Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Today, a new promotional offer for free credit to use the advanced services of Microsoft SharePoint Premium was announced for Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers. Anyone with:

• an existing Microsoft 365 Enterprise cloud instance
• an existing Azure commercial enrollment

…can get access to this promotional offer for SharePoint Premium.

WHAT DOES THE OFFER PROVIDE
This promotion grants a monthly allocation of credit for 9 services that are part of SharePoint Premium. This includes the items in the table below & as you can see, it’s a fair amount of credit for each service:

HOW TO GET IT
Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers can take advantage of the offer by doing nothing but setting up the connection to your Azure enrollment as documented here:

• Try out Microsoft Syntex and explore its services
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/syntex/promo-syntex
  (Syntex is the former name of some of SharePoint Premium’s services)

That’s it. Your Microsoft 365 cloud instance will receive the credit automatically. The promotional offer for SharePoint Premium is available to customers now through June 30, 2024.

For background on the new promotional offer, visit:

• New promotional offer for SharePoint Premium
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/sharepoint-premium-blog/new-promotional-offer-for-sharepoint-premium/ba-p/4021740

(Note: SharePoint Premium is not yet available in GCC cloud instances, so this offer is only available to Enterprise/Commercial subscribers)

Bring external data into your Microsoft 365 Copilot experience to ground generative AI results using connectors and plugins.

• Use Microsoft Graph connectors to integrate the data sources you want with Semantic Index for Copilot. This option pre-indexes defined read-only information used for retrieval with your prompts to drive the most relevant AI-generated responses.
• Use managed and trusted plugins, such as OpenAI plugins, Microsoft Teams message extensions, and Power Platform connectors. Instead of pre-indexing information, plugins optimize for real-time API based data retrieval, and they can optionally write-back data.

Mary David Pasch, Microsoft 365 Copilot Principal Product Manager, shares how both options follow Microsoft’s comprehensive security, compliance, and privacy approach, while respecting defined boundaries within your organization’s data services and can work together when responding to a single prompt.

• VIDEO: How Copilot for Microsoft 365 can work with your external data
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfpDeM-J4us
• DOCS: Documentation on Copilot Extensibility
  https://aka.ms/CopilotExtensibility

#copilot #ai #microsoft #msftadvocate #extensibility

A new year and new things come from the right and left. New Security Adoption Framework (SAF) from #Microsoft is here to help your organization for End-to-End Security Modernization.

The SAF helps organizations to develop and implement a #security strategy and #architecture that fits their business, security, and technical platform requirements. It uses #ZeroTrust principles for all parts of security modernization and offers a realistic way to improve your security in a hybrid, multicloud, and multi-platform, from strategic and programmatic level to architectural and technical design.

The SAF consists of several elements, such as:

• Security Modernization Overview: A collection of security learnings, principles, and recommendations for modernizing security in your organization. This training workshop is a combination of experiences from Microsoft security teams and learnings from customers.
• The Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architectures (#MCRA) are the component of Microsoft’s Security Adoption Framework (SAF) that describe Microsoft’s cybersecurity capabilities and technologies. The diagrams describe how Microsoft security capabilities integrate with Microsoft platforms and third party platforms
• Business Guidance: Multiple planning and execution guides for common focus areas, such as identity and access management, threat protection, information protection, and cloud security.
• Expert Led Workshops: Optional workshops that Microsoft offers for Unified customers to help accelerate their planning and execution of security modernization.

For more details visit:

• Security Adoption Resources – Security documentation | Microsoft Learn
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/ciso-workshop/adoption

The tech trends of today are foreshadowing three disruptive shifts of tomorrow—ubiquitous computing, AI co-reasoning and Quantum at scale. These forces are collectively shaping the future direction of the cloud and will enable innovation that transforms government and society in the coming years. ​

Join us for this episode where we will look more closely at the ground-breaking innovations that will influence the trajectory of governments in the coming years. We will explore how departments, agencies and ministries are applying future innovation and emerging technologies. Find out how 5G, Space, AI, quantum computing and other technologies support government missions and tackle some of society’s greatest challenges with innovation, transformation, and trust.

• Date/Time:
  February 07, 2024 9:00 AM
• Registration:
  The Future Cloud and Government: How governments are applying innovation
  https://futureofcloud.eventbuilder.com/event/80227?source=myco

AI governance is not only a matter of compliance and risk management, but also a strategic advantage and a source of trust to accelerate returns on AI investment.

Microsoft is excited to announce that Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the inaugural IDC MarketScape Worldwide AI Governance Platforms 2023 Vendor Assessment (doc #US50056923, November 2023).

The study represents a vendor assessment of the 2023 AI governance platform market through the IDC MarketScape model. The IDC MarketScape looked at AI governance platforms that ensure AI and machine learning lifecycle governance, collaborative risk management, and regulatory excellence for AI across five key principles: fairness, explainability, adversarial robustness, lineage, and transparency.

Learn more at the announcement post here:

• Microsoft Azure is a Leader in the inaugural IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI Governance Platforms 2023
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-is-a-leader-in-the-2023-idc-marketscape-for-ai-governance-platforms/
  

"For every $1 companies invest in AI, they are realizing an average of $3.5 in return and 5% of organizations worldwide are realizing an average of $8 in return."

