Let's take a look at the new products and updates announced.
The Microsoft Ignite 2023 conference, held from November 15 to 17, was an opportunity to announce numerous innovations. This annual conference dedicated to innovation is a flagship event for executives, experts, and employees in the IT sector.
Let's take a look at the new products and updates announced.
Microsoft Ignite, what is it?
Microsoft Ignite is an annual conference organized by Microsoft, aimed at showcasing the latest technological advancements and digital innovations. It is a must-attend event for all IT professionals.
During this conference, participants have the opportunity to attend hands-on workshops, technical sessions, live demonstrations, and presentations by industry leaders.
Microsoft Ignite, held in 2023 in a hybrid format (in Seattle, USA, and online), aimed to explore the new features and strategic perspectives offered by Microsoft's products and services. This year, it highlighted the latest innovations in artificial intelligence by the American company.
Indeed, it's hard to ignore the contributions of generative and conversational AI, which took center stage in 2023. This implicitly raises an important question: how to integrate the proposed solutions into professional use?
Many innovations to discover: follow the guide!
Many innovations were announced during the 2023 edition of Microsoft Ignite. Here's what you need to know.
Focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Copilot, the New Flagship Brand
Starting today, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise become Copilot, with enterprise data protection applied by default for any eligible user connected with Microsoft Entra ID.
This is how Microsoft formalized its strategy to establish the Copilot brand in the long term, which will be available to the general public (via Edge and Chrome browsers) starting from December 1st. This new assistant features an immediate and intuitive interface, similar to what the ChatGPT conversational agent currently offers.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 has been available since November 1st. It is integrated into Windows applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams. It also includes Microsoft 365 Chat, a chatbot that optimizes time management in various tasks. For example, Copilot's writing assistance is now available in Teams. AI can now assist you in composing messages in meetings or in discussion channels.
In general, the goal is to provide AI assistance in all aspects of workflows (text generation, writing assistance, Python visualization generation in Excel, etc.).
The pursued objective is simple: to improve user efficiency. And it works! Thus, 70% of Copilot users report being more productive, and 68% state that the use of the site improves the quality of their work.
Integration of Microsoft Designer into Teams
Microsoft Designer, the new tool for communication and message composition assistance for social networks, integrates the AI of DALL-E 3 for visuals and Copilot for texts and formatting.
Model-as-a-Service Functionality
With the new Model-as-a-Service feature, professional developers can easily integrate the latest AI models as API endpoints into their applications. They can also customize these models with their own data.
Launch of Azure AI Studio
Azure AI Studio is a unique platform that makes it easier to explore, design, test, and deploy AI applications. It is designed for developers who can create their own generative AI applications, train them, and feed other foundational models with their own data. The tool is currently available in preview and will be released in the coming weeks.
New Multimodal Capabilities for Azure OpenAI Service
In addition to AI Studio, Microsoft introduced the multimodal AI capabilities of Azure OpenAI Service. This new platform allows businesses to build generative AI systems with images, text, and videos. New features include the addition of the AI image generator DALL-E 3.
Other Notable Innovations
Integration of Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender
Microsoft Defender will be integrated into Microsoft Sentinel to create the first security operations platform. The integrated generative AI should enable cybersecurity experts to manage threats at the same speed as the machine, simplifying the complexity of their environment.
Additionally, the extension of Security Copilot, integrated into Intune, Purview, and Entra, will help IT teams simplify complex scenarios. For example, in Purview, data security alerts will provide valuable data for quick issue resolution. Finally, in Entra, identity administrators will be able to quickly resolve identity access issues.
Recomposition of the Cloud Infrastructure
In an effort to support the development of its AI solutions, Microsoft announced a rethink of its cloud infrastructure to optimize each layer. During the Ignite 2023 event, Microsoft announced new innovations for its entire data center fleet, as well as two specifically designed chips:
- Microsoft Azure Maia, an AI acceleration chip designed to run cloud-based AI training and inferences for artificial intelligence tasks.
- Microsoft Azure Cobalt, a cloud-native chip based on Arm architecture.
Furthermore, the general availability of Azure Boost has been announced. This is a system that accelerates storage and networking by moving processes from host servers to software solutions designed for this purpose.
Launch of a New Version of SharePoint
Finally, Microsoft has also announced the launch of a redesigned version of SharePoint.
Known as SharePoint Premium, it will leverage artificial intelligence to enhance content and optimize business processes.
According to Microsoft, SharePoint Premium is expected to bring automation and increased security to content management and processing. Explore our dedicated article on the features of SharePoint Premium to learn more about it.
