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MICROSOFT IGNITE 2024

BOOK OF NEWS

November 19 - 21, 2024

Introduction

Foreword by Frank X. Shaw

Welcome to Microsoft Ignite, our annual event that spotlights the updates and creations that enable customers, partners and developers to unleash the full potential of Microsoft’s technology and change the way people and organizations approach work.

This year’s Microsoft Ignite features an array of new products and key updates that touch on the continued growth of Microsoft Copilot, new capabilities in the Copilot + AI stack, exciting new tools for developers and new devices designed with powerful AI technology in mind.

As we gather for Microsoft Ignite this year, 200,000 people have registered to join us, with more than 14,000 attendees at our in-person events in Chicago. Attendees can choose from more than 800 sessions, demos and expert-led labs from Microsoft and our partners. Most of the Ignite content will be available on demand for those who can’t attend the live event.

The Book of News is your guide to our announcements, crafted to streamline your access to the most current updates and furnish you with essential insights into the topics that are most interesting to you. At the core of our latest innovations is our commitment to security. Since launching our Secure Future Initiative (SFI) one year ago, we have made security the No. 1 job of every employee at Microsoft, dedicated 34,000 engineers to this focus and, at Ignite, we will announce innovations that are rooted in our SFI principles: secure by design, secure by default and secure operations.

As always, your feedback is invaluable to us. We welcome your input on how we can elevate our efforts. It’s crucial for us to ensure you receive the information and context you seek from this event.

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What is the Book of News?

The Microsoft Ignite Book of News is your guide to key news items that we are announcing at Microsoft Ignite. The interactive Table of Contents gives you the option to select the items you are interested in, and the translation capabilities make the Book of News more accessible globally. (Just click the Translate button below the Table of Contents to enable translations.)

We pulled together a folder of imagery related to a few of the news items. Please take a look at the imagery here. To watch keynotes and sessions related to news items, we have links below the news to get you quick access to upcoming sessions and on-demand videos.

We hope the Book of News provides all the information, executive insight and context you need. If you have any questions or feedback regarding content in the Book of News, please email [email protected].

If you are interested in speaking with an industry analyst about news announcements at Microsoft Ignite or Microsoft’s broader strategy and product offerings, please contact [email protected]

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1. AI at Work 1.1. Agents

1.1.1. Out-of-the-box agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot take on specialized roles

New out-of-the-box, purpose-built agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot will take on unique roles, working alongside or on behalf of a team or organization to handle simple, mundane tasks as well as complex, multi-step business processes. These agents include:

Agents in SharePoint: Agents in SharePoint empower employees to gain insights faster and make informed decisions grounded on specific SharePoint content. Users can easily create their own agents, tailored to specific SharePoint files, folders or sites that support common business processes. These agents can be edited to have a personalized name and certain behaviors, and can be shared across emails, meetings and chats, with users being able to ask the agents questions and getting real-time responses. Agents in SharePoint follow existing SharePoint user permissions and sensitivity labels to help prevent the oversharing of sensitive information. These new agents in SharePoint are now generally available.

Employee Self-Service Agent: The Employee Self-Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat (BizChat) will expedite answers for the most common workplace policy-related questions and will take action on key HR and IT related-tasks. From BizChat, users can retrieve benefits and payroll information, start a leave of absence, request a new laptop with IT and even get assistance for Microsoft 365 products and services, all in one place. This agent is in private preview.

Facilitator agent: The Facilitator agent works within Teams meetings and chats for more effective collaboration. In meetings, the Facilitator takes real-time notes, allowing everyone to co-author and collaborate seamlessly. In chats, the Facilitator shares a summary of important information as the conversation happens. This agent is in preview.

Interpreter agent: The Interpreter agent enables real-time interpretation in Teams meetings in up to nine languages so each participant can speak and listen in the language of their choice. Meeting participants can also have the Interpreter simulate their personal voice for a more inclusive experience. This agent will be in preview early next year.

Project Manager agent: The Project Manager agent will automate project management in Planner, handling everything from plan creation to executing tasks. The Project Manager agent can automatically create a new plan from scratch or use a pre-configured template. The Project Manager agent then oversees the entire project, including the assignment of tasks, progress tracking, reminders and notifications and status reporting. It can also complete tasks, including content creation. This agent is in preview.

Additional resources:

1.1.2. Copilot Studio introduces autonomous agentic capabilities, agent library

Several key updates for Microsoft Copilot Studio, now in preview, are designed to help users in their agent creations and include:

  • Autonomous agentic capabilities: Makers can build an agent that can take desired actions on their behalf, without having to prompt the agent each time. Autonomous agents will 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: Copilot Studio will give users a head start with agents, providing templates for commonly used agent scenarios. Users will be able to customize agents as needed within Copilot Studio. Examples of common scenarios for agents include leave management, sales order and deal acceleration agents.

Additional resources:

1.1.3. Copilot Studio and Azure AI announce new tools to build agents

Several key updates for Microsoft Copilot Studio will give makers and developers greater flexibility to build and customize agents. These updates include:

Microsoft 365 Agents SDK: With the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK, developers will be able to build enterprise-grade, scalable and multi-channel agents with code using the SDK. These agents will operate across a variety of channels including Microsoft Copilot, Teams, the web and more. Additionally, it will enable developers to extend agents built with the SDK by connecting them with Copilot Studio agents, ensuring continuity from Copilot Studio to code-first scenarios. The SDK will be able to leverage AI services from Azure AI Foundry, Semantic Kernel or other vendors.

The Microsoft 365 Agents SDK is now available in preview with an initial set of capabilities and more features will be added soon.

Azure AI Foundry integrations: These integrations will bring Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry closer together, prioritizing some of the top feature requests, including adding custom search indices as a knowledge source via Azure AI Search and bring-your-own- model via the Azure AI model catalog.

With these integrations, agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio will be able to access the Azure catalog of 1,800+ AI models, enabling makers to call industry-specific fine-tuned models, as well as allow Azure AI Search support for large enterprises needing it. Bring-your-own-knowledge is in preview and bring-your-own-model is in private preview.

Additional resources:

1.1.4. Copilot Studio enhances platform with new updates

Enhancements to Copilot Studio will include image upload, the ability to build voice-enabled agents and advanced knowledge tuning.

Copilot Studio will enable image upload: Users will be able to upload images to Copilot, have the agents analyze the image and engage in Q&A. Powered by the GPT-4o foundation model, image upload will add rich context to data, whether it’s in customer service, sales or elsewhere. Users will save time as they will no longer have to manually translate data from images and will have their data in one place. This feature is in preview.

Build voice-enabled agents in Copilot Studio: Organizations will be able to embed voice experiences in apps and websites to reach customers. By building and deploying voice-enabled agents, organizations will be able to provide a more immediate response to employee and customer needs. This feature is in private preview.

Advanced knowledge tuning in Copilot Studio: Makers will be able to resolve unanswered questions by matching specific instructions to fix the knowledge gap at the root of each unanswered question. Makers can continuously add new sources of knowledge, including documents and databases to improve answer rates and evolve the agent over time. This feature is in preview.

Additional resources:

1.2. Microsoft 365 Copilot

1.2.1. Easily delegate repetitive tasks with Microsoft 365 Copilot Actions

With Microsoft 365 Copilot Actions, anyone can easily delegate tasks to Copilot – whether asking for status updates or agenda items from team members, compiling weekly reports or scheduling a daily email summarizing important emails and chats. These customizable prompt templates can be automated, used on demand or triggered by specific events to gather information and present it in specified formats, such as emails or Word documents. Copilot Actions is in private preview.

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1.2.2. Analyze screen-shared content with Copilot in Teams

Users will be able to maximize their meetings with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams’ new ability to analyze content presented in Teams for valuable insights. Copilot’s ability to reason over any content shared on screen will help ensure that no meeting details are overlooked. Copilot already analyzes spoken words and chat messages, and the addition of onscreen content will enhance the user experience with a 360-degree view of meetings. Users will be able to ask Copilot to summarize screenshared content, (i.e., “Which products had the highest sales?”), consolidate insights across both the conversation and presentation (i.e., “What was the feedback per slide?”) and draft new content based on the entire meeting (i.e., “Rewrite the spreadsheet as a table with only the rows that are On Track”). This capability will be in preview in early 2025.

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1.2.3. Copilot in Teams will summarize content of files shared in Teams chat

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft Teams users will be able to get a quick summary of a file shared with them in a Teams chat without leaving their flow of work. When a file is shared in a chat, users aren’t always able to read through it and grasp key ideas in real time. With new file summaries in 1:1 and group chats in Teams, Copilot in Teams will be able to quickly summarize the content so the user can understand the main points without opening the file. This feature respects the file’s security policies so only users with access to the file receive a summary, which will carry the same sensitivity label as the original file. Copilot file summaries will be available in preview in early 2025 with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams for both mobile and desktop clients.

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1.2.4. Copilot features in PowerPoint to enable faster creation and more inclusivity

New Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint features will help users create better presentations in just minutes that are ready to share with global colleagues. These updates will include:

  • Narrative Builder based on a file: When starting from a template with a prompt and a referenced file, Copilot’s Narrative Builder will soon also weave the insights from a document into a compelling narrative, with branded designs from templates, speaker notes and built-in transitions and animations. This will give users a high-quality first draft of slides that are informative and closer to presentation ready. This feature will be generally available with Copilot in PowerPoint beginning in January.
  • Presentation translation: Translation can be time-consuming and costly, even for a quick version for internal training or team meetings. Copilot will translate an entire PowerPoint into one of 40 languages, all while keeping the overall design of each slide. It will save time and money and will help promote inclusivity. This feature will be generally available with Copilot in PowerPoint on the web beginning in December and for desktop and Mac in January 2025.
  • Organization image support: Copilot will use images stored in asset libraries, including SharePoint Organization Asset Library and now Templafy. Copilot will allow users to create presentations with their organization’s images seamlessly integrated. This saves time and helps ensure presentations are on brand. This feature will be generally available with Microsoft 365 Copilot in the first quarter of 2025.

Additional resources:

1.2.5. Create a task-tailored spreadsheet template with Copilot in Excel

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel’s new start experience will enable people of all skill levels to create a spreadsheet tailored for their tasks. Whether creating a project budget, inventory tracker or sales report, starting from scratch to create a spreadsheet that meets specific needs can be daunting and time consuming. People will be able to tell Copilot what they want to create, and Copilot will suggest and refine a template with headers, formulas and visuals getting them off to a great start. This feature will be generally available by the end of the year with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel.

Additional resources:

1.2.6. Updates to Copilot in Outlook will make meeting management easier

Updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook will simplify scheduling meetings and keeping attendees on task. Users will be able to ask Copilot to schedule focus time or 1:1s and Copilot will find the best available time for both people. It will even help users draft an agenda for a meeting by prompting it with details about the meeting goals – for example, “The goal of this meeting is to review the next project and introduce a team member.” Copilot will then create an agenda to help the meeting stay on track. These updates will be available by the end of November with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook.

Additional resources:

1.2.7. Organize multimodal notes in OneNote with Copilot

Copilot in OneNote will be able to organize ideas pulled from a combination of typed, handwritten and voice notes on pages within a single section. Users will be able to ask Copilot to organize their current section, including any specifics they have – such as the number of groups and type of groups. Copilot will provide a preview of the organization it would apply. Users will then be able to continue to the conversation with Copilot to refine the structure and click apply to update their section. This update is in preview.

Additional resources:

1.2.8. New features in Copilot Pages will aid in content creation

Copilot Pages will have new features to enhance content creation. Copilot Pages is a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot when signed in with a Microsoft Entra account. With Pages, users can turn insightful Copilot responses into something durable with a side-by-side Page that can be edited and shared with colleagues to collaborate.

New features, generally available in early 2025, include:

  • Rich artifacts: In addition to text, Pages will support more content types, including code, interactive charts, tables, diagrams and math from enterprise or web data. By adding this rich content to Pages, users will be able to further edit and refine with Copilot, as well as share for collaborative work.
  • Multi-Page support: Users will have the flexibility to add content to Copilot Pages in a variety of ways. They will be able to create multiple new Pages in a single chat session or add content from multiple chat sessions to a single Page. To continue building on a topic, users add to Pages created in previous Copilot conversations.
  • Ground on Page content: Copilot chat prompts will be grounded on the Page content as the page is updated, making subsequent Copilot responses more relevant.
  • Pages available on mobile: Users will be able to continue working with Copilot and colleagues while on the go, with the ability to view, edit and share Pages on mobile.

