Innovation and growth was indeed the theme for this year’s Microsoft Inspire Conference in July. Around 18,000+ partners and 20,000 Microsoft employees from all over the world gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Wayne and Daniel were there representing Yorb as one of 100 New Zealand businesses that made the trip. The latest technologies from Microsoft and others again have us on the cusp of a significant change to accepted business models and how we all use technology on a day to day basis. Technology will become more autonomous, which allows actual human employees to free up their time to focus more on core objectives like collaboration, productivity, and growth.

It became clear almost immediately that businesses are undergoing transformation fuelled by cloud, artificial intelligence, mixed reality and the Internet of Things- and Microsoft is just getting started.

Innovation, Growth, and Differentiation

Every day started with breakfast keynote address followed by a break-out session, seminars, and workshops at Mandalay Bay Conference Centre.

Over the 5-day event and 589 sessions, there was no lack of opportunities to learn. There was a choice of 30 sessions at any one time with topics ranging from Business Leadership, marketing and sales, to Modern Workplace, Data and AI, Applications and Infrastructure, Business Applications, Industry and Partnering with Microsoft.

Key Takeaways

• Security and device management were major themes of the event. The “Modern Desktop” centered around Microsoft 365 is designed to allow users easier access to their systems; while providing businesses with greater security controls.
• Geolocation blocking
• Dual factor authentication
• Encrypted data

• Microsoft Teams is the current new and shiny thing, with partners configuring this for clients to enable greater team collaboration. The emphasis is on ensuring all team members can access the data they need, communicate effectively and access all the services via a “single pane of glass”

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• Artificial Intelligence is being baked into all their products. This will include:
• The ability for AI to interpret data within your Excel Spreadsheets
• Automatically transcribe your meeting notes, highlighting action points for each meeting participant
• Embed AI customer service into your websites for basic queries, automatically escalate to a real person when required

In 2010 Microsoft completely changed their business with a move to Office 365 and pay as you go subscriptions. The Cloud is continuing to change how we implement technology solutions and how we support the customer.

Yorb: Clients First, Always

We were extremely privileged to be part of the 2018 Microsoft Inspire Conference. The insights into industry trends, market strategies and ways of improving our business allow us to be true to our commitment to the best possible service to our clients and empowering them to succeed.