Comprehensive Updates from Microsoft Ignite 2024

Friday 22nd November 2024

Introduction

In this blog we’re providing an in-depth look at updates and announcements from Microsoft Ignite. The blog covers all the latest around Microsoft Azure, Copilot and AI, Microsoft Security, Power Platform, Windows 11, Windows 365, Licensing and more!

Microsoft Ignite has once again delivered an array of groundbreaking updates and announcements, setting the stage for the future of technology. From cutting-edge advancements in Microsoft Azure to the latest developments in AI and security, here’s a comprehensive look at the last four days of the event.

What the blog covers – Head to whichever section(s) interest you most!

Microsoft Azure – Azure Arc, AI Foundry, AI Agent Service, AI Content Understanding, AI Search, Synapse Analytics, Data Factory and Kubernetes Service
Copilot and AI – Copilot+ PCs, Copilot and AI Stack, Copilot Actions, Copilot Pages, Copilot Agents, Copilot in Teams, Copilot in PowerPoint, Project Cortex, Responsible AI Tooling
Copilot Studio – Autonomous Agentic Capabilities, Agent Library, Microsoft 365 Agents SDK, Azure AI Services Integration, PAYG Meter, Agent Builder in Power Apps
Microsoft Fabric – Fabric Databases, AI Functions in Fabric
Microsoft Security – Microsoft Defender, Azure Security Centre, Identity and Access Management, Information Protection, Security Exposure Management, Zero Day Quest, Data Loss Prevention for M365 Copilot, Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management, New Windows 11 Security Features
Power Apps – Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents, AI Builder, Plan Designer, Admin Centre Experience
Windows – Windows 11, Windows Autopilot, Windows 365 Link, Windows 365 Frontline Shared, Windows in Mixed Reality, Windows Intelligent Search
Licensing Updates

1. Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure continues to be a leader in cloud innovation, with this year’s Ignite unveiling several significant enhancements.

Azure Arc was a major highlight, with new capabilities that extend Azure management across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Users can now manage Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines directly through Azure Arc, simplifying operations and enhancing consistency. Additionally, Azure Arc now supports machine learning operations, bringing powerful AI capabilities closer to data sources.

Azure AI Foundry is a new initiative aimed at providing developers and data scientists with a robust platform for building and deploying AI solutions. It offers a range of pre-built models, tools for custom model development, and seamless integration with other Azure services to accelerate AI innovation.

The Azure AI Agent Service is designed to help developers create intelligent agents that can interact with users through natural language. This service includes advanced natural language understanding, dialogue management, and integration with other Azure AI services to build sophisticated conversational agents.

Azure AI content understanding provides advanced capabilities for extracting insights from unstructured data. This includes text analysis, entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and more, enabling organisations to gain deeper insights from their data and improve decision-making.

Azure Cognitive Services saw the introduction of new APIs and enhancements to existing ones, making it easier for developers to incorporate advanced AI capabilities into their applications. Improvements in speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and translation services were also announced, providing more accurate and natural interactions.

Azure AI search enhances the search capabilities within applications by leveraging AI to provide more relevant and accurate search results. This includes features like natural language search, semantic search, and integration with other Azure AI services to deliver a more intuitive search experience.

Azure AI Search now features a generative query engine, highly tuned for RAG performance. Query rewriting, available in preview, allows you to transform and create multiple variations of queries using a SLM purpose-built for RAG, which significantly boosts recall.

Azure Synapse Analytics further bolsters its ability to unify data integration, enterprise data warehousing, and big data analytics. The new integration with Power BI and Azure Machine Learning makes it easier for users to derive insights and build predictive models from their data. Enhanced security features and performance improvements were also announced, ensuring that data remains secure, and queries execute faster than ever before.

Azure Data Factory now includes new data integration features and connectors that simplify ETL processes and enhance data movement capabilities. The updates allow for more seamless data integration across various sources, making it easier to build robust data pipelines.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) received new security and compliance features, as well as enhancements to its scalability and performance. These updates aim to provide a more secure and efficient environment for deploying and managing containerised applications.

Microsoft introduced several enhancements to Azure AI, including improved natural language processing capabilities and expanded pre-built AI models. These updates are designed to help developers and data scientists create more sophisticated AI solutions with greater ease. New Azure AI services for vision, speech, and language were also unveiled, providing more tools for building intelligent applications.

2. Microsoft Copilot and AI

AI remains a cornerstone of Microsoft’s strategy, and the advancements in Copilot and AI at Ignite were particularly impressive.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot interface has been enhanced to provide more intuitive interaction and faster response times.

