You are almost ready to move your business applications, data, and infrastructure to the Cloud but you still need to be a little bit more confident.
These 4 pillars represent the main value proposition for what differentiates Azure from the competition.
Those are the reasons why customers choose Microsoft, because of the unique value that we provide in a productive, hybrid, intelligent, and trusted cloud.
Microsoft officially announced the public preview to a simpler and more reliable way to protect your VMware virtual machines.
To tackle the changing needs of the customers, they have performed a major overhaul of the hybrid disaster recovery and added necessary enhancements along with highly requested simplifications. They have implemented a new architecture with which, the configuration server has now been revamped as the ASR replication appliance.
A big deal-breaker with the current architecture was manually updating various configuration server components and mobility services. – as soon as an update arrives, both the appliance and mobility service will be updated automatically and that too out of business hours.
Additionally, for automatic upgrades, machine credentials will not be required anymore. Currently, it is necessary to have the latest credentials for both Linux and Windows machines for a successful update. But with this preview, the credentials will be required only initially and will not be required once the installation is complete. After the installation of the mobility service, credentials can be removed for all the machines.
The appliance is now a single unit of management and all its components have been converted into micro-services which are hosted on Azure. This will not only make the troubleshooting much easier, but scale management also becomes much smoother. To scale out an appliance, you will just need to set up another appliance and voila, it is done! No need to set up another Process server anymore.
Appliance resiliency has also been a highly asked about topic and we have that covered too. Customers are usually afraid of an appliance burndown. There are also scenarios where one may need to load balance an appliance and move a protected machine to another appliance, without disabling replication.
With the preview, you don’t need to take regular backups of your appliance anymore – just spin up another appliance and switch all your machines to the new appliance. All the configuration details particular to a protected machine will be switched to the new appliance without needing to go through the complete replication again.
Apart from the above-mentioned improvements, they have also removed –
Learn more about the preview architecture and check out the release notes for a detailed list of improvements.
Microsoft is announcing changes to the commercial pricing for Microsoft 365—the first substantive pricing update since they’ve launched Office 365 a decade ago.
This updated pricing reflects the increased value Microsoft has delivered to its customers over the past 10 years.
Take a look at some of the innovations they’ve delivered over the past decade in three key areas—communications and collaboration, security and compliance, and AI and automation—as well as the addition of audio conferencing capabilities that they’re announcing today.
Since introducing Microsoft 365 they have added 24 apps1 to the suites—Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer, and Whiteboard—and have released over 1,400 new features and capabilities in three key areas.
→ Communication and collaboration.
In 2020 Microsoft released over 300 new capabilities including Together mode, background effects, large gallery view, raise a hand, live reactions, breakout rooms, live captions with speaker attribution, and Fluid components, just to name a few.
→ Security and compliance.
→ AI and automation.
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Contact us to learn more [email protected]
Today most organizations are experiencing challenges and making plans that they did not anticipate. In times like these, organizations do not have time to worry about reacting to changes in accounting regulations, yet they cannot risk leaving them unaddressed.
A core tenant of Dynamics 365 Finance is to enable you to reduce risk, and to automate and modernize your global financial operations. To help you achieve this, Microsoft are introducing asset leasing in November 2020. Asset leasing helps you adapt and be compliant to the FASB and IFRS 16 accounting regulations related to lease management and its financial impact. Asset leasing will reduce manual errors and save your users time through automatic lease status updates, right of use assets, wholistic monitoring and analytics, and calculations of net present value, lease interest, and future cash payments.
Asset leasing features:
On the first of April, Microsoft has officially started the 2020 release wave 1, kicking off the deployment of new applications and hundreds of new capabilities and updates across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
The complete list of new capabilities for 2020 release wave 1 related to Microsoft Dynamics 365 are as follow:
Seamless B2C and B2B customer journeys across sales, marketing, and service:
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Microsoft’s customer data platform (CDP), including first and third-party data connections that further enrich customer profiles that can be updated and activated in real-time. Organizations can unlock the value of their data by quickly and accurately predicting customer behavior using out-of-the-box AI templates for churn, customer lifetime value, and next best action recommendations, as well as enable deeper insights with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.
B2B organizations can take advantage of new customer engagement capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Field Service to provide customers with unified, consistent, and personalized experiences throughout the entire buyer journey. Sales teams can leverage advanced AI-powered predictive sales forecasting and a new sales acceleration hub for inside sellers. Marketers can enhance campaigns with more personalized and sophisticated email messages, integrated surveys using Microsoft Forms Pro, and aggregated data and segments from Customer Insights. In addition, service centers benefit from centralized scheduling capabilities for dispatchers to schedule technicians and new omnichannel capabilities to reach customers on their preferred channels.
