Microsoft Ignite 2023, the company's annual event for developers and IT professionals, has officially concluded. After the exciting announcements during the MS Inspire event earlier this year, we were very much looking forward to hearing about Microsoft’s latest developments in AI, cloud, data, security, productivity, and more. With over 100 sessions spread across 3 days (15-17 November), we want to present you our highlights and key takeaways for Modern Work.

1.    Extending the Microsoft Copilot experience

In the wake of its launch at the start of November 2023, Microsoft Copilot was one of the obvious big topics throughout Microsoft Ignite. The AI-driven assistant, still only available for enterprise customers, is helping users all around the world with tasks like searching, writing, summarizing, emailing, meetings, note-taking, and more. Microsoft now announced new offerings to extend Microsoft Copilot’s capabilities, such as:

• Microsoft Copilot Studio: a low-code tool to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 and build custom copilots for internal or external use.
• Microsoft Copilot for Service: a copilot that helps businesses accelerate their AI transformation of customer service by integrating generative AI with contact centers.
• Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides: a copilot that combines generative AI and mixed reality to help frontline workers complete complex tasks and resolve issues faster.
• Microsoft Copilot for Azure: a copilot that simplifies IT administration by offering a unified chat experience that understands the user's role and goals, and enhances the ability to design, operate and troubleshoot apps and infrastructure.

In other words, Microsoft is going all-in on the Copilot concept. Releasing new variants of the product and giving the power to organizations themselves to customize their Microsoft 365 Copilot experience to better fulfill use cases.

2.    Introducing new experiences in Windows to empower employees, IT, and developers 

Microsoft continues to invest in and build Windows to empower people to navigate the platform shift to AI. The company therefore introduced Copilot for Windows, which is basically a Copilot built into your Windows experience. It promises to help you finetune your Windows experience and help you find the right setting for your style of work. Microsoft also announced a host of new AI and productivity tools for developers, including Windows AI Studio, a platform that helps developers create and deploy AI apps on Windows.

3.    Strengthening defenses in the era of AI

The threat landscape has evolved dramatically in recent years, and Microsoft introduced new technologies across its suite of security solutions to help defenders make the world a safer place. Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR will be combined to create the industry's first Unified Security Operations Platform, with embedded Security Copilot experiences. With built-in generative AI, it’s a single, powerful experience focused on protecting threats at machine speed and aiding defenders by simplifying the complexity of their environment. Microsoft also announced the expansion of Security Copilot embedded within Intune, Purview, and Entra to help IT administrators, compliance units and identity teams simplify complex scenarios.

4.    Further innovating the way we work and meet

The adoption of Microsoft Teams worldwide has been nothing short of phenomenal. For many businesses in Belgium and Europe, it’s also their preferred tool to collaborate, meet, and call, even after the recent unbundling announcements. It was therefore no surprise that during the Ignite Event, Microsoft also announced new features for the popular app.

They revealed new features for both the end-user as well as management to get the best out of Teams. Some of the most interesting features were:

• Voice isolation in Teams meetings and calls
• Generative meeting background effects
• Teams rooms deployment through Windows Autopilot
• Simplified Teams Phone deployment with shared calling

However, the biggest innovation came through the announcement of Microsoft Mesh for Teams. While Mesh has been around for some time, it will now expand to Teams with what Microsoft calls ‘Immersive Spaces’. These Immersive Spaces will let you use avatars in 3D environments to meet and interact with each other. A truly fascinating idea to say the least.

We’re looking forward to testing and implementing all of these new innovations and features so that we can help you embrace them in your own Modern Workplace.