Tech intensity, the combination of technology adoption and capability built on trust will determine whether organizations will be able to navigate through the covid-19 crisis, Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Microsoft Corp., said on Tuesday.
“Digital technology today is more important than ever," Nadella said, adding that as the world came to a near standstill following the covid-19 outbreak, information technology (IT) professionals helped people and organizations to adapt to the new circumstances. In June, Microsoft said it will launch a global skills initiative to bring more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the year-end.
India-born Nadella was addressing the Ignite event, formerly TechEd, which is the American company’s annual flagship event for developers and IT professionals. The event was held virtually for the first time this year. The first conference had taken place in Orlando, US, in 1993.
As the pandemic transformed the work culture, Microsoft took the opportunity to build the future of productivity, keeping collaboration, learning and well-being in mind, he said. As part of this, Microsoft will be integrating a learning app and user well-being features to Teams, its collaboration tool.
Nadella’s address also included key announcements for the IT and developer community. With the adoption of hybrid cloud, Microsoft shared updates to its Azure hybrid-enabled cloud servers, services and devices, including Azure Arc-enabled servers, Azure Arc-enabled data services and Azure Stack Edge.
The company announced a new voice channel for Dynamics 365 customer services, built on Azure Communication Services. By integrating voice into the existing omni-channel capabilities, Microsoft aims to provide an end-to-end customer service experience within a single solution built on Microsoft cloud.
Nadella said Microsoft is also investing in fundamental research in artificial intelligence (AI) for seamlessly integrating AI into all applications. Microsoft announced low code updates to its Power Platform and Azure for professional developers to quickly create custom apps, bots and workflows with Azure and GitHub integration. It also announced the Power Automate Desktop, which provides a desktop automation option for citizen developers and business users.
To help exploration and use of space data, it will launch Azure Orbital, which will enable customers to quickly analyse data captured from space through physical satellite capabilities. With access to low-latency global fibre networks and Microsoft’s cloud services, it aims to help customers innovate quickly with large satellite data sets. To help the healthcare sector amid the covid crisis, Microsoft announced the launch of its first industry-specific cloud by the end of October.
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