9 WELCOME: WINTER 2024 Forecasting the year ahead This issue of Technology Record offers a glimpse into the innovations and milestones that will shape 2025, including in our exclusive interview with Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer at Microsoft. Dezen outlines her vision of how Microsoft and its global ecosystem of partners will further enable customer innovation across all sectors in the year ahead. You’ll find the interview on page 32. In our cover story on page 38, Sam Murley, general manager of industrial artificial intelligence and strategic partnerships at Microsoft, explains how lighthouse locations and proof-of-value will help accelerate AI adoption. As the print edition of this magazine reaches its readers, the global industry event season will kick off in New York with NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show for the retail community in January 2025. On page 162, Shanthi Rajagopalan, senior director and global head of strategy for worldwide retail and consumer goods at Microsoft, shares how technologies like AI can take in-store shopping experiences to new heights with products like Microsoft Cloud for Retail and Dynamics 365. Microsoft will celebrate an important milestone in 2025: its 50th anniversary. Throughout this half-century of innovation, Microsoft has maintained its primary focus of “empowering every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more”. For much of that time, the team producing Technology Record has been on hand to report on the progress that Microsoft and its partner ecosystem have made in both the enterprise space and the public sector. We’ll share more on that soon, but for now, I hope you enjoy reading our final issue of 2024. ANDY CLAYTON-SMITH: EXECUTIVE EDITOR
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