That’s the result of a study done by IDC around the business opportunity of AI. 

Explore the approaches and strategies enterprise organizations worldwide are using to realize an average of 3.5X return on their AI investments—and find out how 5 percent of organizations are realizing an average of 8X in returns, according to IDC research.

Get The Business Opportunity of AI to:

• Discover the profile and attributes of organizations that are realizing business value with AI.
• Learn about developing an AI strategy with business measurement practices that accurately show the business opportunity and potential benefits for your organization.
• Explore principles for responsible and secure AI build, deployment, and scale.
• Find out why Microsoft is a trusted partner to help you accelerate your AI transformation and realize business value.

Downloadable Infographic summary of the IDC study: (.PDF)

• The Business Opportunity of AI:
  How leading organizations are using AI to drive impact across every industry and addressing barriers such as AI governance, upskilling, and cost.
  idcdocserv.com/US51315823-IG-ADA

Downloadable Report of IDC Study: (30pg / .PDF)

• The Business Opportunity of AI:
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-idc-delivering-real-business-value-from-ai.html

For organizations looking to get better educated on the use of eDiscovery (Standard or Premium) for Microsoft 365, there are a number of avenues you can pursue:

1. ON-DEMAND TRAINING: “MS-101 Manage content search and investigations in Microsoft 365 (FREE)
   This learning path provides instruction on managing content search and investigations in Microsoft 365, including how to search for content in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal, Microsoft Purview Audit, and Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.
   MS-101 Manage content search and investigations in Microsoft 365 – Training | Microsoft Learn
2. LEARNING PARTNER: “SC 400T00 Administering Information Protection and Compliance in Microsoft 365” (4-day – Purchased directly)
   Microsoft-certified training companies or Learning Partners such as New Horizons/United Training deliver instructor-led courses using Microsoft certified curriculum.  The course they teach is a 5 day course called “SC 400T00 Administering Information Protection and Compliance in Microsoft 365”.  It goes beyond Compliance & Governance but covers both eDiscovery & Audit.  They are usually cost around $2-3K/student/class however if you work through an Account Executive, you can sometimes get volume discounts.

   SC 400T00 Administering Information Protection and Compliance in Microsoft 365
   “Learn how to protect information in your Microsoft 365 deployment. This course focuses on data lifecycle management and information protection and compliance within your organization. The course covers implementation of data loss prevention policies, sensitive information types, sensitivity labels, data retention policies, Microsoft Purview Message Encryption, audit, eDiscovery, and insider risk among other related topics. The course helps learners prepare for the Microsoft Information Protection Administrator exam (SC-400).”
   SC-400T00 Administering Information Protection and Compliance in Microsoft 365 | New Horizons

3. UNIFIED WORKSHOP PLUS: “Office 365 Content Search & eDiscovery Case Management” (1-day – Requires use of Unified credits)
   Customers with Unified Support contracts can use its proactive credits for a workshop on eDiscovery which includes eDiscovery Premium. (which is what you folks are licensed for)  I’ve got page 1 of the datasheet for this offering called, “Office 365 Content Search & eDiscovery Case Management” above.  Contact your Unified Customer Success Account Manager to get this scheduled.

After March 31, 2024, any classic Microsoft Teams users that haven’t updated to new Teams client will be automatically updated to new Teams.

(This automatic update does not apply to Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users. Classic Teams for VDI will reach end of support on June 30th, 2024. Learn more: Upgrade to new Teams for VDI!)

• "Classic Teams users to be updated to new Teams after March 31, 2024"
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/new-teams-automatic-upgrade-announced

#microsoft #msftadvocate #microsoftteams

Microsoft & GitHub are excited to launch 6-lesson, open-source course on “Mastering GitHub Copilot for AI-Paired Programming”.

Learn GitHub Copilot’s autocompletion, customizable features & advanced programming techniques. Learn to harness AI-driven algorithms & optimize code quality.

From GitHub repos to Visual Studio Code integration, perfect your coding prowess in Javascript, Python & more.

• TRAINING: Mastering GitHub Copilot for AI-Paired Programming
  https://github.com/microsoft/Mastering-GitHub-Copilot-for-Paired-Programming

#javascript #python #msftadvocate #GitHub #copilot #ai #Microsoft

Governments worldwide are excited about the endless possibilities innovative technology can provide – especially AI. But one thing is for certain, to fully harness the power of all the wonderful benefits technology can provide, the first step is – migrating your workloads to the cloud. This is where the magic happens and you unlock the immense benefits of services such as AI, analytics, and pure innovation to achieve your goals.

In this training video, you will hear from Greg Wilson, Microsoft’s Worldwide Chief Technology Officer for the Government Industry. He will guide you through the steps of cloud migration and give you tips on how to make the process as smooth as possible.

• Harness the Power of Cloud: Guidance to Help You Along Your Adoption Journey
  https://wwps.microsoft.com/blog/cloud-adoption-journey-training-video

#MSCloud #AI #Microsoft #msftadvocate #cloudmigration #azure #Microsoft365 #publicsector