Microsoft has announced its best Surface lineup ever, with five new products coming this holiday, in addition to two new dual-screen devices – Surface Neo and Surface Duo, coming in Holiday 2020.
The company is also bringing more performance and new designs to its most popular product lines with the new Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7 and Surface Pro X, all available for pre-order today in selected markets.
Surface Laptop 3 delivers style and speed, now with a choice of a 13.5” or 15” display and new colors and finishes. Surface Pro remains one of the most versatile devices you can buy, whether you choose the new and improved Surface Pro 7 or the always-connected Surface Pro X – a bold new take on the iconic 2-in-1 device. Designed for comfort and rich sound with intuitive touch controls, Surface Earbuds are also the perfect complement to your Surface.
Microsoft also shared its vision to bring the productivity of Surface to even smaller and more mobile form factors with Surface Neo and Surface Duo, its new dual-screen devices.
For more information, please visit the Official Windows Blog post.
With these newly announced devices comes the opportunity to transform more individuals, and organisations as whole. Below are some examples of companies across Europe who are using existing Surface products to help their transformation while enabling their employees to do their best work:
NHS
From consultants right through to junior doctors, medical professionals in the UK are building Surface into their daily ward rounds; encouraging a fully-connected, agile communications environment. This has also driven existing infrastructure improvements to more closely match the capabilities that Surface unlocks.
“We’ve had a complete infrastructure change to support Surface,” Andre de Araujo, Head of ICT at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust explains, “For instance, when the consultants found they wanted to use Surface in the wards, we had to make sure there was Wi-Fi coverage that would be applicable to cover where they were going. So about two years ago there was a big drive at the Trust to make sure there’s Wi-Fi at all sites, in all receptions and in all key areas. It’s a standard now. Any new building we get, or any new site we put – there’s Wi-Fi. And all the Wi-Fi is automated on the Surfaces, so our users don’t have to connect to it, they just go into a building and it automatically connects itself.”
Surface devices are also becoming the default endpoint for both desk work and meetings; either on Trust premises or at home. The wide rollout across some Trusts has proved an endeavor which has kickstarted the mobile working ethic. Andre de Araujo explains, “Being mobile workers, [staff] can now go anywhere on-site, or off-site completely, and just take the device with them and hook up to either the clinical information system or whatever systems they need – instantly – without having to print off notes, write them on paper, then come back and capture information, updating that separately… they can just do it, straight away.”
The remote meeting advantages of Surface and Teams have also enhanced Trust staff collaboration, with in-person conferences – and the travel time and calendar admin it took to organise them – vastly reduced with Surface technology in so many hands.
Norwegian Air Shuttle
There was a time, not too long ago, when pilots around the world carried flight bags with them for each flight. Filled with documents such as operating manuals, navigational charts, weather information and more, each bag could easily weigh more than 80kg – around the same as two fully-grown German Shepherds. Thankfully for pilots, times have changed.
Now, Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs) in the form of tablet devices have replaced the vast antiquated stacks of paper. Lighter, smaller, easily updatable and more environmentally friendly, the reduced weight over long haul flights also adds up to enormous fuel savings, and improved environmental impact.
One Airline that has embraced transformation is Norwegian Air Shuttle. Based in Oslo, the airline is Europe’s principle low-cost carrier and the largest airline in Scandinavia. As a global airline, Norwegian requires uninterrupted communications between these EFB devices and airports in countries that have varying telecommunications standards. When it needed to update its EFB devices with one best-suited to changeable cockpit environments and telecommunication needs, the airline turned to the Surface Pro with LTE Advanced.
BMW Group
The BMW Group is more than a manufacturer of premium automobiles and motorcycles and provider of mobility services. Since its founding in 1916 in Munich, still its worldwide headquarters, the BMW Group has focused on the consumer’s driving experience. It also has high standards for the experience of its 135,000 global employees.
Workers are supported with a “choose your own device” strategy, offering them Microsoft Surface, HP, or Apple devices to achieve a paperless office. Several specialized teams use devices from the Surface family. One sales team prefers lightweight, mobile-first Surface devices like Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, using a number of the recently deployed 3,750 units to outfit their team.
Oliver Oberthuer, Munich-based Training Manager isn’t surprised that design teams have so completely embraced Surface Hub and Surface Pen. People naturally think in pictures, he explains. With the company’s DEON visual collaboration platform on large-screen Surface Hub devices, teams partner with each other from numerous disparate locations, writing on the screen and attaching virtual notes to interact with collaborators. “We use Surface Pen a lot. Our people use a mix of new technology and deeply seated human ways of communicating in real time using scribbles, sticky notes, PowerPoint, Excel, and the Microsoft Edge browser. And the first year we used DEON on the Surface Hubs in Munich, the people were absolutely blown away.”
