3 minute read
šš» Hello and welcome to this edition of Interesting Stuff, your fortnightly dose of things I think youāll find interesting if youāre in the world of Azure, partners, small business, and Microsoft. Iām James Marshall, SMB Azure Partner Success Lead for the UK at Microsoft, and if you find this content useful please remember to subscribe and share this with your network. Thank you! š
In this edition, youāll find:
š My thoughts the recent Microsoft Ignite event.
š A summary of the latest Azure updates.
š° Interesting articles Iāve seen around the web.
Some Thoughts
Last week, it was Microsoft Ignite, the annual event for technologists and IT Pros to come together and see the best of whatās next in technology! If you couldnāt attend in person, or virtually, Iād highly recommend watching the on-demand content. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in particular gave a brilliant keynote.
Without doubt, AI was at the heart of the event, but did you know there we more than 100 new updates across event facet of the Microsoft technology portfolio? Check out the famous Book of News and the official Microsoft blog to learn more about the key announcements.
Personally, my big take away from the event is that weāre currently going through an even bigger leap forwards for technology than the one we saw with the mainstream availability of hyperscale cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure. For partners, more than ever, āstanding still is moving backwardsā when it comes to developing practices and solutions that solve business challenges for customers. Most partners donāt have to become a deep expert in every new thing, but the opportunity created by these innovations canāt be ignored. Donāt believe me? Check out the Work Trend Index Special Report; early users of Copilot for Microsoft 365 donāt want to go back to working without it: 77% said they donāt want to give it up.
There are too many updates to list out here, but some of my favourites include:
- The Microsoft Loop app is now generally available. Iāve become a big fan of Loop and love using it personally, and collaborating with my team.
- Dall-E 3 is now available in preview in Azure OpenAI Service. GPT-4 Turbo (preview) and GPT-3.5 Turbo 16K (GA) will be available in Azure OpenAI Service at the end of November 2023. GPT-4 Turbo model offers lower pricing, extended prompt length, and structured JSON formatting with improved efficiency and control.
- GitHub Copilot Chat will be generally available in December 2023. Bringing natural language as the new universal language for software development, GPT-4 powers Copilot Chat providing code-aware suggestions and code generation. I cannot tell you how blown away by this I was when I first experienced it.
What are you most excited about from Microsoft Ignite? Let me know in the comments!
Azure Updates
As ever, thereās always something new to know, so hereās a selection of updates you might find interesting: Get the digest!
Interesting Stuff from Others
Cloud Native Innovations with Mark Russinovich
Mark is Microsoftās Azure CTO, and a Technical Fellow, as well as an author, developer, artist - in fact, Iām not sure thereās anything he canāt turn his hand to. His sessions at any conference are always packed. Check out this session where heās in conversation about the latest innovations in cloud native computing.
How to Use Copilot in Microsoft Word to Create Awesome Documents
The productivity coach, and fellow colleague Stuart Ridout put this great video together looking at how best to use Copliot to your advantage when creating or editing Microsoft Word documents.
Until next timeā¦
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