Additional resources:

1.2.9. Microsoft Places general availability brings location understanding to Teams and Outlook

Microsoft Places, now generally available, brings AI-powered location understanding to Teams and Outlook with Microsoft 365 Copilot to help employees optimize in-office days to drive more in-person connections. Admins benefit from understanding hybrid work patterns and what spaces are being used, helping them make more informed decisions about their workplace. Notable features include:

  • Recommended in-office day with Copilot: Copilot provides a recommendation of when to go into the office based on scheduled in-person meetings, team guidance and collaborators’ planned attendance from the unified calendar’s Places card.
  • Managed booking with Copilot: Copilot will manage room booking for a single or recurring meeting through any changes, updates and conflicts, making sure meetings will always have the right space booked for the meeting and attendees.
  • Workplace presence: This feature allows employees to update their location to “office” or to a specific office location when in office to help coordinate in-person meetings and connections. With users’ permission, employees can see where coworkers are working and see who is nearby to maximize in-person connections.
  • Places finder: This updated room and individual desk booking experience has the additional value of images of the space, building floorplans and information about the technology available to filter based on need.
  • Space analytics: This allows admins to analyze intended versus actual occupancy and utilization data across their workplace to make more effective space decisions.

Additional resources:

1.2.10. Copilot will help admins understand Microsoft 365 usage and trends

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft 365 Administration Centers (Copilot in MAC) will help transform the IT admin experience by leveraging AI to reduce and optimize routine tasks, generate insights that enable better decision-making and help IT professionals understand and maximize the value of their Microsoft 365 subscriptions, including Microsoft 365 Copilot.

These features will be available in the Microsoft 365 admin center, Teams admin center and SharePoint admin center, giving admins and adoption specialists easy access to real-time, contextual information across all their key surfaces. Copilot in MAC will offer personalized summaries of key trends and insights across an admin’s assigned areas and will summarize message center posts across all their apps and services so they never miss a key update. In Teams, Copilot in MAC will summarize meeting reports and help troubleshoot call quality or other issues for specific users, all using Copilot’s natural language interface. Copilot in MAC is part of the Copilot Control System, which will offer data protection, management controls and reporting to enable IT to confidently adopt and measure the business value of Copilot and agents. Copilot in MAC is now in private preview and will be generally available early next year.

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1.2.11. Measure AI impact with Copilot Analytics

New Copilot Analytics will provide business impact measurement capabilities ranging from out-of-the-box experiences for leaders to customizable reporting for deeper analysis. Copilot Analytics is part of the Copilot Control System, which will offer data protection, management controls and reporting to enable IT to confidently adopt and measure the business value of Copilot and agents.

Copilot Analytics will include:

  • Copilot dashboard: The Copilot dashboard, generally available, is an out-of-the-box dashboard covering Copilot readiness, adoption, impact and learning categories.
  • Microsoft 365 admin center reporting: Copilot reporting tools for IT pros surfacing adoption and usage trends, with related suggested actions is now generally available.
  • Viva Insights: A comprehensive measurement toolset across productivity and business outcomes. Viva Insights comes with a variety of customizable report templates including the new Copilot Business Impact Report, now in preview, for analyzing Copilot usage against business KPIs across sales, finance, marketing and more. Viva Insights will be included in Microsoft 365 Copilot at no additional charge as part of the new Copilot Analytics starting early 2025. 

Additional resources: 

1.2.12. Copilot Prompt Gallery gains new features to boost AI adoption

The Copilot Prompt Gallery (formerly known as Copilot Lab) has new features designed to boost AI adoption. Copilot Prompt Gallery will enable AI users at work to share their prompting success and find inspiration from others. New innovations will include:

  • Agent prompt support: Users can discover prompts for agents provided by their organization that are tailored to specific roles, functions and tasks. Later this year, they will be able to save and share these prompts to inspire others on the team. This feature is now generally available in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  • Trending prompt lists: New and trending prompt lists will keep users updated on the latest and most popular prompts within their organization. Users will be able to like prompts to influence prompt leaderboards. This feature will be generally available early next year in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Additional resources:

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2. AI Opportunities 2.1. Collaboration

2.1.1. C3 AI and Microsoft forge strategic alliance to accelerate enterprise AI adoption

C3 AI, the enterprise AI application software company, and Microsoft announced a new strategic alliance to accelerate the adoption of enterprise AI. The agreement marks a significant milestone in C3 AI and Microsoft’s existing partnership, further combining C3 AI’s enterprise AI-native application software, including C3 Generative AI, with Microsoft Azure’s robust and expansive ecosystem to the benefit of enterprises globally.

This strategic alliance aims to accelerate the adoption of enterprise AI, helping customers with broadly available enterprise AI application software to achieve rapid time-to-value in supply chain optimization, production optimization, predictive maintenance, government efficiency, environmental, social and governance (ESG) goal attainment and energy management.

This agreement positions Microsoft as the preferred cloud provider for C3 AI offerings, while establishing C3 AI as a preferred AI application software provider on Microsoft Azure. The alliance will focus on product innovation and integration and joint marketing, sales, and customer support to accelerate the cross-industry adoption of enterprise AI and Azure to the benefit of customers, stakeholders and the environment.

Since first entering a strategic alliance in 2018, C3 AI and Microsoft have partnered to deliver enterprise AI solutions at-scale to some of the world’s largest organizations.

The new agreement will make C3 AI’s full suite of enterprise AI application software readily available on the Microsoft Commercial Cloud portal, enhancing customer access.

Additional resources:

2.2 Investment in AI

2.2.1. New study reveals the ROI of generative AI, highlights 5 trends to watch

To help guide organizations on their AI transformation journey, Microsoft recently commissioned a new study through International Data Corporation (IDC), The Business Opportunity of AI. IDC’s findings show that when organizations truly commit to and invest in AI, the return on investment (ROI) potential grows significantly: The study found that the top leaders using generative AI (GenAI) are realizing a 10x return on their investment.

While companies today are largely implementing out-of-the-box GenAI solutions and seeing significant ROI, more than half of those surveyed expect to build custom industry and line-of-business applications in the next 24 months – demonstrating that today’s ROI is quickly becoming tomorrow’s competitive edge.

Other key findings from the study include:

  • GenAI usage jumped from 55% in 2023 to 75% in 2024.
  • For every $1 a company invests in generative AI, the ROI is $3.70.
  • On average, AI deployments are taking less than 8 months and organizations are realizing value within 13 months.
  • Within 24 months, most organizations plan to expand beyond pre-built AI solutions to advanced AI workloads that are customized or custom-built.
  • The ROI of generative AI is highest in Financial Services, followed by Media & Telco, Mobility, Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods, Energy, Manufacturing, Healthcare and Education.
  • 43% say productivity use cases have provided the greatest ROI.
  • The primary way in which organizations are monetizing AI today is through productivity use cases. In the next 24 months, a greater focus will be placed on functional and industry use cases.
  • The top barrier when implementing AI is lack of both technical and day-to-day AI skills.

Additional resources:

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3. Azure 3.1. AI

3.1.1. Azure AI Foundry helps organizations design, customize and manage AI apps

Azure AI Foundry is where organizations design, customize and manage the next generation of AI apps and agents at scale. Azure AI Foundry brings together existing Azure AI models, tooling and safety and monitoring solutions with new capabilities to help organizations design, customize and manage their AI solutions. It is integrated with popular developer tools like GitHub, Visual Studio and Copilot Studio. Foundry is also accessible via an SDK and a portal experience to help businesses efficiently and cost-effectively design and scale their AI applications while empowering IT pros to manage AI safety, reliability and performance. New capabilities will include:

  • Azure AI Foundry SDK, now in preview, will provide a unified toolchain for customizing, testing, deploying and managing AI apps and agents with enterprise-grade control and customization. The integrated library of models and tools and simplified coding experience will improve AI development productivity while enabling organizations to responsibly scale their apps. Developers will be able to choose from 25 prebuilt app templates, easily integrate Azure AI into their apps and develop faster with a simplified coding experience they can access from familiar tools like GitHub, Visual Studio and Copilot Studio.
  • Azure AI Foundry portal (formerly Azure AI Studio), now in preview, is a comprehensive visual user interface that will help developers discover and evaluate AI models, services and tools. With a new management center that brings essential subscription information and controls into a centralized experience, the portal will also enable cross-functional teams to manage and optimize AI apps at scale, including resource utilization across multiple hubs and subscriptions, access privileges and connected resources.
  • Azure AI Agent Service, coming next month in preview, will enable professional developers to orchestrate, deploy and scale enterprise-ready agents to automate business processes. With features like bring your own storage (BYOS) and private networking, it will ensure data privacy and compliance to help organizations protect their sensitive data.

Additional resources:

3.1.2. New collaborations to accelerate end-to-end model customization

Azure collaboration with Weights & Biases (W&B), Gretel, Scale AI and Statsig will help developers accelerate end-to-end AI model customization in Azure AI – from data preparation and generation to training, evaluation and experimentation with fine-tuned models.

Azure integration with Weights & Biases will enable a comprehensive suite of tools for tracking, evaluating and optimizing a diverse range of models in Azure OpenAI Service – from GPT-4 to GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini – empowering organizations to build AI apps that are not just powerful but also tailored to their business needs. Azure OpenAI Service integration with Weights & Biases allows developers to automatically track various aspects of fine-tuning jobs, as well as compare model versions and evaluate large language model-powered apps.

The collaboration with Gretel and Scale AI aim to help developers remove data bottlenecks and make data AI-ready for training. By integrating Gretel with Azure OpenAI Service, customers will be able to easily fine-tune AI models and achieve better performance in domain-specific use cases. Scale AI, coupled with Azure AI, will help developers with expert feedback, data preparation and support for fine-tuning and training models. The Statsig collaboration will enable customers to dynamically configure AI apps and run powerful experiments to optimize their Azure AI models and apps in production.

Additional resources:

3.1.3. Azure AI updates assist in governance, risk and compliance workflows

Updates to Azure AI will assist customers with governance, risk and compliance workflows. These updates include:

  • AI reports will help organizations improve cross-functional observability, collaboration and governance when developing and deploying generative AI (GenAI) apps and fine-tuned models. The Azure AI Foundry SDK and Azure AI Foundry portal will make it easier for organizations to create impact assessments for their AI apps by helping developers assemble key project details, such as model cards, model versions, content safety filter configurations and evaluation metrics, into a unified AI report. These reports can be exported to PDF or SPDX formats, helping development teams demonstrate production readiness within governance, risk and compliance (GRC) workflows and facilitate easier, ongoing audits of apps in production. This update will be in private preview next month.
  • Risk and safety evaluations for image content will help users assess the frequency and severity of harmful content in their app’s AI-generated outputs. Specifically, these evaluations will expand existing text-based evaluation capabilities in Azure AI to assess a broader set of interactions with GenAI, such as text inputs that yield image outputs, image and text inputs that yield text outputs, and images that contain text (i.e., memes) as inputs that yield text and/or image outputs. These evaluations will help organizations better understand potential risks and apply targeted mitigations, such as modifying multimodal content filters with Azure AI Content Safety, adjusting grounding data sources or updating their system message before deploying an app to production. This update will be in preview next month in the Azure Foundry portal and the Azure AI Foundry SDK.

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3.1.4. Resources within Azure Essentials to help customers adopt AI at scale

In July, Microsoft launched Azure Essentials to help customers improve the reliability, security and ongoing performance of their cloud and AI investments by providing a single place to access a comprehensive set of resources including tooling, skilling, guidance, reference architectures and best practices.

Two resources within Azure Essentials that will help customers successfully adopt AI are now generally available:

  • AI scenario within the Cloud Adoption Framework equips technical decision-makers with prescriptive guidance to help prepare organizations to deploy AI workloads in production. The Cloud Adoption Framework methodologies have been adapted to Responsible AI principles so customers can build an AI foundation that supports the design, governance and ongoing management of AI workloads. It helps users with everything from developing an adoption strategy to managing AI workloads in production.
  • AI workload within the Azure Well-Architected Framework supports architects in decision-making when designing their AI workloads. This new guidance allows AI architects to meet the functional and non-functional requirements for reliability, security, performance efficiency, operational excellence and cost optimization.

Azure Essentials makes it possible to adopt AI at scale while aligning to Trustworthy AI principles and provides organizations with a clear path to maximize the value of their AI investment.

Additional resources:

3.1.5. Azure AI model catalog adds partner models

The Azure AI model catalog is adding the latest AI models from leading innovators, enabling organizations to choose the right model for the right use case. Models from NTT DATA, (generally available) and Bria AI (in preview), help organizations bring generative AI capabilities to their apps, while industry-specific models from Bayer, Sight Machine, Rockwell, Saifr, Cerence and Paige.ai, in preview, will empower developers to pursue solutions specific to healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing and finance.

