Microsoft announced a slew of new products and services spanning security, productivity, intelligence and cloud, at its annual Ignite conference.
In the wake of increased threat landscape, the IT major introduced security enhancements across its products, including Windows 10, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility plus Security.
Windows Defender Application Guard is one among the newly announced security offerings. Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows Insiders customers can use it in the coming months.
It is powered by virtualization-based security technology and uses isolated containers built directly into the hardware to prevent malicious code from moving across employee devices and the corporate network.
Another security offering is Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP) and Office 365 ATP. These are designed to help IT pros to investigate and respond to security threats across Windows 10 and Office 365 more quickly and efficiently.
Further, Microsoft will extend Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.
Other enhancements include dynamic delivery, which enables users to receive email immediately with a placeholder attachment while the actual attachment undergoes scanning. Also announced is URL detonation, which analyzes links in real time to identify unknown malicious URLs.
Other security offerings announced include;
Office 365 Threat Intelligence that provides alerts and information on the origination of specific attacks, integrates with existing security incident event management (SIEM) systems, and enables customers to deploy dynamic policies based on the nature of the threat.
Outlook for iOS and Android is now fully powered by the Microsoft Cloud for Office 365 commercial users, supporting Exchange Online mailboxes natively so that no mailbox data is cached outside Office 365.
Enterprise Mobility + Security E5, a new offer that expands security to help the transition to mobility and cloud, will be available starting Oct. 1, 2016. The suite includes the new Microsoft Azure Information Protection service to help organizations classify, label and protect sensitive data.
Secure Productive Enterprise, which offers the latest and most advanced security and productivity capabilities across Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise and Enterprise Mobility + Security.
Intelligence
Microsoft announced new artificial intelligence capabilities as well. It announced new cloud-powered intelligent capabilities to Office 365 with enhancements in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Sway and Maps.
Office 365 is also enhanced with MyAnalytics (formerly Delve Analytics), soon-to-be-released Dynamics 365 for Sales for improved team work among professionals.
At the event, Microsoft AI customers such as Lowe’s, Uber showcased how they are using Cortana Intelligence and Microsoft Cognitive Services in different industry verticals. .
Microsoft has deployed a new AI-enabled virtual agent across all of its U.S. support centers to improve customer experience.The company also announced that it has signed a global, multiyear agreement with Renault-Nissan Alliance to advance connected driving experiences worldwide.
For the cloud space, the company announced Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 to offer security and Azure-inspired innovation for infrastructure and cloud applications. System Center 2016 is designed to offer a simplified management solution across the datacenter and the cloud for Windows Server 2016 software-defined datacenter features.
Apart from those, Microsoft also announced new free training and educational resources program to empower IT professionals.
To make them fit for the digital era, the company announced a Microsoft Technical Community, a new online community that brings together IT professionals, MVPs and Microsoft subject-matter experts to exchange ideas, build connections and share best practices about Microsoft products and solutions.
Further, the company announced that Microsoft IT Pro Career Center and Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials are now available in 25 languages and 40 markets globally.
The Career Center provides free expert advice on cloud career paths, skills and curriculum while IT Pro Cloud Essentials provides a free annual subscription to cloud services, priority support and certification.
In addition, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced that Adobe is bringing its Marketing Cloud to Microsoft Azure and making it the preferred digital marketing solution for Dynamics 365 Enterprise.
“Core to our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet is democratizing AI for every person and organization to help solve society’s most pressing challenges,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “To do this, we’re infusing intelligence into everything we deliver — from the agent to applications, services and infrastructure.”
