Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella took the stage this week at the Inspire 2018 partner conference to an extended round of applause, before he'd even said a word. The past year saw Microsoft prioritise the aligning of its sales teams with the needs of partners, with the result being a surge in growth. Executives shared estimates this week that partners generated nearly US$1 trillion in revenue over the past 12 months through working with Microsoft solutions. But that's just the start, Nadella said during his Inspire keynote Wednesday. "As we look forward, the opportunity for us to serve our customers in this new era of the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge is far greater," Nadella told the 16,000 partners gathered at the conference in Las Vegas. "I've lived through the client-server, the web, mobile, cloud. But what we're going to see going forward is going to be even more profound." What follows are five key topics discussed by Nadella during his keynote at Microsoft Inspire 2018. Intelligent cloud, intelligent edge Nadella said one of his aims was to "express how we do things very differently" as a result of the move into the new era of "intelligent cloud and intelligent edge". What is common across the solution areas that Microsoft is focusing on, including modern workplace, business applications, applications/infrastructure and data/AI, is "this profound shift to a new way of doing things," he said. "Ultimately, though, we've got to measure ourselves not by technology for technology's sake, but [by] how are we empowering people? How are we helping organisations with their digital transformational outcomes? That's what this is all about." The "paradigm shift" that's coming, Nadella said, is "probably bigger than anything that's come before". In part that's because "there are three things that are happening simultaneously," he said. "At the experience layer, we are moving to this people-centred experience. That means we're going to, in some sense, de-couple the experience from the devices" In addition, "we're going to infuse everything with AI. It's going to have perception capability, language capability, and autonomy that's going to be built into the applications going forward," Nadella said. "And to power all of this, the one thing that's needed is a ubiquitous, distributed computing fabric." Azure Microsoft's vision for this sort of computing fabric starts with the Azure cloud platform, which now has 54 data centre regions (and recently expanded to its first underwater data centre). "We are very, very excited about questioning the conventional wisdom of what is a data centre," he said. "Of course, computing needs will go far beyond the data centre. Essentially, wherever there is data, compute will migrate to data. And so we are going and taking Azure to Azure Stack, to Azure IoT Edge, to Azure Sphere. This is that one ubiquitous, distributed computing fabric. One programming model that is event-driven, serverless, so you can write an application that truly works across all of this." Having all of these pieces, Nadella said, "I believe is the biggest unique thing that this ecosystem has as the world gets embedded with computing. Every use case out there is going to be powered by something like this." The Azure Stack hybrid cloud platform has seen "incredible customer demand" since its debut in July 2017, Nadella said during a quarterly earnings call in January. Meanwhile, Azure Sphere - a solution for securing the billions of microcontroller unit (MCU) devices in existence, which Microsoft unveiled in April -- is already "being used across a lot of very different customers," Nadella said during his keynote. Artificial Intelligence During his Inspire keynote, Nadella placed a special focus on artificial intelligence technologies. Recent advances in AI have been "pretty stunning" in terms of how they're reaching parity with human perception and language capabilities, he said. However, "it's not about celebrating these breakthroughs for Microsoft Research. Our collective objective is to take these breakthroughs and democratise them, with the tooling we create, and with the expertise and the skill set and the services that you provide," Nadella told partners. Ultimately, the potential is "for us to be able to turn every industry into an AI-first industry - whether it's retail or health care or agriculture. We want to be able to make sure that they can take their data, in a secure, privacy-preserving way, [and] can work that into AI capabilities that they get the return on." Nadella cited examples such as a project by solution provider BlueMetal to reduce costs at hospital operator Steward Health Care using AI and machine learning, as well as efforts at Toyota to build a fully autonomous warehouse. Microsoft is working at "democratising autonomy into a set of toolkits that everyone here can use," he said. "Autonomy is not just about a few self-driving projects. This is about autonomy everywhere." Microsoft 365 Nadella dedicated a portion of his keynote to demonstrating the way his own workday revolves around the Microsoft 365 suite, which includes Office 365 productivity apps and Windows 10 Along with using Outlook (which Nadella described as "the best Gmail client"), he emphasised how the Teams app has come to dominate his daily collaboration with his inner circle. Microsoft has