Additional resources:

3.1.6. Azure AI Search adds generative query engine and GitHub Models integration

Updates to Azure AI Search, in preview, will help developers deliver better AI apps with improved retrieval augmented generation (RAG) performance. Query rewriting, available in preview, and semantic ranker are now powered by new, upgraded language models that deliver better responses and improved app experiences. In addition, Azure AI Search will soon be integrated with GitHub Models, enabling developers to explore and build a RAG application using a free AI Search index, directly from GitHub marketplace.

Additional resources:

3.1.7. Azure AI Content Understanding to help developers build multimodal AI apps

Azure AI Content Understanding, a new AI service in preview, will help developers more easily, quickly and cost-effectively build and deploy multimodal AI apps. Content Understanding leverages generative AI to extract information from unstructured data, such as documents, images, videos and audio, into customizable structured outputs.

Azure AI Content Understanding offers pre-built templates, a streamlined workflow and opportunities to customize outputs for use cases, such as call center analytics, marketing automation and content search. By processing data from multiple modalities simultaneously, Content Understanding helps organizations lower the cost of building AI solutions without needing specialized AI skills, all while maintaining robust security and accuracy.

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3.1.8. Fine-tuning in Azure OpenAI Service will help developers more easily customize models for AI innovation

New fine-tuning options in Azure OpenAI Service will enable developers and data scientists to customize models for their business needs. This will include support for fine-tuning GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini on Provisioned and Global Standard deployments, in preview next month. Additionally, developers will be able to leverage an end-to-end distillation workflow using Evaluation, in preview, and Stored Completions, in preview next month, to fine-tune cost-effective models, like GPT-4o mini with outputs from advanced models. Multimodal fine-tuning for GPT-4o with vision is now generally available.

Additional resources:

3.2. Developer Tools

3.2.1. Azure Container Apps adds serverless GPUs and dynamic sessions

With the introduction of serverless GPUs, in preview, and the general availability of dynamic sessions in Azure Container Apps, AI app developers now have a streamlined way to instantly run AI-generated code securely and leverage the power of GPUs instantly with serverless elasticity for developing cutting-edge AI and machine learning workloads without configuring AI infrastructure.

  • Serverless GPUs: Serverless GPUs in Azure Container Apps, in preview, will enable AI app developers to seamlessly run their AI workloads on GPUs. By providing serverless scaling with optimized cold start, per-second billing and reduced operational overhead, Azure Container Apps Serverless GPUs will support easy real-time inferencing for custom AI models. This will accelerate the velocity of AI development teams by allowing them to focus more on their core AI code and less on managing infrastructure when using GPUs.
  • Dynamic sessions: Dynamic sessions in Azure Container Apps, now generally available, provide fast access to secure sandboxed environments, ideal for running code that requires strong isolation. Dynamic sessions can securely run large language model (LLM)-generated code at scale or extend/customize software as a service (SaaS) apps. Customers can mitigate risks, leverage serverless scale and reduce operational overhead in a highly cost-efficient manner. Dynamic sessions provide a Python code interpreter, pre-installed with popular libraries, for the most common code execution scenarios without the need to manage infrastructure or containers.

Additional resources:

3.3. Infrastructure

3.3.1. Azure expands adaptive cloud, introduces Azure Local infrastructure solution

Microsoft Azure is expanding and evolving its adaptive cloud approach to support global infrastructure spanning cloud and edge. This expansion allows for unified management and security, easy app deployment and common data foundation across hybrid, multicloud and edge environments. As part of this expansion Azure Local, a new, cloud-controlled, hybrid infrastructure platform enabled by Azure Arc, is now generally available. Azure Arc is a bridge that extends Azure platform’s services like Azure Local across hybrid, multicloud and edge locations.

Azure Local extends Azure services to customers’ distributed locations so customers can run mission-critical workloads, cloud-native apps and AI with flexibility and scalability. Partnerships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Dell, HP and Lenovo provide secure and pre-validated hardware integrated with cloud-based services. Azure Local supports various infrastructure form factors, from small industrial PCs to enterprise class server deployments, including disconnected scenarios for enhanced regulatory and compliance requirements.

The enhanced focus on the breadth of Azure’s global infrastructure ensures that customers have a wide range of choices that match their unique business needs, including Azure public cloud offerings in over 60 regions worldwide and third-party infrastructure enabled by Azure Arc. Azure Arc enhances central management and security with AI, allowing organizations to develop and scale apps rapidly and gather data insights across centralized and distributed environments.

Azure Local unifies Microsoft Azure’s distributed infrastructure offering, replacing the Azure Stack product family. At launch, existing Azure Stack HCI customers will automatically upgrade to Azure Local, which offers much broader capabilities than what they currently use today. Key features include customizable cloud-based operations and security, supporting both cloud-native and traditional apps with Azure Virtual Desktop integration. New customers can visit the Azure Local webpage for validated partner solutions.

From on-premises to edge and multicloud environments, Azure provides support for running resources and workloads wherever required. In addition to Azure Local, there are new features to customers on Windows Server versions 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025. At no additional cost, Windows Server Software Assurance or active subscription customers can access Azure management tools like Azure Update Manager, Azure Policy Guest Configuration, Disaster Recovery, Change Tracking and Inventory and more.

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3.3.2. Microsoft Purview integration, new regions available for Oracle Database@Azure

Customers will be able to unlock advanced security, data and AI capabilities in Oracle Database@Azure for their mission-critical Oracle workloads. New updates will include integrations with Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Fabric. Additionally, new available regions and networking enhancements will provide amplified capabilities and availability for enterprise workloads.

Microsoft Purview now supports Oracle Database@Azure to provide federated data governance and compliance capabilities, enabling organizations to manage, secure and track data across their Oracle workloads.

Additional resources:

 

3.3.3. Azure ND GB200 V6 VMs, powered by the NVIDIA Blackwell platform, will deliver leading AI performance

Microsoft Azure is announcing the preview of NVIDIA Blackwell GB200-powered AI systems. This is the beginning of bringing these systems online, co-validating and co-optimizing with NVIDIA and other AI innovators. Azure ND GB200 V6 will be a new AI optimized Virtual Machine (VM) series. The new VMs will be powered by NVIDIA GB200 Superchips offering a new standard for AI supercomputing performance and scale in the cloud, greatly accelerating the ability to train and inference on the most advanced AI models.

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3.3.4. Azure HBv5 virtual machines built for high performance, cost efficiency

Azure HBv5 virtual machines (HBv5 VMs) are built to deliver high-level performance and cost-efficiency for high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. Powered by custom Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) EPYC™ 9V64H processors, only available on Azure. HBv5 VMs will provide up to 8x higher performance compared to leading bare metal and cloud alternatives and perform up to 35x faster than legacy on-premises systems.

These performance gains are driven using high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and high performance Zen4 cores to create the most scalable AMD EPYC processor platform to date and the latest NVIDIA InfiniBand networking technologies.

HBv5 VMs are built for the most demanding HPC workloads, many of which are bound by the underlying infrastructure’s ability to move data fast enough to keep up with processing needs. To meet this challenge, Microsoft and AMD co-designed a platform from top to bottom to overcome data movement bottlenecks, including:

  • A CPU with HBM enabling instances to deliver 5x the performance of the most popular market alternatives using standard memory.
  • A server platform with 2x as many tightly interconnected CPUs compared to any AMD EPYC platform processor to date.
  • NVIDIA InfiniBand networking for every CPU to ensure customers can efficiently scale their workloads to hundreds of thousands of cores to meet the most demanding real-world modeling and simulation needs of commercial and research organizations.

Coming to preview in 2025, these advancements will result in HBv5 VMs improving HPC performance on many widely used apps, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD), weather modeling, automotive and aerospace simulation and energy research. Customers will be able to leverage this performance increase to gain research and design insights faster, help reduce costs and accelerate time to market.

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3.3.5. Silicon updates for Azure infrastructure

From silicon to system, Microsoft is taking an end-to-end approach in optimizing its infrastructure to meet the demands of cloud and AI, delivering the right mix of performance and efficiency reliably and securely to customers.

Foundational to Microsoft’s security initiatives is Azure’s defense-in-depth approach for its hardware infrastructure. Azure Integrated Hardware Security Module (HSM) is the newest in-house cloud security chip and provides robust protection across Azure’s datacenter hardware fleet globally.

In addition, Azure Boost DPU is being introduced as the first in-house data processing unit (DPU) silicon. Designed for scale-out, composable workloads on Azure, it delivers efficiency across storage, networking, acceleration and more for its cloud infrastructure.

Microsoft continues to evolve its cooling technology to meet the demands and requirements of AI with its liquid cooling heat exchanger unit, designed to efficiently cool large-scale AI systems on Azure including Maia and the latest GPUs. Microsoft aims to advance cooling efficiency while retrofitting the innovation within its existing datacenter footprint.

With Azure Boost DPUs joining the processor trifecta in Azure (CPU – AI accelerator – DPU), enhanced by hardware security capabilities of Azure Integrated HSM, as well as continued innovations in Cobalt and Maia, paired with state-of-the-art networking, power management and hardware-software co-design capabilities, Microsoft continues to optimize every layer of its infrastructure in the era of AI.

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3.4. Data & Analytics

3.4.1. Build intelligent apps with autonomous Fabric Databases

The newest Microsoft Fabric workload, Fabric Databases, in preview, will streamline AI app development with simple, intuitive and autonomous databases that provision in seconds and are secured by default. SQL database in Microsoft Fabric is the first database engine coming to Fabric that will create a unified data platform with the ability to apply AI across operational and analytical data. SQL database in Fabric, in preview, will enable customers to:

  • Build intelligent apps faster with data that is automatically replicated to OneLake, making it instantly available to Fabric’s analytical engines. Native vector search capabilities combine with embedding models in Azure AI to enable new patterns like retrieval augmented generation.
  • Boost productivity with auto-optimizing and auto-scaling databases that provision in seconds. Users get fast and consistent app performance with resource optimization and intelligent auto-indexing.
  • Accelerate innovation with Copilot in Fabric assistance, which translates natural language queries into SQL and provides inline code completion alongside code fixes and explanations.
  • Support continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) using GitHub integration for source control or use SQL projects in Visual Studio Code and deploy to Fabric using mssql extension.
  • Enhance security posture with a unified data estate, enabling common security and governance policies across operational and analytical data.

Additional resources:

3.4.2. Microsoft Fabric adds new AI capabilities

To help customers better execute the promise of generative AI, new capabilities are coming to Microsoft Fabric. These updates, in preview, include:

  • AI functions in Fabric: This feature will enable users to perform text-related tasks easily with minimal code in Fabric. Notebook users can efficiently handle tasks with text summarization, translation, classification, sentiment analysis, grammar correction and more. These functions will provide a simplified API for the most used AI enrichments, making it easier to readily apply them with fewer lines of code.
  • AI skills in Azure AI Agent Service integration: A standout feature of Agent Service is the ability to easily connect enterprise data for grounding, including Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Fabric’s AI skills, and tools integration to automate actions.

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3.4.3. Open Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric to bring more data estate into Fabric

Microsoft Fabric users will be able to gain deeper insights by bringing more data into OneLake with Open Mirroring, a new capability in preview.

Open Mirroring is designed to accelerate the data ecosystem, allowing any app or data provider to bring their data estate seamlessly into OneLake within Fabric. This capability will enable app or data providers to write change data directly into a Mirrored Database in Fabric, giving customers the flexibility to prepare data as they prefer while relying on Open Mirroring to handle the complexity of change data.

Open Mirroring will streamline the replication process, ensuring mirrored data is fully prepared for analytics within Fabric and allowing organizations to leverage a broader ecosystem of tools and further enrich data processing and analytics within the Fabric environment.

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3.4.4. New OneLake catalog offers unified solution for Microsoft Fabric data

The new OneLake catalog, now generally available, serves as a unified solution to explore, manage and govern the entire Microsoft Fabric data estate, including structured and unstructured data, lakehouses, warehouses, machine learning models, notebooks, reports and more. With the OneLake catalog, data scientists, engineers, analysts and other users can securely discover, access, manage and collaborate on trusted data, processes and insights, harnessing the power of AI to enhance productivity and unlock Fabric’s full potential.

The OneLake catalog is the evolution of the current OneLake data hub experience with additional capabilities to help users more easily discover and manage trusted data, as well as provide governance for data owners with valuable insights, recommended actions and tooling to govern their data assets.

