Microsoft Inspire 2020: A Journey of Digital Transformation

A few days ago was Microsoft Inspire, a two-day event. This year, held online, collaboration giant Microsoft announced new ‘Teams Rooms’ offerings. The new services come in two levels, standard, and premium. “Today, we’re announcing new device management and monitoring options for Microsoft Teams Rooms to deliver high-quality calling and meeting experiences,” Microsoft said in a prepared statement.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard users just got a big boost with the addition of several new functionalities within the Teams Admin Center. “These features make it easier to deploy and manage a fleet of devices, with improvements across device set-up, bulk management tasks, and health monitoring,” I’m told. Users can manage Microsoft Teams Room devices from the Teams Admin Center, as well as all other Teams devices including collaboration bars, IP phones, etc., from a centralized platform.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium also focuses on remote management and lets customers shift the operational responsibility of managing and monitoring Microsoft Teams Rooms to Microsoft. This delivery model means gaining access to intelligent software, dedicated experts, and advanced data insights. From a practicality standpoint, I’m told: “Our real-time management service relies on Microsoft technology experts to handle system operations remotely, enabling you to free up IT and enhance meeting productivity.”

Service is available around the clock, meaning 24/7 management and monitoring of your room operating systems and software. You’ll also get monitoring of surfacing insights and alerts around all-action on-site actions. “The technology can even take remote action on your behalf as permitted.”

New Teams features for first-line workers help them to connect and engage with information, apps, and coworkers with features like a walkie talkie and the automation of manual tasks. In a statement, Microsoft said the shift toward ‘remote everything’s’ made things clear – how we stay in touch and collaborate is evolving. “The workplace of the future will accommodate hybrid scenarios in which some people may work from the office while others may work remotely or some fluid combination of the two.”

Azure Stack HCI, is the latest addition to Microsoft’s hybrid portfolio and is now available in public preview. It brings hybrid capabilities to customer data centers while enabling letting them leverage existing resources. A slew of new solutions got added to the collaboration company’s Power Platform and Dynamics 365 platform to deliver ‘critical digital infrastructure needs.’

Enhancements were made to Azure Lighthouse, which today offers multi-factor authentication and privileged identity management services, along with a fresh public preview of Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention in Microsft 365, which helps customers identify and protect information on endpoints.

As Microsoft Inspire is geared toward partners, it only seems natural that the company would do something for such a critical team of individuals who are responsible for a sizable portion of Microsoft’s revenue. Microsoft expanded its Cloud Practice playbooks for partners adding two more playbooks. “The playbooks are aimed at helping partners build an effective cloud practice that lasts,” Microsoft wrote in a statement.

Sessions at this year’s digital Inspire focused on remote work, business continuity, security, and cloud migration with Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner Organization, adding:

“The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated economic and social effects underpinned much of Microsoft Inspire 2020 our partners are digital-first responders supporting frontline workers, and they have rapidly rolled out offerings that didn’t exist at the beginning of the year”