Delivering seamless omnichannel retail experiences:
Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers an end to end retail solution that helps organizations deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences through advanced e-commerce capabilities, intelligent product recommendations, and enhanced clienteling. With Dynamics 365 Commerce, Finance, Supply Chain Management, and Microsoft Power BI you gain greater visibility into an end-to-end processes and virtual warehouses, as well as get a single view of customers across retail and e-commerce.
Exceed customer expectations with an intelligent supply chain:
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is updated to deliver predictive insights and intelligence from AI, IoT, and mixed reality to your organization across planning, production, inventory, warehouse, transportation management, and asset management.
Microsoft has added out-of-the-box IoT capabilities that leverages Azure IoT Hub to connect signals from mission-critical assets with business transaction data. This enables manufacturers to improve uptime, throughput, and quality by proactively managing shop floor and equipment operations with a real-time view of their entire production and stock.
Supply Chain Management now integrates with Dynamics 365 Field Service to help reduce downtime of geographically dispersed mission critical assets by automating field service operations, as well as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides to train your workforce faster, more effectively, and in some cases, more safely using mixed reality learning experiences.
For Instance: Eaton, a multinational power management company, with 97,000 employees serving customers in 175 countries, is leveraging Dynamics 365 mixed reality solutions as part of its ‘Industry 4.0’ transformation. Following pilot evaluations by their IT and business teams, Dynamics 365 Guides and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist are being deployed globally by different business units starting with the Vehicle Group in over a dozen locations for maintenance, digital layout, training, product development, and connecting global teams on knowledge transfer and best practices sharing.
In addition to these highlights for operations, we’re introducing Dynamics 365 Finance Insights, which brings the power of AI into your finance processes, as well as Dynamics 365 Project Operations, a comprehensive solution for service organizations to connect and run every part of the business.
Power Automate adds robotic process automation (RPA)
Power Automate already helps hundreds of thousands of organizations automate millions of processes every day. With the addition of RPA, Power Automate will help these organizations to also automate their legacy apps and manual processes through UI-based automation. The key Power Automate RPA capabilities that are reaching general availability today include RPA for attended and unattended scenarios, a flexible business model to support any business scenario, and several AI Builder models.
Power Automate now provides a single solution for end-to-end automation that spans on-premises systems and the cloud. This approach addresses three primary areas:
Power Apps adds mixed reality experiences
Today, we’re announcing new mixed reality capabilities coming to Microsoft Power Apps. With these new features, Power Apps is one of the first low-code no-code platforms that makes it possible for everyone to build mixed reality applications.
With hundreds of millions of augmented reality capable mobile devices in the hands of business users, every Power Apps maker will be able to leverage the power of mixed reality to extend their apps with the ease of drag-and-drop development. With these new capabilities, makers can start to digitize workflows in physical space in new and innovative ways.
Power BI adds new capabilities
Microsoft Power BI is delivering new capabilities focusing on three key areas to help customers drive a data culture:
Microsoft are announcing a product name change only for some of Microsoft365 products. There are no pricing or feature changes at this time!
The new product names are already into effect since the 21st of April , 2020. The below table shows the Old & New naming for each modified product:
| Old Name | New Name |
| Office 365 Business Essentials | Microsoft 365 Business Basic |
| Office 365 Business Premium | Microsoft 365 Business Standard |
| Microsoft 365 Business | Microsoft 365 Business Premium |
| Office 365 Business | Microsoft 365 Apps. For Business |
| Office 365 ProPlus | Microsoft 365 Apps. For Enterprise |
However, no changes were done for the below products:
Linked below are two comparison sheets for both Microsoft 365 and Office 365 showing the availability features/products for each plan for both Commercial & Educational plan
Nisrine Jamai is a Technical Sustainability Program Manager at Microsoft. She overlooks providing product expertise on the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability (MCFS) in the CEMA region (Central & Southeast Europe, Middle East and Africa) and by extension its implementation consulting to customers and partners who are motivated by the Microsoft vision for sustainability. Nisrine has an extensive engineering background in renewable energy technologies and has actively put in place work in the context of sustainable technologies, bio-energies associated with the production of the second-generation bioenergy and biogas from waste.
As the Head of Microsoft Azure Presales at BPS, Youssef is a dynamic leader in the world of technology and business. With a deep commitment to leveraging technology for sustainability, Youssef plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of cloud computing.Beyond their professional achievements, Youssef is an avid reader and learner with a passion for technology. They also have a keen interest in AI and Data Science, always staying up-to-date with the latest advancements in these fields.With a wealth of knowledge and a dedication to excellence, Youssef is poised to share invaluable insights at GITEX, making a significant impact on the audience.