The OneLake catalog customer experience comes with two easy-to-navigate tabs:

  • Explore: Users can explore and manage all the data they have access to in one central location with filters for domains, item type, owner, endorsement, tags and more. Users can double click on a data item to take actions on the data or explore description, data lineage, permissions and activity. The explore tab is generally available.
  • Govern: Users will see an overview status of their data easily, which allows them to gather information quickly on endorsements, data labeling and data type and get recommended actions to enhance their data for better quality and compliance. The Govern tab will be in preview at the beginning of 2025.

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3.4.5. SQL Server 2025 harnesses the power of generative AI from on-premises to cloud

SQL Server 2025, now in private preview, will support AI apps from on-premises to cloud. Advancements in this new version of SQL Server will include:

Bringing AI to SQL Server data across on-premises and cloud

  • SQL Server 2025 is an enterprise-ready vector database that will generate and natively store vector embeddings, enabling customers to run generative AI models using their own data. Extensible model management enabled by Azure Arc will empower developers with flexibility to choose the right AI model and use it securely.
  • Copilot in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) will streamline SQL development by offering real-time suggestions, code completions and best practice recommendations.

Building on industry-leading security and performance

  • Support for Microsoft Entra managed identities will improve credential management, reduce potential vulnerabilities and provide compliance and auditing capabilities.
  • Enhancements to intelligent query optimization and query performance execution will improve workload performance and reduce troubleshooting.
  • Improved failover reliability and optimized locking will increase uptime and enhance concurrency and scale for SQL Server apps.

Supercharging SQL Server workloads with Azure innovation

  • Microsoft Fabric database mirroring will enable frictionless, real-time analytics by replicating SQL Server data to Microsoft OneLake.
  • Connecting to Azure Arc will enable customers to centrally secure and manage a hybrid SQL Server data estate at scale, including pay-as-you-go licensing for on-premises customers.

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3.4.6. Azure Managed Redis to provide cost-effective caching for AI apps

As intelligent apps handle increasingly high volumes of data requests, fast and reliable access to data is critical. In-memory caching plays a vital role in the era of AI via boosting performance by reducing latency and offloading traffic from databases.

To best support our customers in their AI journey, Azure Managed Redis, now in preview, will deliver customers the latest Redis innovations and robust support, while being more cost-effective than the current Azure Cache for Redis offering. In addition, Azure Managed Redis will go beyond standard caching to enable key use cases, such as AI app performance optimization and session management, and it interoperates with Azure’s popular services. It will offer the latest Redis innovations across all service tiers, including advanced search capabilities, active-active geo-replication and support for various data types.

Azure Managed Redis is also designed to secure customer data with ease through enterprise-level security, compliance offerings and password-free authentication via Microsoft Entra ID.

Additional resources:

 

3.5. Quantum

3.5.1. Microsoft continues transition to reliable logical qubits

The convergence of AI and Quantum will unlock the ability to simulate the interactions of complex molecules and atoms beyond the reach of classical computers. Doing so will also create better AI training data for faster and more accurate models to fuel and accelerate scientific discovery. But to get there, a transition to reliable logical qubits is needed to enable deeper and more complex quantum computations.

Microsoft, in collaboration with Atom Computing, is announcing:

  • The largest neutral atom commercial system with entangled logical qubits that will be able to detect and correct for future reliable computation.
  • Demonstrating the best-in-class neutral-atom 2-qubit gate fidelity in a commercial system.
  • A commercial quantum machine that will be able to outperform classical compute with Atom Computing. This new machine, co-designed with Atom, will be the world’s largest commercial offering and is targeted to ship by the end of 2025.

Additional resources:

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4. Edge 4.1. Edge

4.1.1. Edge management service reduces shared password risk, deploys via Intune

The Microsoft Edge management service in the Microsoft 365 admin center makes browser management easier than ever through a simplified, easy-to-use user interface. New security and management capabilities are being added to enhance Edge as a secure enterprise browser. These capabilities include:

  • Secure password deployment: This will enable IT admins to deploy an encrypted shared password to a specific set of users, allowing them to sign in to websites seamlessly without ever seeing or having access to the actual passwords.This will eliminate the significant risk associated with passwords to shared accounts being passed among multiple people through email, chats or paper. It will help ensure that only the users designated by IT admins will have access to the common website or resource. Secure password deployment will be available in preview in the coming months to customers with Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3 and E5 licenses.
  • Intune deployment: Based on customer feedback, the Edge management service will be able to deploy both browser policies in the cloud and Intune, making it easy to keep users safer and streamline workflows. The Edge management service is recommended as the go-to for browser-first concerns, and Intune remains a key resource that complements the Edge management service. This enhanced Edge management experience is now in preview.

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4.1.2. Scareware blocker helps shield users against cyber scams

Scareware blocker in Microsoft Edge will help protect users from online scammers who employ aggressive scare tactics to steal sensitive data. Sophisticated online scams make it hard for users to know what is legitimate. When a user encounters a warning such as, “Your computer is infected, click here,” scareware blocker will offer protection by intercepting the scam and alerting the user.

This AI-powered shield will not only detect scams but will also continuously improve its detection capabilities as users provide feedback. With cyberattacks increasing in sophistication, speed and quantity, scareware blocker will offer a crucial layer of defense, ensuring users stay one step ahead of online threats. This feature is expected to be in preview for consumer and commercial customers in the coming months.

Additional resources:

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5. Industry 5.1. Industry

5.1.1. Partner-enabled adapted AI models will accelerate business outcomes

New partner-enabled, adapted AI models address industry-specific use cases to help organizations across industries transform and accelerate business outcomes. Through the Microsoft Cloud, Microsoft’s industry-specific AI capabilities and a trusted ecosystem of experienced partners, these new adapted AI models will empower customers to use AI technology to address their most pressing needs. Partners leveraging the power of Microsoft’s Phi family of small language models include:

  • Bayer, a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of healthcare and agriculture, makes L.Y. Crop Protection available in the Azure AI model catalog, for use by agronomic entities and their partners to advance agronomic knowledge and crop protection label compliance. Agronomists can use the model to enhance farmers’ decision-making processes, helping to drive more sustainable outcomes.
  • Cerence, a global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the mobility world, is enhancing its in-vehicle digital assistant technology with fine-tuned small language models (SLMs) within the vehicle’s hardware. The Cerence CaLLM Edge model, available in the Azure AI model catalog, can be used for in-car controls, such as adjusting air conditioning systems, and scenarios that involve limited or no cloud connectivity.
  • Rockwell Automation, a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation, will provide industrial AI expertise via the Azure AI model catalog. The FT Optix Food & Beverage model brings the benefits of industry-specific capabilities to frontline workers in manufacturing, supporting asset troubleshooting in the food and beverage domain.
  • Saifr, a RegTech within Fidelity Investment’s innovation incubator, Fidelity Labs, introduces four new models in the Azure AI model catalog, empowering financial institutions to better manage regulatory compliance of broker-dealer communications and investment adviser advertising. The Retail Marketing Compliance model can help ensure marketing materials adhere to industry regulations and standards, while the Risk Interpretation model identifies and helps users understand potential risks in marketing content. The Language Suggestion model provides language suggestions to enhance the compliance of marketing messages, and the Image Detection model assists users with analyzing and verifying the appropriateness of images used in marketing campaigns.
  • Siemens Digital Industries Software, which helps organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform, is introducing a new copilot for NX X software. It leverages an adapted AI model that enables users to ask natural language questions, access detailed technical insights and streamline complex design tasks for faster and smarter product development.
  • Sight Machine, a leader in data-driven manufacturing and industrial AI, will release the Factory Namespace Manager to the Azure AI model catalog. The model helps manufacturers rename and integrate factory data with their corporate data systems, enabling them to analyze and optimize production alongside supply chain, sales, finance and other corporate functions.

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5.1.2. Azure IoT Operations helping customers accelerate industrial transformation

Azure IoT Operations, now generally available, expands on the Azure IoT portfolio with a composable set of Arc-enabled services that help organizations onboard assets, capture insights and take actions to scale the digital transformation of their physical operations.

For customers in many industries, this ability to connect the physical world to the digital world is a foundational step in the digital transformation journey, providing access to new, rich sources of data that can help optimize business processes.

Azure IoT Operations empowers customers with a unified, enterprise-wide technology architecture and data plane that supports repeatable solution deployment and comprehensive AI-enhanced decision making. It enables a cloud-to-edge data plane with local data processing and analytics to transfer clean, useful data to hyperscale cloud services, such as Microsoft Fabric for unified data governance and analytics, and Azure Event Grid for bidirectional messaging and Azure Digital Twins. This common data foundation is essential to democratize data, enable cross-team collaboration and accelerate decision making.

This unifying approach for customers’ digital ecosystems will remove technical hurdles for the next level of digital transformation, enable technical collaboration across IT and OT and bring interoperability and scalability to digital solutions.

Additional resources:

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6. Modern Work 6.1. Microsoft 365

6.1.1. New Teams features will help break down language barriers

New features in Microsoft Teams will help break down language barriers and facilitate improved collaboration among global teams. These enhancements to Teams meeting features, now in private preview, include:

  • Transcription for multilingual meetings: Meeting transcription will soon support multilingual meetings. When enabled, meeting participants will be able to select one of the 51 spoken languages and one of the 31 translation languages, and the meeting transcript will capture the discussion regardless of languages spoken.
  • Live translated captions and live translated transcript will also support translation for multilingual meetings. This capability will be available next year in Teams desktop, web and mobile apps.
  • Intelligent meeting recap translation: Users will get an intelligent meeting recap automatically generated in the translation language they selected for the meeting. Users can also change the translation language of intelligent meeting recap from the Recap tab. This capability will be available next year in Teams desktop, web and mobile apps.

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6.1.2. Storyline to become integrated in Microsoft Teams

Storyline in Microsoft Teams will simplify the ways that leaders and employees share and connect with colleagues across the company, increasing visibility and engagement. Employee communications are often scattered across multiple places, leading to frustration, delays and overload.

The Storyline integration will empower employees of all levels to follow updates and notifications from leadership, discover content, contribute their ideas and perspectives and express themselves – all within Teams. This new integration will be available in preview early next year.

Additional resources:

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7. Power Platform 7.1. Power Platform

7.1.1. New capabilities in Power Apps help leverage AI for business productivity

A set of new capabilities for Microsoft Power Apps will help makers build intelligent apps and expand on ways users can leverage AI for greater productivity in low-code apps. These capabilities will be in preview in December 2024 and include:

  • A new way to build complex solutions on Power Platform. Makers, supported by Copilot in Power Apps, will be able to 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 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 apps. 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.
  • Agent builder in Power Apps will give makers a fast and convenient way to bring their apps into the agentic era by being able to build agents for their app from within Power Apps Studio, using the lightweight Copilot Studio experience. The app-specific agents will leverage the logic, knowledge and actions already existing in the apps to execute tasks autonomously. The users of the apps will then be able to oversee the actions that the agents took in the app and act where agents hit roadblocks to complete.
  • AI-generated record summary card with a custom prompt will enable makers to enrich the user experience in low-code apps with several generative AI features, including adding a custom prompt to their apps to help users easily gain insights from their records.
  • With the new capability to customize chat for individual apps, creators of model-driven apps will be able to make them more relevant for their users by adding new knowledge sources and skills. This way, each model-driven app will be able to have a distinctive custom Copilot to answer user questions.
  • Users will be able to fill out forms using files and emails as a source of data, making assistance in apps more useful out of the box. Model-driven app users will be able to add a file or email to generate form field suggestions, saving valuable time on a tedious task. The form filling experience has been improved based on user feedback, giving more control over suggestions.
  • With custom prompts to generate text input, Canvas app users will be able to write just as they are able to do in Word. Instead of spending valuable time editing, rewriting and crafting well-written content, users will be able to simply jot down a few ideas and let Copilot handle the rest.

In addition, the new Snowflake Power Platform connector will enable Snowflake data to be brought into Dataverse, empowering sales teams to analyze purchase patterns in Snowflake and track leads in real time within Dataverse. Additionally, Dataverse data will be available the coming months in Snowflake, letting customers leverage Snowflake’s powerful analytics. For example, customer service teams will be able to transfer Dataverse data into Snowflake to gain deeper insights into customer behavior to enhance service quality. This bi-directional integration between Dataverse and Snowflake is now in preview.