been heavily promoting Teams, a competitor to Slack, and launched its first free version of Teams last week in connection with Inspire. Nadella also pointed to his own use of the Cortana virtual assistant - which has a "commitments" feature that reminds him of things he's committed to doing, but hasn't put into a to-do list. Commitments is "one of the features that saves me every day," he said. For partners, Microsoft 365 is a way to help customers transition into a paradigm of "people-centred experiences" rather than device-centred experiences, Nadella said. "The opportunity for everyone here is to take Microsoft 365 and apply it for cultural transformation in large enterprises [and] for productivity in small businesses. To be able to really do industry-specific workflows in health care, manufacturing, financial services. To be able to take it to first-line workers. To extend to business process with Dynamics 365.<doc-sep>Microsoft Inspire 2018 Day 2 news triggers praise for CFO Amy Hood plus Azure cloud and Office 365 updates from ClearDATA, CloudJumper, Dell EMC, MB Solutions, NetEnrich, Pax8 and Walmart. Microsoft Inspire 2018, formerly called Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), continues in Las Vegas. Check this ongoing blog for live Azure Cloud and Office 365 partner news updates, analysis and perspectives throughout the day. 8. Workspace as a Service: CloudJumper has unveiled Cloud Workspace for Azure. The platform integrates the CloudJumper’s Management Suite with Microsoft’s Remote Desktop modern infrastructure (RDmi) for increased visibility into the user’s Azure, Office365 and Cloud Workspace experience, the companies say. 7. Vertical Markets: ClearDATA has launched “healthcare compliant” cloud services for Microsoft Azure. The new offering helps healthcare organizations to embrace Azure while complying with protected health information (PHI) laws, the company says. 6. Key Microsoft Leader: Microsoft CFO Amy Hood is earning major praise for her financial prowess, and her ability to align ample budget with Microsoft growth opportunities. Bloomberg notes Hood’s symbiotic relationship with CEO Satya Nadella — allowing him to focus on technology priorities while Hood marshals key financial resources for those R&D efforts. 5. Dell EMC and Azure Stack: Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack, the on-premises extension to Microsoft’s public cloud, now supports: An all flash VxRack Azure Stack configuration option. A preview of Automated HCI Patch and Update is available now allowing customers to update the firmware on their entire VxRack AS scale unit in one step. No other Azure Stack vendor offers this orchestration tool, Dell EMC asserts. Cloud Flex pricing, allowing partners and customers to consume Azure Stack as an operating expense rather than a capital expense. SecureVM is now integrated with Azure Stack and available through the Azure Stack Marketplace. VM extensions for Linux and Windows VMs allow customers to enforce policies that dictate the circumstances under which keys are released and includes geo-fencing More detail on these updates is available below in a blog by Paul Galjan, senior director of Microsoft Hybrid Cloud at Dell EMC. 4. Azure for MSPs Part One: MB Solutions a Denmark-based cloud services provider specializing in Microsoft solutions, is partnering with NetEnrich in a bid to transform from a hosting company into a Microsoft Azure MSP. 3. Azure for MSPs Part Two: Cloud distributor Pax8 unveiled a Wingman Professional Services Program. The offering allows MSPs to leverage customized IaaS solutions built by Pax8 cloud architects and engineers. Reminder: Microsoft finally unveiled a major Azure MSP partner program push earlier this month… 2. Walmart-Microsoft Azure Partnership: Walmart has inked a five year agreement with Microsoft to leverage Azure and Office 365 for enterprise-wide use. The partnership is widely viewed as an alliance vs. Amazon Web Services and Amazon’s e-commerce businesses. 1. Ongoing Updates: Keep checking this blog for more updates. And check our extended Microsoft Inspire news coverage here. Got news to share from the conference? Email me the details (Joe@AfterNines.com).<doc-sep>Today marks the opening day of Microsoft's annual Inspire partner-focused conference. The company may have already revealed the biggest news ahead of the event last week, but there is likely much more to come today. So, feel free to tune in and watch below as Gavriella Schuster, CFP, One Commercial Partner kicks things off and discusses Microsoft 365, Azure, Power BI, and more. ﻿ ﻿ As a reminder, there are other speakers scheduled for the keynote today. Judson Althoff, EVP of Worldwide Commercial Business, is scheduled to take over at 8:55 AM, followed by Microsoft President Brad Smith at 9:45 AM. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella won't speak until Wednesday when he ends the conference with his keynote at 8:30 AM. Be sure to keep it locked in right here to OnMSFT all week long for all your Inspire news and information. Share This Post:<doc-sep>After a full three days of action, Microsoft's annual partner-focused Inspire conference is finally set to wrap up today. We've seen tons of Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Cloud news throughout the week, and today Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will cap it all off with his own keynote at 8:30 AM PT. You might not want to miss it, so be sure to watch below. As a recap of Inspire so far, Microsoft announced new features and services across Azure, and also for Power BI. The company also launched a free version of Microsoft Teams and took their Whiteboard collaboration app out of preview. Additionally, there are new intelligent Capabilities coming to Microsoft 365, and new New Workspace Analytics/ MyAnalytics nudges solution for Outlook. You can expect for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to recap this news, and also discuss what's next on the road in 2019 for Microsoft's partners. Be sure to tune in, and drop us comments below with your thoughts on the day's news. Share This Post:<doc-sep>