The Copilot+ PC initiative focuses on integrating AI capabilities directly into Windows PCs, enhancing user productivity and experience. This includes features like intelligent task management, personalised recommendations, and seamless integration with Microsoft 365 applications.

As organisations move more workloads to the cloud to enhance security and flexibility, Microsoft is expanding its Cloud PC solution by introducing the first in a new class of devices purpose-built to connect securely to Windows 365 in seconds.

The Copilot + AI stack is a comprehensive suite of AI tools and services designed to enhance productivity and streamline workflows. It includes advanced natural language processing, machine learning models, and integration with Microsoft 365 applications to provide users with intelligent assistance in their daily tasks.

Copilot Actions are a set of predefined actions that users can leverage to automate routine tasks and streamline workflows. These actions are integrated into Microsoft 365 applications and can be triggered through natural language commands, making it easier for users to perform tasks quickly and efficiently.

Copilot Pages are intelligent, AI-powered pages within Microsoft 365 applications that provide users with personalised content and recommendations. These pages leverage AI to surface relevant information, documents, and insights, helping users stay informed and productive. Now you can prompt Copilot to create everything from interactive flow charts to blocks of code—drawing from data across the Microsoft Graph—then share them in durable Pages your team can build upon.

Copilot Agents are AI-powered assistants that can perform a variety of tasks on behalf of users. These agents are designed to understand natural language commands and can assist with tasks such as scheduling meetings, drafting emails, and analysing data, significantly reducing the time spent on routine activities. Microsoft have announced agents in Microsoft 365 that add specialised skills and knowledge while automating specific tasks at hand.

With agents in SharePoint, every SharePoint site now has an agent so every employee can quickly tap into the massive knowledge base. You can ask the agents questions about data across your files and even create and share custom agents scoped to specific content with a single click.

Copilot in Teams can now understand, recap, and answer questions based on visual content shared onscreen—from PowerPoint slides to web content—in addition to the transcript and chat. You can also ask Copilot for a quick summary of a file shared in a chat to get all its main points without having to open the file.

Copilot in PowerPoint can translate entire presentations into one of 40 languages with a single prompt, while keeping the overall design of each slide.

Project Cortex, now part of Microsoft Viva, was highlighted for its capabilities in organizing and managing knowledge within organisations. Updates to Cortex include new AI-driven insights and integrations with other Microsoft 365 services, helping users access relevant information more quickly and efficiently.

Responsible AI Tooling. Introducing risk and safety evaluations for images, alongside AI reports. These reports enable you to document and share your application's use case, model card, and evaluation results. Compliance teams can easily review, export, approve, and audit these reports across their organisation, streamlining AI asset tracking and governance. This can ensure your AI applications are not only innovative but also safe and compliant.

3. Copilot Studio

Autonomous agentic capabilities are available in preview in the coming weeks, allow makers to build an agent that can take desired actions on their behalf, without having to prompt the agent each time. Autonomous agents can act in the background to respond to events, like receiving an email or recording an uploaded file, without the need for human interaction.

Agent library is now generally available. Microsoft Copilot Studio now gives users a head starts with agents, providing templates for commonly used agent scenarios. Users can customise agents as needed within Copilot Studio. Examples of common scenarios for agents include leave management, sales order, and deal acceleration agents. New agent templates are being added on a continuous basis.

Microsoft 365 Agents SDK allows developers to build enterprise-grade, scalable, multichannel agents. This SDK allows developers to create agents that leverage services from Azure AI Foundry, Semantic Kernel and Copilot Studio, or AI services of their choice and can be deployed across multiple channels, including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, the web, and other third-party messaging platforms. Additionally, the SDK bridges capabilities from Copilot Studio with agents created in code, providing a seamless integration from low- to pro-code. Now in public preview.

Azure AI Services integration: This integration enhances the integration between Copilot Studio and Azure AI services, prioritising some of the top features asks, including add custom search indices as a knowledge source via Azure AI search and bring-your-own model via Azure AI model catalogue. With Azure AI integration, Microsoft provides access to a catalogue of 1,500+ AI models, enabling makers to call industry-specific fine-tuned models, as well as allow Azure search support for large enterprises needing it. The integration with Azure AI Search is in public preview and the ability to choose a model is in private preview.

PAYG meter: Copilot Studio is announcing the addition of a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) meter starting 1^st December, 2024. This model is designed to provide customers with greater flexibility and control over their usage and costs. The PAYG meter allows customers to only pay for what they consume.

Agent builder in Power Apps allows makers to build agents for their app from within Power Apps Studio, using the lightweight Copilot Studio experience. The app-specific agents leverage the logic, knowledge, and actions already existing in the apps to execute tasks autonomously. The users of the apps can then oversee the actions that the agents took in the app and act where agents hit roadblocks to complete. Available in public preview.

4. Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Fabric received several updates aimed at improving its capabilities for building and managing enterprise-grade applications. These updates include enhanced integration with Azure services, new development tools, and improved performance and scalability features.

The newest Fabric workload, Fabric Databases, are a new class of databases that bring together transactional and analytical workloads, and streamline AI application development with simple, intuitive, and autonomous databases that provision in seconds and are secured by default. SQL database in Microsoft Fabric, built on Microsoft’s industry-leading SQL Server engine, is the first database engine coming to Fabric, creating a unified data platform with the ability to apply AI across operational and analytical data. In public preview.

AI Functions in Microsoft Fabric: This feature enables users to perform text-related tasks easily with minimal code in Fabric.

Microsoft also announced the general availability of Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric. This new feature is designed to empower organisations to compute, analyse, and disclose their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics with unprecedented ease and accuracy. Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric provide a comprehensive suite of tools that include prebuilt and preconfigured resources such as data lakes, notebooks, and dashboards.

5. Microsoft Security

Security continues to be a top priority, and Microsoft introduced several new features to help users safeguard their data and systems.

Microsoft Defender has been enhanced with new threat detection and response capabilities, designed to protect against an ever-evolving range of cyber threats. These improvements include advanced machine learning models for threat detection and expanded coverage across more platforms and devices.

Azure Security Centre now offers more comprehensive security management and compliance monitoring features. Updates include enhanced threat intelligence, automated remediation capabilities, and improved integrations with third-party security tools.

Updates to Microsoft’s identity and access management solutions include more robust multi-factor authentication options and tighter integration with Microsoft Sentinel. These enhancements help ensure that users’ identities are protected and that access to sensitive data is tightly controlled. New identity protection features, such as risk-based conditional access, were also announced to provide more granular security controls.

Microsoft Information Protection received updates to enhance data loss prevention and information governance. New capabilities include automated classification of sensitive data and improved reporting and analytics for better visibility into data usage and compliance.

Microsoft Security Exposure Management offers defenders a graph-based approach to proactive threat protection by dynamically mapping changing relationships between critical assets such as login credentials, permissions, and other connections in enterprises, providing a true graph-based view of a customer’s environment. Now generally available.

Zero Day Quest is the industry’s largest security research event. Every year Microsoft's bug bounty program pays more than $16 million for high-quality security research—more than any other in the industry. Zero Day Quest will build on this work with an additional $4 million in rewards focused on cloud and AI which are areas of highest impact to Microsoft customers.

New advances for securing AI and new skills for Security Copilot: New capabilities in Purview include Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Microsoft 365 Copilot, prevention of data oversharing in AI apps, and detection of risky AI use such as malicious intent, prompt injections, and misuse of protected materials.

Additionally, Microsoft are introducing Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), that gives customers a single pane of glass to proactively discover data risks, such as sensitive data in user prompts, and receive recommended actions and insights for quick responses during incidents.

Introducing new security features for Windows 11 including:

Windows Hotpatch, now in preview, downloads security updates in the background and makes them effective immediately upon installation, eliminating the need for a device restart. This enables customers to work without interruptions, while keeping systems protected with the latest security updates. Windows Hotpatch also works for Windows 365 Cloud PCs.
Administrator protection: Microsoft have introduced a new feature in preview where employees have Standard User permissions by default but can still make Windows system changes, including app installation, when necessary.
Personal Data Encryption adds a second layer of protection to Windows Enterprise, so individual files the user is carrying on their laptop are encrypted for a second time and can only be read by the user when logged in to their PC using Windows Hello.

6. Power Platform

The Power Platform continues to empower users to build custom apps, automate workflows, and analyse data with ease.

Power Apps received several updates aimed at making app development more intuitive and efficient. New features include enhanced integration with Microsoft Teams and improved usability for non-developers, making it easier for anyone to create powerful applications. The introduction of new templates and components also simplifies the app-building process, reducing the time required to go from concept to deployment.

Power Automate now offers more pre-built templates and connectors, allowing users to automate a wider range of business processes. The addition of AI-driven suggestions helps users identify opportunities for automation, further streamlining their workflows. New robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities were also introduced, enabling users to automate manual and repetitive tasks more effectively.

Power BI updates focused on enhancing data visualisation and reporting capabilities. New features include more customisable dashboards, improved data connectors, and enhanced AI-powered analytics. These updates make it easier for users to create insightful reports and share them with stakeholders.