Additional resources:

7.1.2. New AI and governance features in Power Automate will enable better automations

A variety of new AI and governance features in Microsoft Power Automate will span Copilot for Power Automate cloud automation and robotic process automation (RPA). These updates will enable users to build more intuitive, reliable and fast authoring automations backed by powerful AI innovation and include:

  • Next-generation document processing with GPT-4o: Power Platform’s prompt builder has been enhanced to handle multimodal content, now supporting both documents and images. When integrated with the structured outputs feature using JSON in a Power Automate flow, these capabilities allow users to automate the processing of incoming emails, documents and images, leading to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. This feature is now in preview.
  • Generative actions: Currently in the Early Access Program, generative actions will allow cloud flows to create AI-powered steps or actions from natural language input. This will be in preview beginning in December.
  • Repair with Copilot: This will expand the AI capabilities for RPA in Power Automate for desktop. It recommends UI app selector fixups when a UI control isn’t detected during an attended or unattended desktop flow run. This will be in preview beginning in December.
  • Copilot expression assistant: Now in preview, Copilot expression assistant will enable developers to build the right expression by describing what they want to build and referencing the dynamic data in the flow.
  • Automation center: Now generally available, the automation center provides a centralized hub for managing automations at scale, including the management of service level agreements in work.

Additional resources:

7.1.3. New capabilities for Power Pages elevate digital experiences

New capabilities in Power Pages will enhance user’s experience, streamline operations and provide secure, intelligent solutions to meet evolving business needs. These capabilities, in preview, include:

  • Agent-enabled workflows in Power Pages will allow users to empower their digital presence through autonomous agents, secured by robust access controls.
  • Enhanced List AI Insights will provide actionable insights through advanced AI, improving user experience and seamlessly aligning content for better engagement.
  • Site Copilot will bring structured Q&A and Application Lifecycle Management support, streamlining website management with easier deployments and enhanced user interactions.

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7.1.4. Power Platform admin center simplifies security and governance experience

The updated Power Platform admin center experience will provide IT admins with an intelligent control plane to gain greater visibility, act on personalized recommendations and leverage comprehensive controls to govern and secure Power Platform at enterprise scale.

Updates to the Power Platform admin center, in preview, will include pages to help users manage low-code assets and explore resources, view and help with agent adoption in Microsoft Copilot Studio, manage capacity and licenses and monitor reliability and optimize latency. The updated security page will allow IT admins to gain visibility, get recommendations and utilize the controls needed to improve their security posture.

Additional resources:

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8. Security 8.1. Security

8.1.1. Microsoft Security Exposure Management now generally available

Microsoft Security Exposure Management delivers a unified experience that empowers security decision-makers and security practitioners to effectively assess and reduce exposure to cyberthreats. Exposure Management is now generally available to Microsoft Security customers.

Exposure Management is a unified posture management solution that consolidates disparate data silos for visibility of end-to-end attack surface, creates automatic ongoing assessment of attack paths to critical assets and offers context-based prioritized recommendations to improve security posture across devices, identity, apps, data, on-premises, hybrid and multicloud infrastructures.

Exposure Management works together with Extended Detection and Response, Microsoft Defender XDR and generative AI solution Security Copilot to provide complete protection for both pre- and post-breach situations through a unified SecOps platform.

Exposure Management enables organizations to adopt a continuous threat exposure management program to measure, monitor and manage their cyber threat exposure to proactively identify and remediate attack paths that pose risk to critical assets.

Exposure Management includes the following set of comprehensive capabilities:

  • Attack Surface Management supercharges the ability for security teams to discover and safeguard critical assets by increasing awareness and visualizing complex relationships among digital assets.
  • Attack Path Analysis provides visibility into attack paths, helping security teams stay ahead of attackers. It also enables scenarios such as asset risk posture exploration, attack path modeling and blast radius analysis across on-premises, multicloud and hybrid environments.
  • Unified Exposure Insights aggregates security posture data from Microsoft and other vendors, providing security decision-makers automated metrics for security initiatives aligned to their business needs and compliance requirements. Insights can be leveraged to effectively prioritize investments and focus on managing the organization’s overall security exposure.

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8.2. Microsoft Purview

8.2.1. Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management updates will strengthen data security

Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management (IRM) usage indicators and policy template will provide new detections of intentional and unintentional insider risk activity on generative AI (GenAI) apps that can pose a risk to an organization. With the fast adoption of GenAI, customers need visibility into risky AI usage within their organizations to understand potential data security risks related to GenAI apps and prevent misuse of these technologies. These updates for Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, ChatGPT Enterprise and Azure OpenAI are now in preview.

Activities will include risky prompts that contain sensitive information or risky intent and sensitive responses that contain sensitive information or information generated from sensitive files or sites. These detections will also contribute to Adaptive Protection insider risk levels. To further strengthen the understanding of potential risky GenAI usage impacting organizations’ data security, new Communication Compliance GenAI metrics (jailbreak and hallucinations) are being added as IRM indicators.

To provide better data security context to support SOC teams’ investigations, IRM alerts will be integrated into the Microsoft Defender XDR incident page and IRM analytics into Advanced Hunting, so teams can perform deeper and more complex analyses. Integrating IRM alerts with Defender XDR investigations will provide a more complete picture of the security landscape and improve the efficiency of investigations by helping uncover indicators of potential user compromise. This expanded visibility will help reduce false positives and improve incident containment with protective actions that are better aligned with the business value of the data.

Other features will include bringing IRM context into Communication Compliance alerts and bringing Microsoft Entra compromised user context into IRM alerts to better identify compromised user risk and the potential of an attacker posing as an insider.

Additional resources:

8.2.2. New controls in Microsoft 365 Copilot will help prevent data oversharing

New generative AI controls, now in preview, will stop oversharing of sensitive information, will limit Microsoft 365 Copilot from using sensitive data and will detect risky AI usage in Microsoft 365 Copilot. These controls will give choices about the data used in Microsoft 365 Copilot summaries and responses, and alert them when prompts or responses contain sensitive information or may have risky intent.

Data oversharing can occur when users have access to more data than necessary for their job duties. Organizations are requesting robust data security controls to help mitigate these risks. Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Microsoft 365 Copilot will enable admins to configure policies to prevent Microsoft 365 Copilot from processing files based on their sensitivity label to help reduce the risk of accidental oversharing.

Generative AI can pose risks of exploitation by inadvertent or malicious insiders. As organizations request more visibility into these risks, Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management risky usage indicators will help detect risky activities, such as prompt injection, in attempt to elicit unauthorized behavior from the large language model (LLM), or risky prompts, such as those containing sensitive information.

Additional resources:

8.2.3. Microsoft Purview data governance solution renamed Unified Catalog

Microsoft Purview Data Catalog is being renamed to Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog to better reflect the offering’s comprehensive customer benefits. The modern data governance solution delivers comprehensive visibility, data confidence and responsible innovation for greater business value in the era of AI. The solution streamlines metadata from disparate catalogs and sources, like Microsoft Fabric OneLake, Databricks Unity and Snowflake Polaris, into a unified experience. Additionally, the following new capabilities are available in preview:

  • Deeper data quality support: Microsoft Purview will offer deeper data quality support, through a new data quality scan engine for big data platforms, including Microsoft Fabric, Databricks Unity Catalog, Snowflake, Google Big Query, and Amazon S3, to support open standard file and table formats. This new scan engine will allow businesses to centrally perform richer data quality management across disparate data assets from within the Purview Unified Catalog. It will further enable a modern federated data governance practice, no matter where data is stored.
  • Microsoft Purview Analytics in OneLake: To further an organization’s data quality management practice, data stewards will be able to leverage Microsoft Purview Analytics in OneLake capability to extract tenant-specific metadata from the Purview Unified Catalog and publish to OneLake. This new capability will enable deeper data quality and lineage investigation using the rich capabilities in Power BI within Microsoft Fabric.

Additional resources:

8.2.4. New Microsoft Purview DLP capabilities will help prevent sensitive data loss

New capabilities in Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) will help security teams prevent sensitive data loss in the era of AI and include the introduction of DLP for Microsoft 365 Copilot. DLP for Microsoft 365 Copilot, in preview, will enable confident adoption and use of Copilot within the modern enterprise by putting data protection measures in place. This capability helps ensure that the content within sensitive documents is not summarized by Microsoft 365 Copilot or processed by Microsoft 365 Copilot for grounding data.

In addition to the introduction of DLP for Microsoft 365 Copilot, several improvements will help DLP admins effectively investigate DLP incidents, strengthen existing protections and refine their overall DLP program. These capabilities, all in preview, will include:

  • Expanded file type coverage for endpoint DLP: Broader range of file types will be supported by endpoint DLP to enable more consistent coverage and protection across workloads
  • Power Automate integration: Users will be able to set up custom Power Automate workflows (like alert triage and investigation) as an action for DLP policies.
  • Security Copilot-powered DLP policy understanding: Security Copilot will provide admins with policy summarization in natural language and policy gap analysis based on their organization’s needs.
  • Full file evidence (Microsoft-managed): Users will be able to store and view full files on Windows as evidence for investigations using Microsoft-managed storage.
  • Blanket protections for non-supported file types: Users will be able to enforce general protections for file types that endpoint DLP does not currently scan and monitor.

Additional resources:

8.2.5. Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management will streamline visibility

Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), in preview, will provide centralized visibility and contextual insights from across Microsoft Purview data security solutions and will enable organizations to manage their data security posture more effectively. Bringing information from Microsoft Purview Information Protection, Insider Risk Management and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) into one place, DSPM’s contextual insights will help data security teams identify possible labeling and policy gaps, unusual patterns and activities that might indicate potential risks and opportunities to adapt and strengthen their data security program.

Data security teams will be able to perform unified analysis through data, users and activities, leveraging DSPM as a crucial starting point for teams to understand the organization’s data environment, even before classifications or policies are put in place.

DSPM insights will include views on the location and type of sensitive data, risky user activities and common channels for data exfiltration. By centralizing visibility across data security, DSPM will empower teams to accelerate investigations and uncover hidden data risks that could have been more easily overlooked in isolated views. This unified approach will provide a comprehensive view of an organization’s data security posture, revealing opportunities to enhance the security program.

When the organization has access to Security Copilot, Data Security Analytics will then provide generative AI-powered insights in natural language as well as a suggested path for investigation. Users will be able to dig deeper into the data landscape, allowing investigations to explore many directions across data sets, alerts, users and activities. Additionally, it will strengthen data security expertise by centralizing insights and guiding investigations, facilitating onboarding for newer team members and enabling more efficiency for experienced data security teams.

Additional resources:

8.2.6. Microsoft Purview Information Protection will extend Azure RMS-defined sensitivity labels

Microsoft Purview Information Protection will offer admins the ability to extend Azure Microsoft Rights Management (RMS)-defined sensitivity labels to Office files and PDFs at rest in a SharePoint document library. The protections defined in the label apply to files when they are downloaded from SharePoint. This prevents sensitive data leakage stemming from the egress of documents from SharePoint sites. This feature is in preview.

Additional resources:

8.2.7. Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management for AI generally available

Data Security Posture Management for AI, now generally available, enables data and IT admins to proactively discover AI risks, strengthen their data posture and prevent incidents like data oversharing or data leakage.

Security teams often find themselves in the dark when it comes to data security and compliance risks associated with AI usage. In fact, 80% of leaders cite the leakage of sensitive data as their primary concern. And more than 30% of decision-makers say they don’t know where or what their sensitive business critical data is. Without proper visibility, organizations struggle to safeguard their assets effectively. Data Security Posture Management for AI offers protection by:

  • Discovering data security, safety and compliance risks in AI prompts and responses, including Microsoft Copilots, custom-built AI apps built on Copilot Studio and third-party AI apps like ChatGPT Enterprise.
  • Providing policy recommendations, like configuring auto-labeling or data loss prevention (DLP) policies to mitigate these risks.
  • Running a data oversharing assessment to discover data that is at risk of oversharing in Microsoft 365 Copilot by scanning data for sensitive information types, identifying locations with potential oversharing based on existing user access patterns and providing recommendations on how to protect sensitive data by configuring auto-labeling policies or default labels for items within the over-permissioned site. Additionally, it provides recommendations on how to fix permissions with auto-labeling, Restricted Content Discovery and Access Review in SharePoint Advanced Management. The oversharing report can be run pre-deployment to identify unlabeled files accessed by users before deploying Copilot or post-deployment to identify sensitive data referenced in Copilot responses.

Additional resources:

8.2.8. Microsoft Purview integration with Copilot Studio will boost data security

Microsoft Purview’s built-in integration with Microsoft Copilot Studio, now in preview, will offer data security and compliance features to low-code developers building custom AI apps. Developers will be able to toggle Microsoft Purview integration on with no coding needed and benefit from:

  • Discovering data risks in custom-built AI interactions by gaining visibility into insights like sensitive data shared with custom-built AI apps via prompts and responses, the total number of users interacting with the app, their associated risk level and more.
  • Governing the data generated through the custom-built AI app with the ability to audit custom-built AI prompts and responses, preserve, collect, analyze, review and export prompt and response interactions, apply retention or deletion policies on prompts and responses and detect business or code of conduct violations for prompts and responses.

