First day of Ignite 2022: highlights and key takeaways

Ignite 2022! Back live and in-person in Seattle after two years of virtual sessions. As usual, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, delivered the keynote address, where he focused on agility and resiliency, skills we all developed during the COVID crisis. These skills are now seen as essential, given that we have faced (and will continue to face) challenges such as staff shortages, supply chain challenges, economic challenges, an energy crisis in Europe and increasing cyber attacks.

That is why the motto of this Ignite is: “Do More with Less”. We have now gone from “Digital Innovation” to “Digital Imperative”:

As usual, the first day of Ignite was packed with new announcements, facts, insights and much more. Here are a few highlights.

Be data-driven and optimise with Azure

An important announcement is that a new type of SSD is available in Azure: Premium Storage V2 (GA). In addition: Elastic SAN (Preview), Azure Savings Plan, Managed Kubernetes on Windows Server on-premises, and Azure Stack HCI are free to use with Windows Server Datacenter Software Assurance.

Deliver efficiently with automation and AI

With OpenAI , companies are able to easily create and use AI models. Some of the references that were cited include Shell and PwC.

Innovate with a cloud developer platform

Let users easily create apps themselves and automate repetitive tasks. For example, you can use AI to create a PowerAutomate flow with a description of what you want to automate.

Re-energise your workforce with Microsoft 365

- Microsoft Teams – This remains one of the most important tools for modern working. There are many upcoming new features within Teams, including a Premium version. There will also be a new central portal on Windows and for mobile, allowing you to quickly access your data.

Microsoft Places – never come to the office alone when the rest of the team is working from home. Find out more here
Microsoft Designer – Microsoft Designer – create design sketches with AI
Mesh Avatars – Microsoft, together with Meta, is fully committed to the metaverse. There were several announcements from Facebook in collaboration with Microsoft. As Mark Zuckerberg said, “The metaverse is not built by one company.” Microsoft is a Meta partner and already has a lot of experience from HoloLens. New Mesh Avatars will also be used in Teams. Expect to hear more about this soon.

Protect everything, everyone, everywhere

In March 2023, there will be a more extensive version of Intune – Intune Premium Suite. Among other things, this solution will give local users admin rights on a device, based on time limits and necessity. Defender and Intune can also automatically patch third-party applications together.

Of interest is the announcement of Automated Attack Disrupter as part of the XDR stack in Microsoft 365 Defender, which can automatically stop a ransomware attack.

And finally, Microsoft also announced the new Surface Pro 9, Surface Laptop 5, and Surface Studio 2+. Beautiful devices!

If you’d like to read more about Microsoft’s Ignite announcements from the first day of the conference, then go to Microsoft’s Book of News here.

We will also be publishing another blog early next week on more exciting and relevant news from Microsoft Ignite, so be sure to keep an eye out.