Power Virtual Agents received new capabilities for building more sophisticated chatbots, including enhanced natural language understanding and integration with other Power Platform components. These updates enable users to create more interactive and helpful virtual agents for customer service and internal support use cases.

AI Builder, part of the Power Platform, received updates that make it more accessible and powerful for end users. New pre-built models and templates allow users to automate processes and gain insights without needing extensive AI or coding expertise. AI Builder now includes additional use-case scenarios and enhanced predictive capabilities, enabling users to create even more versatile applications.

Plan designer in Power Apps provides makers a new way to build complex solutions. Makers, supported by Copilot, can define the business problem and then step through and review proposed roles and requirements, working alongside Copilot to help ensure it reflects the true business problem. Copilot in Power Apps will iteratively build a solution architecture from apps, pages, automations, and agents as possible assets. This iterative and outcome focused development cycle will happen within single view in Power Apps Studio but can enhance the way solutions are built across the breadth of low code. Makers will be able to jump from the plan designer view into app generation, directly accelerating low-code development while remaining focused on user requirements. In public preview.

The Updated Power Platform Admin Center experience, allows IT admins to have an intelligent control plane to gain greater visibility, act on personalised recommendations, and leverage comprehensive controls to govern and secure Microsoft Power Platform at enterprise scale. The newly updated experience will include pages to help users manage low-code assets and explore resources, view and help with agent adoption, manage capacity and licenses, and monitor reliability and optimise latency. The updated security page will allow IT admins to gain visibility, get recommendations and utilise the controls needed to improve their security posture. Features now in public preview and GA.

7. Windows Updates

Microsoft’s announcements regarding Windows are set to benefit both individual and enterprise users.

Windows 11 updates focused on enhancing user experience and productivity. The new features include improved virtual desktops, a more integrated Microsoft Teams experience, and updates to the Windows Store, making it easier for users to find and install apps. Additionally, Windows 11 now offers better support for touch and pen input, enhancing the overall usability on a wider range of devices.

Windows Autopilot received updates that streamline the deployment and management of Windows devices. New features include enhanced provisioning capabilities and integrations with Microsoft Endpoint Manager, making it easier for IT administrators to manage devices at scale.

Windows 365 Link: Windows 365 Link is a new feature that allows users to seamlessly connect their Windows 365 Cloud PC with their physical PC. This integration provides a unified experience, enabling users to access their cloud-based applications and data from any device, enhancing flexibility and productivity.

Windows 365 Frontline Shared delivers the same secure and high-fidelity Windows experience in a cost-effective way for a single endpoint to be used by multiple people during their workday. It is designed for employees who need to use Windows 365 occasionally as part of their job rather than working full-time on a Cloud PC.

Windows in mixed reality brings the full capabilities of Windows 11 to the Meta Quest headset. Access to your local Windows PC or Windows 365 Cloud PC from a Quest headset is seamless, and it takes only seconds to connect to a private, high-quality, multiple-monitor workstation.

Intelligent search in Windows uses natural language to access an integrated semantic index and the Microsoft Graph to easily find content across M365 apps, OneDrive for Business, and local PC files, extensible to the Windows 365 Cloud PC.

8. Licensing

Microsoft introduced more flexible licensing options, allowing businesses to better tailor their software investments to their specific needs. These options include new subscription models and pay-as-you-go plans, providing greater flexibility and cost control. Updates to Microsoft 365 licensing were also announced, offering more granular options to suit different organisational requirements.

The evolution of Microsoft’s enterprise commerce strategy will position the Microsoft Customer Agreement for enterprise (MCA-E) as the recommended option for enterprise customers, while CSP or MCA-E is recommended for SMC customer.

To provide payment flexibility, a new monthly billing plan for annual subscriptions of Microsoft 365 Copilot and related services will be introduced on the 1^st December 2024.

Conclusion

Microsoft Ignite has been packed with significant updates and announcements that promise to enhance productivity, security, and innovation for users worldwide. By continuing to invest in cutting-edge technologies and user-centric solutions, Microsoft is empowering customers to achieve more in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Email us at [email protected] or speak to your Bytes Account Manager today to explore how these new features can benefit your business and personal productivity.

Next steps

Watch Microsoft Ignite sessions live and on demand and browse the session catalogue to explore all the available learning opportunities: https://ignite.microsoft.com/.

See the full set of announcements. Review the Microsoft Ignite Book of News to see all the news items Microsoft have announced at Ignite.

Bytes have various workshops, assessments and funding options to support you on your Microsoft journey. As a Solutions Partner for Microsoft Cloud - the highest certification in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program - we're in the best position to help you! Email [email protected] today.

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