When creating custom-built AI apps in Copilot Studio, organizations will be able to protect sensitive data by ensuring that app-generated responses inherit the sensitivity label of the referenced files, limit access to sensitive data to authorized users only and reference sensitivity labels for files in responses.

These new features will address the growing need for security and compliance in custom-built AI apps, ensuring that low-code developers can easily integrate these controls without extensive coding knowledge. This will help organizations protect their data while leveraging the power of AI.

Additional resources:

8.2.9. Security Copilot capabilities will be embedded in Microsoft Purview

Security Copilot embedded capabilities will help data security and data compliance teams use natural language to uncover hidden data risks and accelerate tasks and investigations while strengthening teams’ expertise and efficacy. These capabilities, in preview by the end of the year, will include:

  • Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM): Microsoft Security Copilot in DSPM will provide generative AI-powered insights in natural language for teams to look deeper into potential risks to their data estate, with starting insights that are contextually relevant to the top risks in the environment, as well as suggested prompts to help prioritize efforts and guide users through a recommended path of investigation. Users will be able to further customize analysis by asking open prompt questions about data based on what is most important for the organization. This capability will enable teams to discover and manage previously unseen risks, providing a deep dive view on insights and upskill teams.
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policy Understanding: Security Copilot will provide admins with policy summarization in natural language and policy gap analysis based on their organization’s needs.
  • eDiscovery Case Summary: Designed to streamline case management, this new capability will allow users to quickly access a comprehensive summary of eDiscovery cases, holds and searches in natural language, eliminating the need to navigate through multiple tabs to assess status, statistics of completed actions, pending tasks and ongoing jobs.
  • New DLP investigation prompts: Users will be able to expand prompts available in DLP beyond the alert summary, such as data/user-specific investigation and prompts and filters in Activity Explorer.
  • Copilot-powered Knowledge Hub: Product experience guidance will be embedded in the Copilot in Microsoft Purview window, aimed to educate and elevate team members of all skill levels.

Additional resources:

8.2.10. Compliance Manager enables use of custom regulation templates

New enhancements in Compliance Manager enable organizations to leverage custom templates to address evolving regulations in the AI space and beyond. Templates now include the EU AI Act, NIST 2 AI, ISO 42001, ISO 23894, Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and more international and regional regulations.

Compliance Manager allows an organization to assess compliance with regulations and corporate policies and visualize the organization’s compliance posture. Historical records help to track compliance over time and provide actionable next steps on how to continue to implement procedures to mitigate risk associated with regulatory requirements.

Feature enhancements include:

  • General availability of new AI regulations, including EU AI act, NIST AI – Framework, ISO 42001, ISO 23894; DORA, NIST CSF 2.0, Indonesia PDP and Cloud Computing – Qatar.
  • Custom templates to customize existing regulations to meet specific organizational policies.
  • Pre-deployment compliance that helps users understand the compliance posture of Azure services before deploying them.
  • History report to view trends of compliance scores and contributing factors for changes.

 Additional resources:

8.3. Security Copilot

8.3.1. Security Copilot updates will use generative AI to aid in security efforts

The latest advancements to Security Copilot will make generative AI (GenAI) a powerful tool in an organization’s security efforts and extend its reach beyond just security analysts. These advancements include:

Boost comprehensive security: New embedded capabilities across Microsoft security solutions will allow admins and analysts to bolster their domain security using everyday tools.

  • In addition to embedded summaries and insights, data security admins will be able to get comprehensive visibility in Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management, with GenAI-powered insights to dig into their data environment – enabling and guiding investigations to take any direction across data sets, alerts, users and activities – for faster and more accurate analysis. This update is in preview.
  • Identity admins will be able to get AI-driven assistance in the Microsoft Entra admin center, with insights across sign-in logs, user and group details, audit and diagnostic logs and app risk to help troubleshoot, enforce least-privilege access and remediate risk for users, apps and workloads. This will simplify workflows, enhance security and reduce workload. This update is in preview.
  • IT admins will be able to use AI-driven Kusto Query Language (KQL) query assistance to assess data across multiple devices and platforms for rapid endpoint issue troubleshooting. With the new enhancements, IT will be able to simplify patch management, resolve policy conflicts and gain app risk insights to simplify app elevation approvals. This update is in preview.
  • Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts can now quickly identify and resolve potential security issues with broad insights on identity behavior and misconfigurations. The improved Security Copilot side panel, now generally available, offers more control, allowing users to decide when they need the panel open or closed.
  • Now in preview, threat Intelligence and SOC analysts will be able to leverage a broader set of sources via the Microsoft Threat Intelligence plugin for a unified, holistic view of threats, impacts and recommendations. Additionally, Threat Intelligence and SOC analysts will be able to simplify complex workflows with new out-of-box promptbooks that offer a guided experience. This update is now generally available.

Automate security tasks and empower security teams: The new Logic Apps connector, now generally available, allows security teams to run promptbooks directly from their Logic Apps workflow, enabling admins to sequence and automate common tasks enriched by generative AI insights.

Leverage new third-party plugins: Security Copilot’s thriving partner ecosystem empowers security teams to use existing tools while leveraging Microsoft’s global threat intelligence and generative AI capabilities. Over 15 new third-party plugins across different categories including, device and endpoint management, threat intelligence and data security, are now generally available.

Build on enterprise readiness: Supported features for audit logs and role-based access control, now in preview, and a new usage dashboard, now generally available, provide granularity and comprehensive visibility, ensuring that Security Copilot can scale with the organization’s security needs.

Additional resources:

8.4. Intune

8.4.1. Microsoft Security Copilot in Intune will expand to more platforms, scenarios

Since the preview release in April 2024, Security Copilot in Intune has been transforming endpoint management and security for IT admins. Now, with expanded functionality across Intune, the Intune Suite and Windows Autopatch, Security Copilot in Intune will be equipped to address more of the everyday challenges faced by IT teams. This embedded, generative AI experience as part of Security Copilot and embedded in the Intune admin center experience will redefine how IT teams protect and enhance productivity across their organizations. These expansions are now available in preview.

One of the biggest challenges for IT professionals is ensuring worker productivity across a diverse array of devices while keeping the digital estate secure amid increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats, and while keeping pace with rapidly evolving technology and constantly adapting to new systems and best practices. With these new capabilities, Copilot in Intune will extend its AI-guided insights to a broader range of scenarios, enabling IT teams to make more informed decisions and take quicker, more effective action when needed.

By extending Copilot’s capabilities across these platforms, Microsoft will provide a more unified and intelligent approach to endpoint management, giving IT admins the tools they need to tackle routine tasks more efficiently, reduce security risks, elevate their expertise and improve the overall user experience. This expansion will help IT professionals focus on strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down by day-to-day troubleshooting.

Additional resources:

8.4.2. Microsoft Intune expanding core device hardware inventory capability

Microsoft Intune is expanding its core device hardware inventory capability for Windows to iOS, Android, macOS and Linux devices. Device data is the foundation of modern endpoint management and Microsoft recognizes the importance of having complete end-to-end visibility across devices. This expanded hardware capability is now in private preview and will include:

With a catalog of device properties, such as CPU information and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) data for device upgrade eligibility, admins will have a resource to easily explore and help them make business decisions across device platforms. With this data, Intune will generate insights that give IT and security teams a complete view of device status and configuration.

Admins will be able to retrieve real-time data of an online cloud-managed Windows device on demand with Intune Advanced Analytics. Intune will expand this functionality to retrieve and analyze the device details across multiple devices using a Kusto Query Language (KQL) interface.

Admins will gain visibility into near real-time data about the state of the device including hardware performance issues impacting user technology experience, anomalies and associated timelines. This will empower IT admins to make improvements before users generate support tickets.

With focus on business outcomes of endpoint management, Intune empowers admins to act on insights across their organization’s fleet of devices. Intune is introducing a new set of device actions, now generally available, which can be taken based on the analysis of the KQL device queries with Intune Advanced Analytics. Admins can act across multiple devices, such as restarting devices or running remediation scripts to save time, fortify endpoint security and drive operational excellence for better user experiences.

Additional resources:

8.5. Entra

8.5.1. New capabilities strengthen Microsoft’s Security Service Edge solution

Microsoft has several updates and feature additions for the products that comprise its Security Service Edge (SSE) solution in the Microsoft Entra Suite. These updates include:

  • Microsoft Entra Private Access simplified the migration to Zero Trust Network Access from traditional VPNs, with general availability of quick access policies that simplify onboarding of private apps to Microsoft Entra and preview of App Discovery that will allow organizations to easily discover all their private apps. With Private DNS, in preview, users will be able to access a resource using single label names or hostnames. Deploying private network connectors will be easier, with connectors available in preview for Azure and AWS Marketplaces with Google Cloud Platform coming later to preview.
  • Microsoft Entra Internet Access will improve its ability to extend adaptive access controls universally with the preview of universal continuous access evaluation (CAE), a capability that revokes access when conditions change, in near real-time, to all internet destinations, agnostic of the app or client being natively CAE aware. Additionally, the private preview of Transport Layer Security (TLS), inspection will provide the ability to inspect encrypted traffic, improving Internet Access threat protection capabilities. Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection, in private preview, will provide comprehensive visibility of encrypted traffic and enables enhanced URL web category filtering based on full URLs, with more capabilities being added soon.

Microsoft, in collaboration with leading connectivity partners, is transforming secure access and accelerating the journey to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) for organizations by optimizing branch connectivity. Notable integrations include HPE Aruba, Versa Networks, Cisco Systems, Aviatrix, Teridion and Check Point, with more partnerships coming later.

In addition, Microsoft is enhancing its SSE solution by integrating advanced network security functionalities from other providers and creating an open SASE ecosystem, starting with Netskope Advanced Threat Protection and Data Loss Prevention (DLP), now in private preview.

Additional resources:

8.5.2. Microsoft Security Copilot will be embedded in Microsoft Entra portal

Microsoft Security Copilot will be embedded directly into Microsoft Entra admin center, bringing the available identity skills from the standalone Security Copilot experience, along with new identity capabilities, directly to identity admin workflows, making it easy for them to operate at the speed and scale of AI. The interactive experience will be available via an embedded chat panel, accessible through a global Copilot button in the Entra portal menu bar. Built-in starter prompts and AI-guided suggestions will help customers seamlessly navigate Copilot’s features. Security Copilot in Entra is now in preview and will include:

  • AI-driven assistance and recommendations for identity and access management (IAM) scenarios, simplifying data challenges and reducing administrative overload. It will enable identity admins and security teams to accelerate identity security efforts through AI-driven risk detection, insights and mitigation. Copilot automates data gathering and correlation, allowing admins to quickly detect and address suspicious activity, including high-risk users. By communicating directly with Copilot in natural language, admins will be able to reduce investigation and troubleshooting times.
  • The ability for admins to quickly troubleshoot access failures during critical moments, offering automation and actionable insights. Whether handling failed multifactor authentication attempts or policy changes, Copilot will transform complex data into natural language summaries, offering recommendations on how to quickly reduce risk and resolve access issues.

Additional resources:

8.6. Defender

8.6.1. Microsoft Defender for Cloud to bolster container security through app lifecycle

Microsoft Defender for Cloud empowers security teams to strengthen container posture with improved visibility throughout the software development lifecycle, while providing comprehensive threat protection to detect, investigate and respond to security incidents. Achieving comprehensive vulnerability oversight throughout the entire app lifecycle from development to deployment remains a substantial challenge for many organizations.

Updates to Defender for Cloud include:

  • The ability to scan container images from their creation in the continuous integration/continuous delivery CI/CD pipeline, through cloud (Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform), third-party and private registries (starting with the widely used Docker Hub and JFrog Artifactory) and in the Kubernetes cluster where they are deployed. This update is in preview.
  • A simplified and streamlined experience in the Defender for Cloud blade within Azure Kubernetes System (AKS) for comprehensive, built-in visibility into container security issues and actionable security insights. These insights will enable cluster owners to assess the status of their resources and directly assign teams to identified security issues, shortening the time to remediate the incident. This update is in preview.
  • Enhanced monitoring and alerting capabilities with the improved integration of Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Defender XDR now processes Kubernetes container data in real-time to help detect and respond to a broader range of potential vulnerabilities and threats. This update is in preview.
  • Binary drift detection identifies and responds to unauthorized changes in container configurations at runtime and helps users ensure container images remain unmodified after deployment. Binary drift detection is now generally available.
  • The ability to create custom queries to detect suspicious activities in containers and other cloud resources within an organization through the improved integration of Defender for Cloud and Defender XDR, a feature that will be available later this year. Users can quickly contain vulnerabilities in runtime by limiting pod communication or isolating the network to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data and critical resources through one-click containment. This will significantly reduce mean time to resolve (MTTR). This update is in preview.
  • The ability to leverage AI-driven guided threat remediation with step-by-step assistance, empowering SOC teams to manage container-specific incidents efficiently, even with minimal expertise. This update is in preview.

