What’s New From Ignite? Office Perpetual Licensing Lives On!
Microsoft’s annual customer facing technology event is about to come to its conclusion; this event looks to promote new software and service offerings as well as detail technical roadmaps of the next generation releases planned or upcoming.
What did we find out?
Microsoft are, like many others progressing the machine learning, cognitive and artificial intelligence initiatives which is being reflected in Satya’s keynote as well as the improvements in some of their releases.
- Teams to replace Skype for Business even though Microsoft Teams is less than a year old, it is now going to consume Skype for Business (which was the later version of Lync and Office Communications Server). This is thought to be a response to rise in uptake of Slack, but also to ensure that their overall collaboration platform is agile and responding to customer requirements.
- SQL Server 2017 confirmed the release date for the latest version is 2nd October 2017, with the added bonus of extending the platform of deployment to include Linux.
- Dynamics 365; Microsoft’s third 365-branded software subscription is Dynamics 365. That’s having some machine learning, or artificial intelligence as it’s now branded, infused. The company has built intelligent agents to help with customer care and conversion management tools that are all using machine learning. HP, Macy’s, and Microsoft itself have been using these new tools and claim improved customer satisfaction and the ability to handle more customer requests in less time.
- Office 2019 has been formally scheduled a release timeframe which is likely to be in the second half of next year. The main interesting points relate to the fact that this will still be able to be procured through the traditional perpetual route as well as through Office 365. The other element is that it reflects that not all customers will want to go to Office 365 and as such there is an allowance for the integration of technology for on premises as well as in the cloud.
- Azure Stack follows the above concession that the hybrid model is likely to be the interim solution prior to the predicted avalanche into full public cloud IT service consumption in the next 5-10 years. This allows customers to effectively deploy their own instance of Azure on premises with 90% of the look, feel and functionality of Azure with the options to burst out into public cloud if scalability issues prevail.
How Can SCC Help?
If you are interested in getting more detailed updates on what the above and other announcements are, please contact SCC and we will arrange a briefing session to align to your requirements.
Contact SCC today [email protected]