Microsoft inspire 2022: Key takeaways from Satya Nadella's keynote speech

Move over Re:Invent! It’s time for the 21st edition of Microsoft Inspire. Credera attended the keynote speech, presented by CEO Satya Nadella, and I’m here to give you the key takeaways that left us feeling inspired.

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Teams

We’ll start with my favourite update: Microsoft Teams is adding screen annotations! No more fumbling around describing specific parts of a user’s screen or presentation. A quick circle or note can now be made on the fly from all users of the call. They are also introducing the ability to take video clips and edit Excel files in an integrated manner. These updates will certainly take them further on their journey to compete with tools like Slack and Zoom.

Data Processing

A heavy emphasis was placed on data sovereignty, security, and governance, making ‘Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty’ the headline of the keynote. This is a new solution to ensure data governance and compliance standards are implemented and, essentially, will enable more control over data policies to adhere to local governmental regulations. Its primary use will likely be within public sector organisations or companies that deal with sensitive data, such as those in the banking and insurance sectors. On the data security side, ‘Azure Confidential Computing’ introduced the ability to encrypt data while in use and ‘Azure Confidential Ledger’ was highlighted as a new Blockchain-backed ledger to track data tampering

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Data security also extended to the internet-of-things. ‘IOT Defender’ was called out as a tool for securing your printers, smart fridges, and IOT devices. Combined with Application Insights, it lets the user track the statuses of IOT devices.

Multi-Cloud

Multi-cloud computing was brought up multiple times during the keynote. ‘Azure Arc’ was mentioned as a fully-fledged multi-cloud or hybrid management solution. This is in contrast with AWS, who don’t have this type of out-of-the-box functionality. ‘Azure Security Center’ was brought up as a multi-cloud protection platform, which AWS and GCP also currently lack. Considering the growing prevalence of multi-cloud architecture, this is a major area where Microsoft has a clear lead. We have seen many of our clients opt for a multi-cloud architecture, so it is likely we will see more solutions like this developed from all the big players in the future.

Microsoft Mesh

‘Microsoft Mesh’ is Microsoft’s response to the metaverse. This VR-friendly platform is interesting and could bring a unique platform for collaboration. Potential technical use cases exist within design prototyping. The demos felt like a Snapchat filter and if it hits the mainstream, I’ll be very excited to make fashion choices for my avatar.

Administrative

Some minor business updates were also given:

• Ten new data centres will be added over the next year in Poland, Austria, Italy, Spain, Israel, Taiwan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Chile.

• There is a new sustainability commitment to reuse 90% of cloud hardware by 2025.

• A new space partner community was introduced to better connect Azure partners who use satellite and space networking

In a nutshell

• The updates to Microsoft Teams will provide better communication between members on remote teams.

• Microsoft's improvements in data governance will allow us to refine security and ensure compliance on data solutions in a more streamlined manner.

• Multi-cloud is a growing field, so Microsoft’s continuous leadership surrounding multi-cloud management will be valuable to Credera’s clients.

• The Microsoft Mesh and Azure Space updates will likely only be useful to niche clients.

Overall, Satya gave plenty to look forward to and I’m excited to see which new tools we can use to help our clients in the coming months!