This year the Microsoft Ignite conference hosted a 48-hour virtual event for over 150,000 tech leaders and practitioners. Here’s a recap of the major announcements:

Microsoft Mesh

Self-declared as their next big “whoa”, Microsoft Mesh promises to bring geographically dispersed teams together in the most connected way yet. It is a mixed reality platform that allows people to virtually travel countries and feel as though they’re present in the same room as people on different continents. 

• This will be integrated with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Hybrid Work

This year may bring a return to classrooms and offices, but there’s no going back to the way things were pre-pandemic. 2020 was the year that work moved to the cloud, and Microsoft predicts that hybrid work will be the way forward. A combination of working from home, the office and anywhere in between will require cloud power solutions that can keep up. 

Ignite announced:

• Teams Connect which will provide multiple [if uk_office]organisations[/if] [if us_office]organizations[/if] with the ability to collaborate across company boundaries. 
• New presenter views in Team meetings.

You can check out the Microsoft 365 and Teams announcements here.

Continued cloud innovation and control

Many powerful new features and updates are being added to Azure, such as:

• Azure Percept which aims to simplify the ways in which customers can use Azure AI technologies on the edge. 
• New functions within Azure Purview will allow customers to better map and understand their data.
• Azure Communication Services now interoperates with Microsoft Teams.

Security enhancements

Continued work on bringing together Microsoft’s top security superpowers (integrated end-to-end approach and AI and automation capabilities) has produced several new security enhancements. The one’s to get excited about are:

• Password-less authentication is now generally available in Azure Active Directory. 
• New Threat Analytics reports in Microsoft Defender.
• Secured-core coming to Windows Server and Edge devices. 
• Teams will support end-to-end encryption meaning protection of sensitive online conversations.

Three new industry clouds

Increased industry investments giving rise to three brand new industry clouds for manufacturing, financial services and nonprofit sectors. You can learn more about these clouds and how they enable [if uk_office]organisations[/if] [if us_office]organizations[/if] to make faster and more intelligent decisions by catching up on all the Ignite previews available to watch online, here.

If you’d like to speak with a member of our Microsoft Dynamics recruitment team, you can contact us on +44 (0)1483 233 000. Alternatively, visit our contact page and get in touch.