Additional resources:

8.6.2. Microsoft develops enhancements for Security Operations Center platform

Microsoft continues to set the standard for the unified Security Operations Center (SOC) platform with its latest innovations. The following updates, in preview, include:

  • Microsoft Defender for Office 365 will be able to identify the attacker’s intent using large language models to more effectively protect against key threats like business email compromise.
  • Expanded Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) capabilities for Microsoft Sentinel will include support of new STIX objects, threat actors, identities, attack patterns and relationships.
  • A unified experience will integrate insider risk information into Microsoft Defender XDR, unify into a single agent across endpoints, identity protection and operational technical security and enable Microsoft Sentinel to have access to the unified SecOps platform experience.
  • Customers will get recommendations in Microsoft’s unified SecOps operations platform that will help them improve their protection and save costs in their log ingestion.
  • Microsoft Sentinel will be available in Microsoft’s unified SecOps platform to customers who do not use Microsoft Defender XDR. With this new experience Microsoft Sentinel customers will be able to access the embedded Security Copilot experience (additional license required) and an enhanced incident correlation engine that increases the speed of incident correlation by 50%.

Additional resources:

8.6.3. Microsoft Defender for Cloud updates will enable proactive approach to security

Enhancements to Microsoft Defender for Cloud will enable organizations to take a more proactive approach to their cloud and AI security. More organizations are choosing to package their AI models within containers to scale their deployments and use APIs to provide efficient access to apps. As a result, protecting APIs and containers is critical to the security of AI models. New innovations span APIs, containers and AI security posture management and include:

API security posture capabilities will be natively integrated into Defender Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), providing security teams with visibility and remediation tools to quickly address API-driven app security risks. By mapping APIs in Azure API Management’s front-end endpoint and back-end compute hosting the API, security teams can gain full context across the entire app, including compute and storage. Additionally, API data classification will be extended to include API query strings and URL path parameters, supporting investigation and triage for data-in-transit. Teams will also be able to see the source of data exposure in APIs. API security posture capabilities will surface security recommendations, exploitable attack paths with context to data-in-motion scenarios and risk hunting to perform end-to-end analysis of data exfiltration scenarios. This enhancement is in preview.

Container security posture capabilities will help ensure ongoing visibility into vulnerabilities throughout the software development lifecycle. Security teams will be able to address vulnerabilities early in the build stage with container image scanning in any continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. Defender for Cloud will offer flexibility to scan cloud registries (Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform) and third party/private registries for vulnerabilities, starting with the widely used Docker Hub and JFrog Artifactory. This enhancement is in preview.

AI security posture management capabilities help security teams discover and map generative AI models and technologies within multicloud environments across Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning and Amazon Bedrock. Organizations can leverage built-in security recommendations to strengthen their security posture, identify infrastructure-as-code (IaC) misconfigurations and vulnerabilities from code and runtime, and map attack paths affecting sensitive data used in grounding within generative AI deployments. These capabilities are now generally available and include:

  • Expanded support of Amazon Bedrock: Deeper discovery of AWS AI technologies, new recommendations and attack paths. Additional support for AWS such as Amazon OpenSearch (service domains and service collections), Amazon Bedrock Agents and Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases.
  • New AI grounding data insights: Enriched resource insights into datasets used for AI grounding within AI deployments provide evidence to the specific associated virtual machine and AI models where it’s used. New risk factor in recommendations and attack path analysis enables customers to filter and prioritize their risks to datasets used in AI grounding.

Additional resources:

8.6.4. Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates with Endor Labs

Microsoft Defender for Cloud has natively integrated with Endor Labs, a leader in reachability-based Software Composition Analysis (SCA). This integration further empowers organizations to consolidate their Application Security and Cloud Security programs into a single platform, securing cloud workloads and code seamlessly in one place. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the market-leading Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP). Customers can now deploy best-of-breed SCA and CNAPP solutions from a unified dashboard, achieving comprehensive security coverage from code to runtime.

With the native integration, teams can correlate SCA findings with runtime alerts to view code-to-runtime attack paths. This means security teams can trace vulnerabilities found in open-source software (OSS) dependencies to potential exploit paths in their cloud environments. By connecting the dots between app code and cloud infrastructure, teams can prioritize remediation efforts more effectively while minimizing false positives and reducing risk across the entire software development lifecycle.

Additional resources:

8.6.5. Strengthened partner ecosystem will benefit small and medium business security

Microsoft is strengthening its partner ecosystem to make it easier for Managed Solution Provider (MSP) partners to support small and medium businesses (SMBs), which are facing increased cyberattacks. MSP partners help augment the limited internal security resources that SMBs have by providing security services. Updates include:

  • Defender for Business and Entra integration with Huntress: Huntress’ 24/7 Security Operations Center will triage, manage and remediate incidents and alerts for Defender for Business, expanding their defenses and extending protection for joint customers without requiring any additional investment in in-house operations. The Entra integration will ensure joint customers use multifactor authentication (MFA) and risk-based conditional access policies to protect their users and accounts. The Defender for Business integration is now available to standalone and Business Premium customers. The Entra integration will be generally available by the end of 2024.
  • Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) portfolio addition: MISA added a SMB verified solution status to its portfolio. This MISA solution highlights technology solutions that are purpose-built to meet the needs of SMBs and the MSP service providers who often manage IT and security on behalf of SMBs. MISA members who meet the qualifying criteria will receive a specialized MISA member badge showcasing the verification and will be featured in the MISA partner catalog.
  • Boosted email defense with intent-based detections backed by large language models (LLMs) for SMBs: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has integrated LLMs to improve threat detections by interpreting subtle human language nuances to attempt to understand the attacker’s intent and proactively thwart threats. These models have been trained on one of the largest datasets in the industry and enable more accurate identification of text-only attacks like business email compromise (BEC). With this integration, Defender for Office 365 can effectively predict and neutralize attacks by recognizing malicious intent and safeguarding inboxes against sophisticated social engineering tactics. This capability is available in Defender for Office 365 Plan 1, which is included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium.

Additional resources:

Two women sit in a windowsill around a laptop

9. Windows 9.1. Windows Commercial

9.1.1. Console support for Teams Rooms coming to Surface Hub 3

Console support for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows touch boards is expected to launch in 2025, with Maxhub as the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partner building the certified console. This feature, along with the additional hardware, will let users control the Teams Rooms app on the Surface Hub 3 from a console instead of using the touchscreen.

Additional resources:

9.1.2. Improved Windows search will make finding files more intuitive

Improved Windows search, powered by models that leverage the neural processing unit (NPU) on Copilot+ PCs, is coming to File Explorer, Windows Search and Settings. Users will be able to find the right files, including documents and photos, without needing to remember file names or exact file content. Users will be able to search for local documents by describing their content or using synonyms of content in documents. For example, a document that talks about cars, buses and airplanes can be found by a user searching for “modes of transport.” For images, users will be able to search by image content, including any text found in an image. Starting in early 2025, improved Windows search will launch first to the Windows Insider Program for Snapdragon powered Copilot+ PCs.

And, thanks to the power of the 40+ TOPS NPU included in Copilot+ PCs, it will work even when not connected to the internet. This will make it more intuitive and efficient for people to find the information that they need.

In addition to finding local files on disk, active OneDrive for Business files will also be found using improved Windows search. Improved Windows will expand beyond physical PCs by coming to Windows 365 Cloud PCs in spring 2025.

Additional resources:

9.1.3. New Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop features aid modern work environments

Microsoft is continually enhancing its cloud-based solutions to meet the evolving needs of modern work environments. New features and updates for Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop include:

Windows 365 new features and updates:

  • Windows 365 Frontline will be able to be provisioned in “shared mode,” which will provide a new way to access Windows 365 Cloud PCs. This new mode is designed for users who need brief access to complete ad-hoc tasks quickly and securely from a non-personalized Windows desktop environment, and their user data is deleted upon signing off. The feature is now available in preview.
  • Windows in mixed reality will bring the full capabilities of Windows 11 to the Meta Quest headset. For enhanced productivity and collaboration, Windows in mixed reality will make it easier than ever to access the familiar and trusted Windows experience on high-resolution monitors. Whether participating in virtual meetings, working in shared spaces or interacting with digital content in a physical environment, Windows and Meta Quest together will provide a powerful tool for productivity. The feature is coming in preview in December.
  • Microsoft Purview Customer Lockbox provides data protection for Windows 365 by bringing users into the approval workflow process to help ensure only authorized requests allow access to content. This update is generally available.
  • Port 3389, used to facilitate remote access to Windows computers through the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), is now disabled by default for all newly provisioned and re-provisioned Windows 365 Cloud PCs. This feature is generally available.

Azure Virtual Desktop new features and updates: 

  • Azure Virtual Desktop App attach application delivery feature will support integration with partner app delivery solutions. Application management admins will be able to use application delivery solutions from Liquidware, Numecent and Omnissa to manage their on-premises and cloud applications through a single console. This update is in preview.
  • App attach now supports Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) packages. App-V is an app packaging format, often used in on-premises virtualization environments, designed to help admins stream apps to users. App attach support for App-V packages will make it easier for Azure Virtual Desktop admins to migrate their apps to the new MSIX app format and manage those app from the cloud. This update is in preview.
  • Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI has been renamed Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Local. Current features and existing pricing are now supported through Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Local.
  • Enhanced host pool management for Azure Virtual Desktop is in preview. Enhanced host pool management is a collection of features designed to give admins additional tools to streamline session host deployment and optimization. These include session host deployment and updating, creating and deleting session hosts at scale and ephemeral disks.
  • In addition, both Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop will bring a range of advanced features to enhance security, authentication and management for Windows in the Cloud.

Additional resources:

9.1.4. Personal Data Encryption for known folders now generally available

With Personal Data Encryption, generally available, Microsoft is adding a second layer of protection to Windows Enterprise, so individual files the user has on their laptop are encrypted for a second time and can only be read by the user when they sign in to their PC using Windows Hello. This even protects the files on the PC while the device is running or on standby.

Threats are rapidly evolving with the prevalence of flexible work arrangements. Robust security measures have never been more needed. Windows Enterprise encrypts data stored on the disk when the device is shut down, so if it is lost or stolen the data is secured.

Personal Data Encryption integrates with OneDrive or SharePoint on Microsoft 365 to allow for seamless collaboration. Personal Data Encryption is enabled by an IT admin, using Microsoft Intune (or another management tool).

Additional resources:

9.1.5. Windows adds security and resiliency improvements

Windows is a secure and resilient platform supporting an open ecosystem of partners, enabling flexibility for customers across the globe. Windows is committed to evolving access, security and resiliency features and best practices in response to a changing threat landscape.

Several key updates are intended to make Windows even safer:

  • Updated Microsoft Virus Initiative (MVI). Partners that have the deepest integration into Windows, including Microsoft Defender, agreed to a new set of standards following the September Windows Endpoint Security Summit.
  • Partners must conduct additional security and compatibility testing to components such as drivers with each Windows update, ensuring more issues are found early. Furthermore, Microsoft and its MVI partners are developing strengthened incident response processes for streamlined coordination to move quickly and decisively to address any incident.
  • Microsoft and the MVI also committed to Safe Deployment Practices, in line with Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recommendations, including that security product updates must be gradual and leverage deployment rings and monitoring to help ensure any negative impacting updates are kept to a minimum.
  • Microsoft is also developing new abilities to quickly recover compromised machines. Coming to the Windows Insiders Program in early 2025, and in the broad Windows release after that, is a new recovery solution that can execute targeted fixes on Windows machines even when Windows is unable to boot.

In addition, Microsoft is addressing three longstanding challenges with Windows security: overprivileged users and apps, unverified apps and drivers and insecure credentials and authentications. Microsoft is taking the most significant step in a generation to address these longstanding challenges.

Least-privileged users and apps

  • Administrator protection is a new solution that will have the security of Standard user permissions by default, where users can still easily make Windows system changes when needed. With administrator protection, if a system change requires admin rights, the user is prompted to securely authorize the change using Windows Hello. Once authorized, Windows creates a temporary isolated admin token to get the job done. This temporary token is immediately destroyed once the job is complete. This means admin privileges do not persist. Administrator protection is new to Windows and in preview.

