A few days ago Microsoft Ignite 2021 was held, the annual event for developers and IT professionals that brings together the partner community. For the second consecutive year in online version, Ignite is one of the most important events in Microsoft's calendar and generates great expectation. This is largely due to the fact that in each edition new products are announced and the company's roadmap is outlined. This year Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defined the company's main objective for the coming months: innovation from the cloud. As part of this cloud strategy and in Satella's own words, the following guidelines are established:
- Ubiquitous and decentralized computing.
- Key role of data.
- Artificial Intelligence.
- Trust by design, or security by design.
- A commitment to mixed reality and the hybrid environment as a work scenario.
New tool: Microsoft Mesh
One of the main and most surprising innovations announced at Microsoft Ignite 2021 was Microsoft Mesh. A new tool for the development of mixed reality that caused great interest among the partner community for its innovative functionality. Microsoft Mesh allows to connect and interact with people in the distance through virtual reality. It allows interaction through avatars or holograms, as desired by the user. We leave you a video so you can see the most striking part of its functionality:
Mesh will be integrated in the future with Teams and Dynamcis 365 via the cloud. It will be a very powerful tool for presenting, for example, engineering projects.
Boost hybrid working with Microsoft apps
Hybrid work is the environment Microsoft is betting on for post-pandemic reality and is developing apps and enhancements along these lines. For example, it has added the Connect app to Microsoft Teams as a new collaboration feature for new organizations. It has also created more views in the collaborative app to continue to refine it as a work hub.
On the other hand, it continues to add features to Microsoft Viva, the recently announced platform for remote work.
What's new in the cloud
Launches several new tools to continue facilitating developments in the cloud. Highlights include Azure Percept, for developing and managing AI solutions, and Azure Synapse Pathway, for accelerating the migration of workloads to Microsoft's analytics service.
In parallel, it continues to launch new clouds for sectors in addition to the existing ones.
More security
As usual, functional improvements and new products are accompanied by security updates. We highlight the following announcements in this area:
- Passwordless authentication in Azure Active Directory.
- Threat reports in Microsoft Defender.
- End-to-end encryption in Microsoft Teams.
