Microsoft Ignite 2019 revisited

The recent Ignite conference saw a raft of new product announcements, with Azure Arc and Project Cortex amongst the most eye catching, along with a number of security-related developments.

Azure Arc is a set of technologies that extends Azure management and enables Azure services to run across on-premises, multi-cloud and edge. Essentially, it will allow Microsoft customers to take advantage of Azure’s management tools and services on almost any platform, including both AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

The new offering can simplify complex and distributed enterprise cloud environments by managing everything via Azure services. Connecting hybrid infrastructure via Azure Arc also improves security for users via automated patching, as well as improved governance, since everything is under one roof.

Azure Corporate Vice President, Julia White outlined some of the benefits of the new offering, which does not as yet have a final release date:  “Customers now have the flexibility to deploy Azure SQL Database and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale where they need it, on any Kubernetes cluster... Customers can get limitless scale by seamlessly spinning up additional Kubernetes clusters in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) if they run out of capacity on-premises”.

Meanwhile, the conference also saw the announcement of Project Cortex, a Microsoft 365 service that uses advanced AI to automatically classify an organisation’s data.

Touted as a knowledge network for Microsoft 365 users, Project Cortex uses AI to deliver insights and expertise on a company’s content and project activity by creating a network repository that is based on topics and knowledge of particular subjects.

Microsoft describes it as the first new service in Microsoft 365 since the launch of Microsoft Teams. It will build on intelligence from the Microsoft Graph, a variety of Microsoft AI technologies and the leading content services of SharePoint. It is also possible to connect to external systems and repositories.

The role of AI will be to automate content capture, categorisation and management, whilst protecting information with intelligent security and compliance.

End users of Microsoft 365 applications, such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Office, will utilise Project Cortex via so-called ‘Topic Cards’ which will pop up from text, showing organisational information. These will be created in background using AI and metadata, and will be based on an organisation’s customers, products, projects, policies and procedures.

Project Cortex is currently available as a ‘private preview’, with a broader release planned for the first half of 2020.

On the security front, the announcements included:

• A new service called Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which brings together System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and the Microsoft Intune mobile management service in a move that combines the two previously separate device management tools
• Insider Risk Management, a tool that helps identify and remediate threats coming from within the organisation. It utilises signals from Microsoft Graph and other services to pull file activity and suspicious behaviour from Office, Windows and Azure, whilst also being capable of collecting third-party signals from human resources systems such as SAP and Workday
• New data protection capabilities to Power BI in an effort to improve governance and data security. Users can now classify and label sensitive Power BI data with the same Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels used in Office. These labels are managed by admins, who can configure labels for both Power BI and all Microsoft 365 apps
• Opening the Microsoft Authenticator service to users of the free Azure Active Directory plan. The expanded ability to use the Microsoft Authenticator App for Android or iOS mobile devices will allow organisations to more broadly enforce multifactor authentication identity verification when users attempt to access applications.

Elsewhere, Microsoft plans to add a new AD Cloud Provisioning capability for organisations with complex environments in order to help synchronise Azure AD users. 

And finally, the company has also confirmed the acquisition of Mover, a cloud file-migration specialist. The intention is to use Mover’s technology to help customers plan, analyse and move content into Microsoft 365.