Posted by: kurtsh | February 19, 2025

NEWS: Microsoft announces “Majorana 1”, revolutionary “Quantum Computing on-a-chip”

Microsoft’s new revolutionary quantum computing technology delivers massive scale – far exceeding that of any other quantum solution today.

Microsoft’s new “Majorana 1” quantum computing chip is poised to transform the quantum computing industry as the world’s first Quantum Processing Unit (QPU). (p.s. Majorana is pronounced “my-yor-rana”)

Some notes:

VIDEOS:
Watch Microsoft Technical Fellow, Krysta Svore, VP Advanced Quantum Development explain what this breakthrough advancement means for Microsoft customers:

The following videos are also available at Microsoft’s Azure Quantum news site:

MICROSOFT’S QUANTUM INVESTMENT:
This augments Microsoft decade’s long investment in quantum technology & elevates its quantum offerings: (See What is Azure Quantum?)

  • Azure Quantum Workspace
    An environment for running & managing quantum programs on real quantum hardware of their choice & monitoring quantum jobs. Provides customers with $500 of free Azure Quantum credits for each quantum hardware provider.
  • Quantum Development Kit
    A free tool in Visual Studio Code that empowers developers to write quantum programs in Q#, Qiskit & Cirq, making it versatile for developers working with different quantum programming languages.
  • Azure Quantum Elements
    Accelerates scientific discovery by providing simulation workflows optimized for Azure High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters, AI-accelerated computing, and integration with quantum tools. It enables researchers to simulate quantum mechanical systems, such as molecules, and experiment with existing quantum hardware.
  • Azure Quantum Partners
    Microsoft already makes available quantum hardware from other providers to offer diverse quantum resources, including:
    • IONQ: Trapped-ion quantum computers with up to 11 fully connected qubits
    • PASQAL: Neutral atom-based quantum processors with long coherence times
    • Quantinuum: Trapped-ion systems with high-fidelity qubits and low error rates
    • Rigetti: Superconducting qubit-based quantum processors with fast gate times
    • …and more.

Read more about Microsoft’s announcement here:

To get started using Azure Quantum:

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 19, 2025

INFO: Microsoft Community Hub Blogs (aka the “TechCommunity”)

Microsoft has multiple blog platforms on multiple domains and depending on your needs, you may need to go to a different one. The largest of these Microsoft blog platforms is the Microsoft Community Hub, also known as the TechCommunity, which is largely focused on technical information from various Microsoft product groups for IT Professionals.

Here’s a list of the blogs available on the Microsoft Community Hub:

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 18, 2025

EVENT: Azure CosmosDB Conf 2025 – April 15, 2025

Join us for our 5th annual Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2025, a free virtual developer event co-hosted by Microsoft and the Azure Cosmos DB community.

Tune in to learn why Azure Cosmos DB is the leading database for the era of AI and modern app development. Dive into a dynamic mix of sessions from Microsoft and community experts, showcasing their innovative projects and breakthroughs. Join our engaging 3-hour live show and explore additional sessions on-demand. Mark your calendar for April 15, 2025, and join us online for an exciting day of learning, sharing, and inspiration!

Visit https://aka.ms/azurecosmosdbconf to register!

Reflecting on 2024: A Look Back
Last year’s sessions at the Azure CosmosDB Conf 2024 event were filled with groundbreaking insights, innovative use cases, and practical demonstrations that illuminated the vast possibilities of Azure Cosmos DB. As we prepare for 2025, let’s take a moment to look back at some of the standout sessions and memorable moments from Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2024.

  • Playlist of All 2024 Talks: Relive the entire conference experience by browsing through the full playlist of sessions. This collection showcases a variety of topics and deep dives that spanned the event.
  • Highlight Reel: Get a taste of the most exciting moments with the Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2024 Highlight Reel, capturing the energy, key announcements, and high-impact sessions that defined the conference.

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 17, 2025

TRAINING: “The Value of Windows Enterprise” webinar series – Monthly

We’re all being asked to do more with less.  Maximizing ROI for every dollar is now more important than ever.  It’s critical that technology decision makers have the information needed to make those tough calls around where to invest.  You’re familiar with Windows, but what about the tangible benefits it provides for the organization and employees? 

Here’s an opportunity to gather timely information to help truly understand the value of Windows Enterprise. Grab a coffee or quick bite then join us for any of the six, quick-hit, 20-minute sessions.  

These sessions, led by subject matter experts and available live and on-demand, delve into topics such as: 

And more! See the list of upcoming Windows Enterprise webinars & register at:

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 17, 2025

TRAINING: Cybersecurity guidance from Microsoft Incident Response researcher, Lukas Beran

Microsoft Cybersecurity Incident Response, Senior Security Researcher, Lukas Beran maintains an amazing security web site & a great security YouTube channel which documents ways to protect your Microsoft cloud & on-premises footprint.

He posts regularly about Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, Microsoft Intune & Office 365. For example, here’s a list of some of his amazing videos:

If you are responsible for cybersecurity in your organization & work with Microsoft technologies, I highly encourage you to parse through Lukas’ web site & YouTube channel.

