One of the most exciting announcements at this year’s event is the reveal of a new variation on Microsoft 365. With the latter software debuted this last summer as a commercial suite of Microsoft software, the next step is in cornering the education market.
As the third variation on Microsoft 365, the Education edition is going to feature software designed to streamline educational institutions. It plans to bundle with “Minecraft: Education Edition” as a way to entice students to use the suite of software. Plus, it’s going to have mobility functions so students can work with the platform away from the classroom.
Microsoft Teams Will Eventually Replace Skype
If you’re used to using Skype for Business in Office 365, things are about to change. A major announcement at Microsoft Ignite says that a similar communications tool called Microsoft Teams will soon replace Skype.
One major reason for this is that Microsoft wants to place more competitive pressure on a similar communications app called Slack. While the change isn’t immediate, you can expect this replacement eventually. Once Microsoft Teams goes forward, expect more advanced features like call transfer, voicemail, and inbound/outbound calls with external phone numbers.
In the meantime, Skype for Business is going to get an upgrade in its voice and video technologies.
Better Cyber Security for Office 365
Advanced Threat Protection has become a standard feature in Office 365 recently, but Microsoft has a plan for improvements. They’ll be announcing this at Microsoft Ignite, including some of the new security features they’ll be adding.
The company is going to add enhanced features like better ways to fight back on phishing, impersonation, as well as domain spoofing. They’ll even be adding some tools that help repair security issues in real-time rather than merely alert you to a problem.
It’s refreshing to see Microsoft take security more seriously in the volatile times we live in.
New Features to Azure
Those of you who depend on Microsoft’s Azure to store and manage data should know that you’ll soon get even more improvements. Microsoft continually evolves Azure, and they’ve announced new features for each Ignite event.
This time, it’s adding Azure Cost Management services, which helps optimize cloud spending. It’s a service they’ll be providing for free through next June. Other premium capabilities are going to become available as well through next summer. After this time, they’ll become paid features, though only requiring 1% of your cloud spend.
Updates to Cognitive Services
Microsoft’s foray into AI and their Cognitive Services continues to get better. At Ignite, expect an announcement about more features, including a new text analytics API for language processing.
The above can aid considerably in helping you glean data from new voice searches that continue to increase. Part of this extends to Microsoft’s Bing and Custom Search, plus Bing Search v7.
Contact us at PointClick Technologies to learn more about what’s occurring with Microsoft products and how they improve your company.