. The sheer number of appointments and meetings taking place on our Teams platform means greater productivity and access to greater volumes of intelligence. We’ve seen a new daily record of 2.7bn meeting minutes in one day, up 200 per cent from 900m on March 16, when falling securities markets shook the world. The UK’s National Health Service, the Cleveland Clinic and others are using our platform for virtual visits, consultations between isolated patients and their families and, sadly, end of life video calls. New doctors are taking the Hippocratic oath using Flipgrid, our video sharing tool.

Telemedicine is skyrocketing. A health network in Pennsylvania uses our video conferencing platform to communicate with patients most vulnerable to Covid-19. Seattle hospitals are using our tools to manage bed counts and inventory of critical supplies and share information with others in the region. And the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used our services to build a health bot that quickly assesses the symptoms and risk factors for people asking about infection.

Technology is accelerating the search for a vaccine and treatments. We are helping to create an open, machine-readable data set of all scientific literature on Covid-19. We have expanded our partnership with Adaptive Biotechnologies to map the immune system’s response to coronavirus, and will make the data set freely accessible to speed the development of treatments. And scientists are using GitHub, our developer platform, to power a distributed computing project that uses volunteers’ personal computers to assist researchers developing potential therapeutics.

Looking ahead, economic recovery must be inclusive, allowing every country, industry and citizen to prosper. Cloud-based products and services are keeping businesses, governments and non-profits functioning, and helping small businesses serve their customers and compete. Broadband is needed everywhere to support vulnerable populations.

Education and skills development must be a centrepiece of our efforts to recover. Schools and universities around the world are turning to tech platforms for remote learning. The University of Bologna recently moved 90 per cent of courses for 80,000 students online within three days. Not bad for a 900-year-old institution. A Japanese elementary school hosted its graduation on Minecraft, building a virtual assembly hall and seating to maintain the sense of community and belonging so important in times like this.

Finally, trust and security are more important than ever. We must all prioritise the protection of healthcare systems from cyber attacks. In addition, more kids are online than ever, so Microsoft is doubling down on digital safety. We’re committed to protecting privacy and building ethical artificial intelligence.

Accurate information and resources are always essential, especially during a global pandemic. LinkedIn Learning and Bing are providing data and life-saving information. We’re working with Facebook, Google, Twitter and our customers to help elevate authoritative content and combat fraud and misinformation about the virus.

It is a societal failure when we undervalue institutions and the critical services they provide. What we need is citizens and customers to demand co-ordination and partnership across sectors.

What’s happening in Seattle, the first US city affected by the coronavirus outbreak, provides a glimpse. A public-private alliance of the region’s largest employers, Challenge Seattle, became the town square for sharing data and best practices, managing the crisis and planning our return to work. Partnerships between business, government non-profit and academia are essential to flattening the infection curve everywhere, and recovery will require an enduring, vigilant effort.