I had the opportunity to attend the Tech Summit last week and get a pulse on where Microsoft is going with their Modern Workplace vision. It was a great place to catch up with my peers, learn about workload roadmaps, and escape a winter blizzard in Boston. As a technologist, I always have a lens on how this applies to the everyday users, and I felt there were three key takeaways from this summit:
- Security in Microsoft365 and how AI is helping
- Modern workplace tools are for real now
- Yammer is getting some more love
Security in Office 365 has always interested me, and it was really cool to see that Azure AD is really a leader in this Identity Management space. There are more than 270k active applications in the AAD App Directory, and more than a 1B authentications every day. This volume of authentication data puts Microsoft in a great position to identify anomalies and protect users from malicious attacks. One feature that we use at Netwoven, and I recommend to all my clients, is Sign-in Risk Policies. This allows Microsoft AI to do the leg work in detecting fake sign-ins, and apply my IT policies automatically (like force a password reset).
Modern workplace tools have really matured in the last year and a half since the GA of Microsoft Teams. Netwoven and Microsoft have been walking users through a day in the life of Modern Collaboration using these tools, whether through MTC sessions, or Netwoven workshops. So its really nice to see that Teams is starting to gain traction and filling business gaps like knowledge retention. If you haven’t checked it out yet, give it a shot, 200k organizations are already using Teams.
Yammer is getting some more love this year. Its marketing budget has doubled this year, and Microsoft is reporting a growth of 64% in engagements per Yammer Network YoY. There is now a clearer roadmap on integrations to Office365, including the long awaited integration with the Audit log and cool new SharePoint webparts. The tighter Yammer becomes with the rest of the O365 workloads, the easier it is to tell the story to people about their Inner and Outer Loops. Another take away from Yammer is how Microsoft is starting to promote Use Cases where Yammer excels in. BRK2006 highlighted three scenarios where Yammer excels in: People connecting based on Role in the Organization, about a Topic as part of a Community, and about a goal as part of an Initiative. These are all outer loop scenarios that customers have found success in using Yammer.
If you were unable to attend the summit, the slides can be found on their website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/techsummit/san-francisco
