MICROSOFT recently held Inspire 2023, an event that highlighted the value of the Microsoft Cloud across three key areas, with numerous new releases designed to accelerate AI transformation, drive business success, and foster growth and profitability in partnership with Microsoft.
“Microsoft Inspire is a chance to acknowledge the role our partners play in customer success and to share new opportunities and ways to engage with Microsoft products,” Peter Maquera, Microsoft Philippines Chief Executive Officer said. “We’re excited to share even more AI-powered solutions and show how Microsoft partners can apply these AI innovations across their organizations in a variety of ways.”
One of the key highlights was the introduction of Bing Chat Enterprise, which empowers organizations with AI-powered chat capabilities while ensuring commercial data protection. This feature enables secure and efficient communication, offering better insights, improved efficiency, and enhanced creativity for commercial customers.
Bing Chat Enterprise will be rolled out this year in preview mode to organizations licensed for Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business Premium, and Business Standard, without any additional cost. In the future, it will also be available as a stand-alone subscription at a minimal fee per user, per month.
Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrated into various Microsoft applications, garnered significant attention, boosting productivity across different tasks. By enhancing creativity in Word, facilitating data analysis in Excel, aiding presentation design in PowerPoint, and assisting meeting summaries in Teams, Copilot is set to be a game-changer. The pricing for Microsoft 365 Copilot was officially announced at $30 per user per month for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium customers, making it accessible to a wide range of users.
Recognizing the importance of diverse tools for sellers, Microsoft expanded functionality in Microsoft Sales Copilot within Dynamics 365 Sales. This includes AI-generated opportunity summaries, contextualized email drafts, and meeting preparations, empowering sellers with comprehensive resources.
Additionally, Microsoft showcased the power of tailored chatbots in Power Virtual Agents for customer service departments. These chatbots can be trained within minutes using natural language and can reference internal and external knowledge sources, customer service applications, and web data via Bing Search.
Addressing workflow challenges faced by organizations, Microsoft announced the general availability of next-generation AI features in Power Automate Process Mining. Customers can now benefit from AI-powered insights to optimize existing processes, resulting in greater efficiencies through low-code automation. Process Mining enables users to understand their business operations, generate insights, receive app and automation suggestions, and leverage the Power Platform for rapid solution development.
Microsoft also made significant investments to enhance the scale and availability of Azure Migrate & Modernize, along with the launch of Azure Innovate. These developments were driven by the increasing demand for analytics and AI, providing comprehensive support for seamless migrations and the creation of AI-powered applications.
Expanding its partnership with Epic, a leading healthcare software company, Microsoft collaborated on AI-driven solutions that alleviate administrative burdens for clinicians, allowing them to focus more on quality patient care. Epic integrated Azure OpenAI Service into its electronic health record software and included Nuance DAX Express to enhance healthcare outcomes.
To further strengthen collaboration with partners, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. This initiative empowers partners to deliver customer value while leveraging Microsoft AI and the Microsoft Cloud. The program offers a comprehensive portfolio of investments across various partner business models, catering to all stages of maturity.
