{"id":277099,"date":"2018-09-24T19:21:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T17:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=277099"},"modified":"2018-09-24T19:24:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T17:24:24","slug":"microsoft-launches-new-office-and-cloud-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cloud-hosting\/277099-microsoft-launches-new-office-and-cloud-services.html","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft launches new Office and cloud services"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft Corp. unveiled\u00a0a raft of product updates and new services in security, artificial intelligence and other areas\u00a0as the company tries to sustain the\u00a0growth of\u00a0its Azure cloud and Office software businesses.<\/p>\n<p>It also announced an agreement on common data standards with Adobe Systems Inc. and SAP SE, that will allow business to move clients\u2019 data around among platforms. The partnership, called the Open Data Initiative, aims to put the customer &#8220;back in control of their own data,&#8221; Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said at the company\u2019s\u00a0Ignite conference for information technology professionals on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The initiative will eliminate data silos by combining all the information companies retain on single individual customers into one real-time and renewable package, he said. This will allow companies to create a complete view of customer interactions and connect data across their organizations.<\/p>\n<p>Nadella\u00a0also introduced new offerings and provided updates that include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Microsoft Teams \u2013\u00a0the company\u2019s Slack rival \u2013\u00a0has 329,000 organizations as customers, including 87 of the Fortune 100.<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Windows and Office apps will have a search box that queries both Bing web search and internal corporate documents and data.<\/li>\n<li>Office 365 users can now email and share documents with LinkedIn direct\u00a0connections from Office apps.<\/li>\n<li>A little lightning bolt icon in Office apps \u2013\u00a0starting first in Excel and PowerPoint \u2013\u00a0will provide suggestions for design, layout and images based on what the user is doing.<\/li>\n<li>The company \u201cdeclared an end to the era of passwords\u201d by adding the ability to login to hundreds of thousands of corporate apps without a password via Microsoft\u2019s Authenticator service.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The world\u2019s\u00a0largest software company also said it\u2019s spending $40 million to put its\u00a0AI products to work in helping\u00a0refugees, children and disaster response in conjunction with organizations like the World Bank.<\/p>\n<p>Called AI for Humanitarian Action, the five-year program is\u00a0the latest\u00a0part of\u00a0the company\u2019s AI for Good initiative begun last year. One program will provide computer vision and facial modeling tools to help surgeons\u00a0improve cleft palate surgeries\u00a0for needy kids. The company will also work\u00a0with the United Nations\u00a0and World Bank to use AI and data-modeling software for disaster forecasting so the agencies can have supplies in place ahead of time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAI can be a gamechanger in helping aid response,\u201d said Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, whose unit will oversee the program.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft General Manager John Kahan, who had been leading a team of data scientists tracking\u00a0key performance metrics for the company\u2019s executive team, will oversee the new program and report to Smith. Kahan, who lost a baby son to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, had also been using\u00a0data science to find new approaches to SIDS prevention. That\u00a0program will become\u00a0part of AI for Humanitarian Action.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/277051-google-chrome-getting-a-dark-theme-report.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Google Chrome getting a dark theme \u2013 Report<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft Corp. unveiled\u00a0a raft of product updates and new services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":242088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[4214,123,24138,463],"class_list":["post-277099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hosting","tag-cloud","tag-microsoft","tag-office","tag-security-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}