Microsoft Inspire 2018 Recap: 8 Key Quotes Microsoft's annual partner conference, Inspire, just wrapped up in Las Vegas, where it was combined for the first time with the Microsoft Ready internal sales event. Here are some key moments from the Inspire keynotes that illustrated some of biggest themes from the show, which also represented the unofficial start of Microsoft's fiscal year. Intelligent Cloud/Intelligent Edge "The opportunities for us to serve our customers in this new era of the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge is far greater. I've sort of lived through the client-server, the Web, mobile, cloud, but what we're going to see going forward is going to be even more profound." --Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft During his keynote last Wednesday, Nadella walked attendees through a number of customer scenarios that hit on the intelligent cloud or the intelligent edge. The messaging covers the Azure platform in all its iterations from the public cloud to Azure Stack to Azure Sphere, and includes the artificial intelligence (AI) that is built into many Azure services. Focus on Privacy "Privacy is a fundamental human right. ... Our fundamental value proposition for our customers, not just as a company, but as a community, that we will help them better protect the privacy of their customers." --Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft In a keynote, Smith reiterated Microsoft's commitment to improving privacy and security for customers, while also trying to take a thought leadership role in the ethics of AI. Modern Workplace Refresh "This move over the next three years represents a $100 billion opportunity for all of our partners." --Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft 365 Markezich runs the Microsoft 365 business, which is the core of Microsoft's Modern Desktop initiative and includes Windows 10, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). Markezich was describing the opportunity to sell Microsoft 365 and associated devices due to the upcoming upgrade cycle around end of support for Windows 7 and Office 2010. Reorg "I was very excited to welcome the Windows team into Azure, and we're one unified group now. So, everything from silicon at the base level, firmware, operating systems, everything in the middle of the stack up through app stack to tools, we've got everything on one team to go deliver on this vision." --Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure During his keynote about Azure for partners, Zander made the case for why the Windows team was consolidated under his engineering unit. Co-Selling Momentum "We've built over 28,000 solutions, services and applications with you this past fiscal year. We have generated over 3 million leads out to partners and jointly developed over 100,000 co-sell opportunities. And, get this, we have landed over $5 billion in partner sales. That's your sales, not Microsoft's sales, $5 billion. And the best thing about that is that that is with 87 percent of IP co-sell ready partners participating in that motion." --Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft From being announced a year ago, the Microsoft co-selling program with partners gained a lot of steam in fiscal year 2018. Schuster said Microsoft will continue to reward Microsoft sellers for selling partner solutions at 10 percent of partners' contract value at least through June 2019. Azure Scale "The amount of interconnect cable we have across Azure datacenters is enough to go to the moon and back three times over. It's crazy." --Satya Nadella The Inspire keynotes are always a time for metrics about the scale of Azure. Nadella talked about the cabling in the context of Microsoft having added 14 datacenter regions over the last fiscal year to bring the total to 54 worldwide. Elsewhere during the show, Microsoft shared that its private network includes over 4,500 peering locations and 130 edge sites. Combined Conference "Today is a momentous milestone for us, bringing together these two communities, Inspire and Ready, because that's how our customers see us, as one. And to be able to kick off our fiscal year is something that I think is going to really mark a real difference in how we as this tech community are going to serve our customers going forward." --Satya Nadella This statement during Nadella's Wednesday keynote captured the main reason for combining the two conferences for the first time. What's Cool "I always say this to any student who is joining Microsoft or looking to join Microsoft. I say to them, 'Look, if you want to be cool, go look for someplace else.