Microsoft Inspire 2021 | Highlights

Like every year, the largest global technology partner event is held where attendees can enjoy a unique experience, learn, create value relationships, and share knowledge: the Microsoft Inspire 2021. In addition, it will be the time when the Partner of the Year awards will be awarded, in which Plain Concepts participates (fingers crossed).

In the 2020 edition participated about 100,000 partners, where they met ICT service companies, consultants, software and hardware manufacturers, management profiles, commercial, technicians, etc. Microsoft Inspire is the perfect opportunity to discover what other partners are doing to excel in more than 100 countries and learn from them. The countdown has already begun. Are you in?

* We will update this post with the news that are announced every day

When and where Microsoft Inspire 2021 is held

Digital events have become commonplace in our daily lives. For the second consecutive year, the Microsoft Inspire 2021 edition will be online, and we already have the dates: from 14 to 16 July.

Registration Microsoft Inspire 2021

Due to the circumstances that the event will be online, it will also be free, making it a much more inclusive and open meeting for anyone who wants to sign up for Microsoft Inspire 2021.

During the sessions of last year and its other significant events, we have been able to verify that the essence of these meetings remains intact, revealing new business opportunities and the priorities of the partners.

Microsoft Inspire 2021 Sessions

Such important hosts will lead the event as Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), Judson Althoff (Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Customer and Partner Solutions), Rodney Clark (Corporate Vice President of Channel Sales and CVP), Charlotte Yarkoni (Chief Operating Officer, Cloud + IA Division), Nick Parker (Global Partner Solutions CVP) or Vasu Jakkal (CVP, Security, Compliance, and Identity), among many others.

The talks and meetings of this edition will again stand out for their variety and novelties aimed at the technological partner community. This year they will be divided into five major themes that explore the primary needs of companies:

• Microsoft Cloud for digital transformation across industries
• Drive growth with the most partner-focused business platform
• The cloud created for the new world of work
• Innovate from the cloud to the edge on your own terms
• Building a Foundation of Trust and Security

Microsoft Inspire 2021 | Recap

Day 1 | Recap

 Windows 365

If there has been a protagonist on the first day of the Inspire, it has been the emergence of Windows 365, a tool that will offer a complete and personalized computing experience from the cloud to any device, offering companies and their employees’ power, simplicity, and safety for hybrid work.

“Just as applications were brought to the cloud with SaaS, we now uploaded the operating system to the cloud, providing organizations with greater flexibility and a secure way to empower their workers to be more productive and connected, regardless of their location.” Microsoft President and CEO Satya Nadella said.

Hybrid work is becoming the company’s favorite, so Windows 365 helps them solve the challenges of this new model, ensuring flexibility, adaptability to Windows 10 and 11, customization, Zero Trust principles, and greater versatility. Windows 365 will be available to all companies on August 2, 2021.

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Another fundamental pillar in the transformation of enterprise applications is the Dynamics suite. Modular applications are the future for businesses, with connected data charts and a standard data model.

During the conference, we saw the advantages of Dynamics 365 for Sales and its integration with LinkedIn. You can now extract the contact details directly from the Sales application, which is a real twist when it comes to contacting a potential customer. It can also be used from Outlook, which makes it easy for us to add leads and contacts to the application, and also shows the history of customer involvement in a side dashboard.

Finally, they announced that we would soon see Dynamics 365 for Talent, an application aimed at HR that offers a connected experience throughout the employee’s lifecycle. You can also integrate with LinkedIn, matching job profiles with candidates directly from the social network. The application will allow you to easily schedule the interview time and integrate backend processes, which helps access the paperwork.

Applications, infrastructure, data and AI

The final pillar of the session focused on cloud-framed applications, data, infrastructure, and AI as the basis for digital transformation.

Microsoft’s commitment is back to Azure, where we hope to make AI accessible, allowing all companies, regardless of size, to automate solutions and improve their productivity. They showed us how, through a bot and facial and voice recognition, security could be enhanced, automatically detecting and responding in the client’s language and analyzing feelings according to facial expressions.

Day 2 | Recap

Improvements in Azure

Microsoft’s star, Azure, is also loaded with new features, with the launch of Azure Migration and Modernization Program, an evolution of the migration program that helps businesses see what the performance and costs will be when they move from local to the cloud. The program covers apps, infrastructures, and data.

On the other hand, they have also released a new trial version of Azure Kubernetes as an event source for Azure Event Grid. So clients can subscribe to platform events, in addition to allowing the management of APIs.

New integrations and functions for Viva

We have already talked on other occasions about the improvements and innovations that Microsoft has been adding to Viva. This tool integrates and combines communication, learning, and well-being at work. It will now present more integrations, which will be available from autumn.

In addition, new tools for developers to extend their apps to Viva will also be deployed, such as the Viva Connections APIs (analytics panel) and Viva Learning (extracting content from training providers, delivery dates that can be taken to Teams, SharePoint, Bing…).

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse and the Orland Project

Although still only in the public beta phase, the tool provides partners with a central location and security configuration templates that ensure the protection of data, users, and devices against potential threats.

Orland also arrives, still in a private trial phase, and will help partners grow their business cloud through recommendations based on where customers are.

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Finally, there was also time for the more “solidarity” touch. Cloud for Sustainability will be a cloud designed to help customers reduce their carbon footprint and move towards a more sustainable model with the environment.

It will arrive by the end of 2021, and organizations will be able to record, analyze and reduce their emissions through software offerings that connect in real-time or suggestions for making better decisions. The cloud will function as a log panel to track progress and monitor targets.