Alice Chambers |
Microsoft partners exhibited a range of cloud and artificial intelligence solutions to improve a range of business operations across a variety of industries at Microsoft Ignite 2024.
“I see our partner ecosystem as such an extension of everything we do,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, at the event. “From our software partners that literally bet your business on our platform, to our system integrator partners that take our products and create solutions at the face of the customer, and to our channel ecosystem for without whom we would have no business in our corporate accounts and small-to-medium-sized-business customers around the world. You all bring the magic to life each and every day.”
First, AvePoint – a solution provider for data security, governance and resilience – showcased its Microsoft 365 Copilot benchmarking capabilities within AvePoint tyGraph, which provide organisations with critical insights into how their AI adoption and usage patterns compare to others. Adding to the AvePoint Confidence Platform, these enhancements help organisations evaluate their activity to maximise the success and sustainability of Microsoft 365.
“Realising the full potential of AI requires a balanced approach that includes analysing your AI adoption and identifying champion users to model the type of productivity and innovation you’re looking for,” said John Peluso, chief technology officer at AvePoint. “But just focusing on that without ensuring your data is properly governed and secured could lead to immense challenges. With the AvePoint Confidence Platform, we offer organisations a comprehensive solution so that they do not have to choose between adoption, speed and security.”
Next, Cognizant highlighted how agent-based systems and large language models are helping to solve complex problems. Babak Hodjat, chief technology officer of AI at Cognizant, joined Marco Calaina, vice president of Azure AI products at Microsoft, to present a session on the topic, titled ‘Exploring the future of AI with multi-agent systems and LLMs in action’.
Meanwhile, Informatica covered how it is helping customers to revolutionise their data with AI through its native Azure solutions, master data management Azure software-as-a-service and exclusive cloud modernisation programme.
“It’s just a phenomenal partnership that’s really deep and richly integrated across the entire Microsoft Cloud,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and AI at Microsoft, on the Informatica partnership.
In addition, Miro demonstrated how their tools integrate with Copilot, Teams and Microsoft 365 to empower teams to accelerate every phase of work – from brainstorming to delivery.
After 35 years, the Siemens and Microsoft partnership has developed to enhance product lifecycle management, design, manufacturing and other industrial processes by using Microsoft’s cloud and AI technologies. For example, Siemens covered how its Xcelerator portfolio on Azure allows manufacturers to communicate issues faster to the right people to fix the issues, at the event. Kyle Aruda, portfolio development executive at Siemens, led a session on ‘Harnessing AI Innovations: A Collaborative Journey with Siemens and Microsoft’ to discuss this in more detail.
Plus, Shure revealed its inclusion in the Android-based Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP), which is designed to enable device manufacturers and software develops to deliver solutions for all types of users.
“We are excited to further expand our partnership with Microsoft through MDEP,” said Sam Sabet, chief technology officer at Shure. “MDEP provides another avenue for innovation on the highly popular Android platform, leading to the right solutions for our customers. This partnership ensures that our solutions, like IntelliMix Room software, can meet the highest security standards and deliver exceptional audio quality for Microsoft Teams Rooms.”
The audio manufacturer also showcased its audioconference kit at the event. The kit includes an MXA902 ceiling array microphone with built-in loudspeaker paired and pre-routed with the ANIUSB-MATRIX audio network interface for simple setup and seamless connectivity to conferencing platforms like Teams Rooms.
Finally, as Microsoft Teams Partner of the Year for 2024, TeamViewer debuted its AI-powered features at Ignite. Its tools – like Session Insights – use Microsoft Teams, Copilot and Azure OpenAI to provide summaries of meetings for participants.
“TeamViewer and Microsoft are joining forces to enhance the value and experience for our customers,” said Edith Wittmann, general manager of global partner solutions for Germany at Microsoft. “By combining TeamViewer’s advanced remote support and workflow solutions with Microsoft’s powerful AI and cloud infrastructure, we are not only improving agent productivity today, but moving towards an agent-less support in the future, which will be a gamechanger for our customers.”
Discover more news from the event on our dedicated Microsoft Ignite page