Stanislav Lencz is devoted to making organizations, technology, communication, and processes serve people.
He has excellent communication and networking abilities and extensive experience in Project / Team Management, Business Solution and Solutions Design architectures.
After many years of professional career covering mainly domains of Biometrics and Identity related solutions, since 2016 he dedicates himself intensively to company, community and leadership consulting, networking, and thought leadership. Passionate in helping individuals and teams re-discover their purpose and build unity in diversity. He currently serves as Country Director for Slovakia and Regional Director for Europe and Middle East, at Consulus.
Hrvoje Lovrić is a Senior Business Consultant devoted to making organizations, technology, communication, and processes serve people.
He has excellent communication and networking abilities and extensive experience in Telecom, Energy and Education sectors, and experience in EU Funding applications.
After many years of a professional career covering mainly domains of creating and implementing marketing and sales strategies, working as a lecturer at the graduate study of Entrepreneurial Management, since 2020, he dedicates himself intensively to company, community, and leadership consulting, networking, and thought leadership.
After studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing and later Master of Science in Economics, MBA, University of Zagreb, Croatia led him into organizations such as Croatian Telekom, Optima Telekom, and Helb Engineering.
He currently serves as Country Lead for Croatia at Consulus.
Clara Kwan is the Global Head of Sustainability and Impact Investment of Consulus and the Chief Sustainability Officer of DesignFutures Venture. She graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Law (Honors) and has an Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.
Clara spearheads and executes strategic decisions and provide strategic consultations on sustainability issues, investments and best practices for companies, including establishing ESG principles and roadmap into regional and local processes in companies’ management, operations, legal and compliance, business continuity planning, marketing and human resources. She assesses and manages investment and financing portfolios from a legal, sustainability and social impact angle.
She sits on boards and previously held the positions of Chief Operating Officer, Head of Sustainability and Managing Director (Singapore) for a regional green independent power producer.
Clara is also a certified mediator and an attorney who is qualified in several jurisdictions. She has served clients globally including Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Dubai, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, United Kingdom and United States.
Ahmed Ameen Ashour is a forward-thinking, and results-driven leader who has dedicated his career to driving innovation and positive change in the areas of Ed-Tech and Sustainability. As of 2023, Ahmed has assumed the pivotal role of Chief Sustainability Commercial Officer at Microsoft, bringing his extensive leadership expertise to the forefront of the company’s sustainability initiatives.
In this new role, Ahmed’s primary responsibility is to help enable organizations both in public and private sector on their ESG journey through leveraging Microsoft’s Sustainability Cloud Solutions. His focus is on developing and implementing scalable business and go-to-market strategies for Microsoft’s Cloud for Sustainability platform, empowering organizations to make a significant impact through sustainable innovation, digital transformation, and growth.
Prior to this transition, Ahmed served as the Education Industry Director for Microsoft UAE & GCC, where he was instrumental in leading the company’s engagement within the education sector. He established key alliances and catalyzed an education transformation through the use of technology. His impact can be seen in numerous UAE education initiatives, including the Mohammed Bin Rashid Smart Learning Program (MBRSLP), One Million Arab Coders, Madrasa.org, Mohammed Bin Rashid Virtual Schools (MBRVS), and the UAE’s transition to remote learning during the COVID pandemic.
A thought leader in sustainability, Ahmed is committed to engaging with partners and startups to develop innovative sustainability solutions that can quickly go-to-market. His passion for making a positive impact on the future of our planet is evident in his commitment to building a better future for generations to come.
Ahmed began his journey at Microsoft in 2008 as an Industry Solutions Lead for Education, following a decade-long career in education consultancy across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa region. He holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Louisville (US) and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Ain Shams University (EG). Ahmed’s blend of deep technical expertise, leadership, and dedication to sustainability make him a driving force in Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more through sustainable practices.
Lawrence Chong is the CEO and Co-founder of Consulus. A recognized thought leader in Innovation and Strategy.
He is a regular speaker at global events and has spoken at Innovation by Design, World Marketing Summit, World Brand Congress, Business of Design Week. He is a featured Columnist on innovation, branding, and design for Asian businesses. He is a featured thought leader on the largest professional network, LinkedIn and is followed by 400,000+ professionals.
His insights appear regularly in regional media such as the TheEdge, Radio 93.8, Business Insider, Marketing, Business Times Singapore, VTC (Vietnam), Doanh Nhan Sai Gon (Vietnam), CafeBiz (Vietnam), Ceylon Today, Brunei Times.