Trusted apps and drivers

  • Smart App Control and App Control for Business policies provide peace of mind that only verified apps can run on a user’s device. This helps eliminate attacks like malicious attachments or social engineered malware. With the power of AI, this is simpler to deploy where admins can select the Microsoft cloud policy, which enables millions of known safe apps to run regardless of where they are deployed from. Line-of-business apps unknown to Microsoft can be easily added through policy changes or via Microsoft Intune managed app deploys.
  • Windows Protected Print works seamlessly with Mopria-certified devices and does not require third-party drivers.

Protecting credentials and authentications

  • Windows Hello is the premium multifactor authentication (MFA) solution on Windows, and it has been hardened and extended to support passkeys. A user no longer needs to choose between a simple sign-in and a safe sign-in. Windows Hello is also being used to protect Recall and Personal Data Encryption.
  • Delegated managed service accounts. With more and more users enabling MFA, attackers are focused on attacking passwords associated with service accounts. Delegated managed service account (DMSA) is being introduced to help enterprises enable automatic credential management and rotation for these accounts. DMSA requires Windows 24H2 or Windows Server 2025 and an upgraded Server 2025 domain controller.

Additional resources:

9.1.6. Evolved tools enable IT to configure and manage Windows at scale

Microsoft continues to evolve tools to enable IT to configure and manage Windows at scale with a modern device management service (MDM) such as Microsoft Intune.

  • Zero Trust DNS: Network destinations are often defined by domain names, making enforcement challenging. Zero Trust DNS restricts Windows devices to approved domains, blocking outbound IPv4 and IPv6 traffic unless resolved by a Protected DNS server or allowed by IT admin.
  • Configuration Refresh is a frequently requested feature by commercial customers using MDM. Configuration drift can occur when a user or app has made unwanted changes to a PC’s system registry. To address this common scenario, Configuration Refresh helps enforce MDM-defined security policies by automatically returning PC settings to the preferred configuration. Because Configuration Refresh works locally on the PC without needing to connect to the MDM, devices can self-manage settings drift even when offline. Configuration Refresh is generally available.
  • Windows Backup for organizations with Microsoft Entra ID accounts: This solution enables backup of settings on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices that are Hybrid or Entra ID joined and restores settings for users on new or reimaged Windows 11 Entra ID joined devices. Customers running either Windows 10 or Windows 11 Hybrid joined or Entra ID joined will be able to take advantage of this solution.

Additionally, Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop bring a range of advanced features to enhance security, authentication and management for Windows in the Cloud. 

  • Faster re-authentication, in preview, will allow IT admins to enforce re-authentication based on sign-in frequency policies.
  • FIDO and Passkeys on MacOS provides a secure and password-less way to sign in on MacOS, in addition to what has been available on Windows. These features collectively improve security, flexibility and control for both managed and unmanaged environments. This is generally available.
  • Mobile application management (MAM) for iOS and Android, in preview, will enhance device redirection and will strengthen security on unmanaged or externally managed devices.
  • Windows App MAM support for iOS and Windows App MAM support for Android, in preview, will allow organizations to define device security criteria and customize access, supporting bring your own device (BYOD) scenarios.

Additional resources:

9.1.7. Universal Print anywhere makes printing convenient, secure

Universal Print is an ideal choice for businesses aiming to simplify print management. It moves print management to the cloud, incorporating modern authentication and Zero Trust principles for a modern, cloud-based print solution that enables simple, rich and secure printing experiences for users. Now, a highly demanded feature makes Universal Print truly universal.

Universal Print anywhere, the feature commonly known as “pull print,” will enable users to print and securely release their jobs to any printer in the organization. Building on the existing secure release with QR code functionality, users will be able to print from any device or app with web connectivity without having to choose a printer in advance. They can then authenticate themselves at the printer of their choice and securely retrieve their print jobs. This will help ensure that confidential documents aren’t left on the printer for unauthorized viewing and minimizes toner and paper waste from uncollected print jobs. This update will also allow admins to configure print options for a Universal Print anywhere printer share. Users will only be able to view the options that have been selected by the administrator. Pull print functionality is now in preview.

Additional resources:

9.1.8. Windows Autopatch and Hotpatch updates

The functionality formerly known as Windows Update for Business deployment service has been woven into Windows Autopatch to offer a more cohesive and streamlined update experience. With this change, customers can use Windows Autopatch to simplify aspects of keeping their Windows devices up to date. This automation will help ensure seamless update deployment for the Windows OS, Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Edge.

The unified dashboard in Microsoft Intune admin center allows for easy management of update policies, groups, status and reports while allowing IT pros to maintain the level of control needed for their organization. Benefits include reduced complexity, enhanced compliance and security and better resource allocation. This unified approach helps to ensure timely updates, minimizes disruptions and frees IT resources for strategic initiatives — with no new Windows Enterprise licensing required.

Hotpatch for Windows, now in preview, will help boost productivity and security. With Hotpatch, updates are downloaded in the background and become effective immediately upon installation, eliminating the need for a device restart. This will enable customers to work without interruptions, while keeping systems protected with the latest security updates.

When combined with Windows Autopatch, Hotpatch will streamline the update process and significantly shorten the time needed for applying updates. Organizations utilizing Windows Autopatch have reported up to a 95% reduction in the time required to deploy feature updates. Hotpatch will also work on Windows 365 Cloud PCs.

Windows Autopatch AI integration with Copilot in Intune, powered by Microsoft Copilot for Security, will be in preview later this year. This is a generative AI security analysis tool that will help organizations get information quickly. It can help IT admins better manage and troubleshoot Windows Autopatch devices using the power of AI.

Copilot in Intune uses Windows Autopatch data. Admins have access only to data within their permissions, including role-based access control roles and scope tags assigned to them. Customers can get details on preparing for Windows feature updates, device readiness, alerts and payload information, gain insights into Windows Autopatch devices’ deployment status and group membership and analyze and assess update impacts on Windows Autopatch devices with suggested resolutions to help ensure they are up to date.

Additional resources:

 

9.1.9. Windows 365 Link now in preview

As organizations 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.

Windows 365 Link, the simple, secure, purpose-built device for Windows 365, will enable users to work securely in a familiar Windows desktop in the Microsoft Cloud with responsive, high-fidelity experiences. Windows 365 Link is in preview and will become generally available for purchase in select markets in April 2025 at an MSRP of $349.

Compact, fanless and lightweight, it’s convenient to ship directly to users and place on a desk. Windows 365 Link will take seconds to boot, instantly wake from sleep and offer local processing for high-fidelity experiences, such as Microsoft Teams meetings and Webex by Cisco, helping users make the most of productive time. With dual 4K monitor support, four USB ports, an audio port, an Ethernet Port, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, Windows 365 Link is seamless to use with wired and wireless peripherals.

Windows 365 Link will be secure by design. The device will not have any local data, local apps or admin-less users and corporate data will stay protected within the Microsoft Cloud. Security baseline policies will be enabled by default and security features cannot be turned off. Log in will be simple and secure with passwordless authentication using Microsoft Entra ID and the Microsoft Authenticator app or USB security keys.

Windows 365 Link will be simple to manage using Microsoft Intune alongside other PCs, with a small Windows-based OS footprint with minimal applicable configuration policies. It can be configured within minutes when first turned on and automatically stays up to date. It is designed to be long-lasting and can be factory reset remotely in minutes, making it easy to reuse.

Windows 365 Link will be able to help organizations advance sustainability. The device is made with 90% post-consumer recycled aluminum alloy in its top shield and 100% pre-consumer recycled aluminum alloy in its bottom plate. Its motherboard contains 100% recycled copper and 96% recycled tin solder. It also has paper-based packaging. Plus, it is an ENERGY STAR® certified device that has lower energy consumption than most desktops for users with external monitors and peripherals connecting to Windows 365.

Organizations with desk-based workers using Windows 365 in Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States can apply for the preview program starting today.

Additional resources:

9.2. Windows Developer

9.2.1. New capabilities coming to Windows Copilot Runtime

Windows Copilot Runtime has new AI APIs and updates to AI frameworks and tools that will help developers scale AI across Windows devices. Windows Copilot Runtime APIs introduces new Imaging APIs, powered by on-device models, that will enable developers and ISVs to integrate AI within their apps, quickly and securely.

Developers will be able to bring new AI capabilities to their apps using these new APIs:

  • Image description API: This API will provide a text description of an image and will be available in January through Windows App SDK 1.7 experimental 2 Experimental release.
  • Image super resolution API: This API will increase the fidelity of the image as well as upscaling the resolution of the image. This API can be used to enhance clarity of blurry images. This will be available in January through Windows App SDK 1.7 experimental 2 Experimental release.
  • Image segmentation API: This API will enable separating the foreground and background of an image, as well as removing specific objects or regions within an image. Creativity apps like image editing or video editing can easily bring background removal capabilities in their apps using this API. This API is powered by Segment Anything Model (SAM) and will be available now through Windows App SDK 1.7 experimental 2 Experimental release.
  • Object erase API: This API will enable erasing unwanted objects from the image and blends the erased area with the rest of the background. This will be available in January through Windows App SDK 1.7 experimental 2 Experimental release.
  • Optical character recognition (OCR) API: This API will recognize and extract text present within an image. This will be available in January through Windows App SDK 1.7 experimental 2 Experimental release.
  • Phi 3.5 Silica: This will be built from the Phi series of models and will be included out of the box. It will be custom-built for the neural processing unit (NPU) in Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X series NPU, enabling text intelligence capabilities like text summarization, text completion and text prediction. This will be available in January for developers to access Phi Silica model capabilities via the API in Windows App SDK 1.7 experimental 2 Experimental release.

Additional resources:

9.2.2. New enhancements to Windows Developer tools

As security and control are becoming increasingly important in today’s world, Microsoft offers several key enhancements to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and WinGet developer tools that will enable IT admins to effectively manage their enterprise’s line-of-business apps.

WSL enhancements

Based on Zero Trust principles, WSL provides two new features to enhance enterprise security. Intune device compliance integration, now generally available, provides IT admins with an interface to enforce WSL distribution and version usage in their enterprise with conditional access. Microsoft Entra ID integration with WSL, now in private preview, will provide a Zero Trust experience while accessing protected enterprise resources from within a WSL distribution. It will give better security around passing Entra tokens and an automatic connection for Linux processes to use the underlying Windows authentication.

WSL also will have new distribution architecture that will offer a seamless and more efficient way for users, IT professionals and enterprise developers to set up, manage and customize their WSL distributions, while complying with their enterprise’s security policies. IT professionals will be able to create custom distributions by bundling together necessary applications, binaries and tools, and easily distribute them to their users. IT professionals can now install WSL distributions through their own configurable source locations, separate from the Microsoft Store. These features will be in preview in the coming months.

WinGet enhancements

WinGet enables enterprises to securely install and configure apps that are important for their businesses. IT professionals will be able to manage and control access with Microsoft Entra ID, so only authorized users within their enterprise can install software onto their individual devices. WinGet Entra ID integration is now available in preview.

WinGet allows enterprise customers the convenience and flexibility to download line-of-business apps from any WinGet source (Microsoft Store included) using the new WinGet Download command. WinGet Download is now generally available.

Additional resources:

9.2.3. Enhancements coming to Windows client platform

As part of the ongoing modernization of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) framework, apps built on WPF and running on Windows 10 or later can now take advantage of cutting-edge design elements and behaviors. Key enhancements include:

  • Support for light and dark themes
  • Rounded corners for controls
  • Compliance with Windows 11 design guidelines

The introduction of the new Fluent theme delivers a fresh, modern Windows 11 aesthetic to WPF apps. With integrated Light/Dark mode and system accent color support, this update is set to enhance user engagement by giving WPF apps a contemporary, polished appearance. First showcased at Microsoft Build 2024, the Fluent theme is now generally available as part of the official .NET 9 release.

Other updates include:

  • Windows App SDK 1.7-exp1 will introduce the highly anticipated TitleBar control, incorporating community feedback to enhance the visual and functional experience of Windows apps. It also includes default TitleBar improvement to match the Windows theme setting. Additionally, this update will address three major UWP API gaps: Web Authentication, Camera Capture UI and supporting additional background triggers in Win32. Also, through Visual Studio 17.12 release, WinUI developers will get minor improvements in areas, such as IntelliSense and hot reload, which should make developing on WinUI easier. This will be available this month through Windows App SDK 1.7-exp1 release.
  • React Native new architecture: The React Native new architecture unlocks capabilities and improvements that were impossible in the legacy architecture. New apps built on React Native for Windows v0.76 or later can now optionally opt into the new architecture preview, which includes support for Win32 and access to new Windows App SDK capabilities like the Scene Graph. React Native for Windows v0.76 also provides a template for library authors to write modules that simultaneously target both the old and new architectures. This update is in preview.

Additional resources: