I just got back from Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. I was there with our alliance team and it was an incredible week! We joined over 16,000 other partner leaders to hear about what Microsoft has planned, how they want to work with us and to give them feedback on how things have been going.
Here are some of the major announcements from WPC:
Microsoft and GE Partner to Bring Predix to Azure
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a partnership that will make GE's Predix platform for the Industrial Internet available on the Microsoft Azure cloud for industrial businesses, enabling customers around the world to capture intelligence from their industrial assets and take advantage of Microsoft's enterprise cloud applications. With the massive growth in connected things being used, this partnership will give customers greater choice and flexibility to securely harness the power of data from machines and systems of intelligence.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource
Available this fall, Microsoft Dynamics 365 will unify the current Microsoft CRM and ERP cloud solutions into one cloud service with new purpose-built apps to help manage specific business functions. Dynamics 365 apps are designed to easy-to-use and customizable. The apps seamlessly work together to work with your business needs as they grow. Power BI and Cortana are embedded within Dynamics 365 to give customers predictive insights and the ability to visualize their data in one place.
Microsoft AppSource will be Microsoft's new destination for business users to find and try out line-of-business SaaS apps from Microsoft and Microsoft partners. It includes exclusive new industry specific business apps from AFS (Retails Execution), AvePoint (Citizen Services) and Veripark (Next Best Action).
Windows 10 Enterprise E3 for CSP
It was announced that starting later in the year, Windows 10 Enterprise E3 for CSP will enable businesses to get enterprise-grade security and management at just $7 a seat per month for the first time through the Cloud Solution Provider channel. This means that partners selling through CSP will now be able to offer their customers our full stack of services and subscriptions, including Windows 10, Office 365, Microsoft Azure, and CRM subscriptions through a single partner with one user account, one point of contact for support and one simplified bill. This gives users increased security, simplified licensing and deployment and Microsoft Partner-managed IT.
News About Office 365
Office 365 is now being used by some of the world’s top companies. Facebook is one of the companies that chose Office 365 for their more than 13,000 employees because it supports Facebook’s mission to make the world more open and connected.
A cool feature that Office 365 users are getting a preview of is automatic transcription and translation in Skype Meeting Broadcast. This should be available to users by the end of the year. These new services will provide live closed captioning of presentations and allow viewers to choose translation into their preferred language from a list of supported languages.
Office 365 is used by customers around the world because of its industry-leading security and compliance capabilities. Because of this, AIG’s CyberEdge clients using the Microsoft Cloud will now have access to expanded business interruption coverage. Microsoft is the first cloud vendor to achieve this status with AIG.
General Availability of Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Greater Cloud Market Resources
One of the big announcements at WPC was the general availability of Azure SQL Data Warehouse, which delivers true cloud scalability to data warehousing, saving time and money compared to competitive solutions.
With the enormous demand for all things related to the cloud, Microsoft is investing to help partners maximize probability in the cloud. In the coming year, Microsoft will be doubling their investments in free software, cloud services, and platforms, making enhancements for Cloud Service Providers (CSP) and providing more field employees and training dedicated to the cloud.
Frontline Partnership Award
For the fifth year in a row, Pragmatic Works was named Outstanding Frontline Partner of the Year in Big Data by Microsoft and HPE. Our team worked extremely hard on developing an APS solution for our client and we were honored with this recognition because of it. Thanks so much to our amazing team! Read our press release about the Frontline Award to learn more.
It was a great week (Gwen Stefani performed at the party), but I had an early flight so I missed that... Oh well. I got what I went to Toronto for, meeting with amazing people from Microsoft and HPE and getting to talk to people who are advocates for what we do at Pragmatic Works.
You can learn more about everything that went on at WPC here: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/wpc/wpc-2016-vision-keynotes
Opportunities for Pragmatic Works Customers
Pragmatic Works was awarded special funding programs for our customers to explore and implement a variety of modern data applications:
- Advanced Analytics
- Predictive Analytics
- Cognitive Intelligence
- Power BI
- Big Data
Many of our customers are exploring or implementing modern data solutions right now. To learn if these solutions are a fit for your organization, please register for a personalized strategy session with one of our Solution Architects.
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