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 16, 2025

INFO: Oversharing Control at Enterprise Scale with Microsoft 365 Copilot & Microsoft Purview

Minimize risks that come with oversharing and potential data loss. Spotlight data-sharing risks across top SharePoint sites, securing sensitive information using the “oversharing report“, a part of Microsoft Purview (Commercial) and its new Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI insights.

Leverage new Data Loss Prevention policies for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and SharePoint Advanced Management – now included with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Automate “site access reviews” at scale and add controls to restrict access to sites if they contain highly sensitive information.

In this video, Erica Toelle, Microsoft Purview Senior PM, shows how to:

  • control data visibility
  • automate site access reviews
  • fine-tune permissions with Pilot, Deploy, Optimize phases

(Written documentation to accompany this video is available here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftmechanicsblog/oversharing-control-at-enterprise-scale–updates-for-microsoft-365-copilot-in-mi/4321109)

Read more about deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot at:

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 16, 2025

INFO: Obtaining licenses for SharePoint Advanced Management for Microsoft 365 Copilot for GCC customers

If Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses are purchased for a sub-segment of your Microsoft 365 GCC users, it can provide SharePoint Advanced Management licensing for ALL USERS as announced on our blog. For instance, if a customer buys 250 seats for M365 Copilot, all 20,000+ users in the M365 cloud instance will access to SharePoint Advanced Management.

Note however: GCC customers will not automatically receive these SharePoint Advanced Management licenses until April 2025.

  • From an administrative standpoint, for any of my customers purchasing pilot Microsoft 365 Copilot GCC licenses (~10% of your Microsoft 365 footprint) right now until April 2025, contact your Account team and we can request an exception with Microsoft 365 engineering to roll out SharePoint Advanced Management trial licenses tenant-wide for you extended for 3 months until it’s fully integrated with the M365 Copilot GCC purchases in April 2025 & can obtain full licenses/non-trial licenses.
  • After the exception is approved, we can work with you to ensure that your Unified CSAM &/or CSA are working together to then educate you on assigning licenses, configuring features, enabling them, and best practices on monitoring and usage.
  • There is also an offering from Unified Support called “SharePoint Optimization” that can be leveraged, with modules of SharePoint Advanced Management being included in it.

NOT READY TO LICENSE MICROSOFT 365 COPILOT?
Organizations with Microsoft 365 GCC that don’t want to license Microsoft 365 Copilot immediately, wil be able to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat in April 2025. Copilot Chat is the “lite” version of M365 Copilot which provides Enterprise secure, IT-managed Copilot for end users as part of their Entra ID Premium P1 licensing. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat exclusively provides responses based on Internet/web data & does NOT INDEX OR PROVIDE RESPONSES based on Microsoft 365 GCC protected data from Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Teams or OneDrive for Business. (Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat consequently does not include SharePoint Advanced Management since Copilot Chat does not automatically index SharePoint Online or OneDrive files.)

(Note: There are no “trial” licenses of Microsoft 365 Copilot. If you wish to “test” Microsoft 365 Copilot & it’s integration with your Microsoft 365 tenant data, you are required to purchase licenses. These licenses will again include SharePoint Advanced Management licensing as mentioned above & this will activate the “Semantic Index service” and the “Microsoft 365 Copilot System service” for use in your organization’s Microsoft 365 cloud instance.)

To read more about SharePoint Advanced Management, visit:

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 13, 2025

NEWS: OpenAI’s o3 model demonstrates glimpses of generalized Artificial Intelligence

Most people are familiar with narrow or weak Artificial Intelligence. GPT4, Wolfram Alpha & other more well-known models are good examples of these AI that have a specific focus & purpose.

But imagine artificial intelligence with the unique ability to:

  • Reason over problems it’s never seen, much less been trained for
  • Infer both what needs to be solved & how to solve it

THE FIRST GENERALIZED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AGI)?
That’s what OpenAI’s new o3 model has demonstrated. Instead of being trained for a specific type of problem, o3 is able to evaluate a situation, determine the problem that needs to be solved & figure out how to solve it.

The video below is a breakthrough demonstration of generalized AI that’s never been seen before.

THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & QUANTUM COMPUTING CONNECTION
The catch? It’s currently very expensive to run – by an order of magnitude. Single executions can run thousands of dollars due to the immense compute power required to simply run the model, much less train it.

This is one of the reasons why Microsoft believes in not just the power of Artificial Intelligence for problem solving but also the power of Quantum Computing, Azure Quantum & Microsoft’s Quantum Safe program to support such workloads which can reduce compute requirements for large problems from a hyperbolic curve to a linear one.

What’s extremely resource intensive today with Classical Supercomputing can be made run-of-the-mill with Quantum Computing. Imagine the problems it’ll solve, like battery life, cancer detection, ocean cleanup, vaccine development, climate change, election tampering detection, educational equity, environmental protection, accelerating education, etc.

And it’s just around the corner. Years not decades.

UPDATE: According to a Twitter post from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI’s o3 model will be integrated into GPT5.

#ai

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 11, 2025

INFO: Microsoft’s own AI Center of Excellence

Microsoft Digital (our IT dept) created an AI Center of Excellence (CoE). Here’s the story of how we did that and how our CoE is now helping us navigate the AI revolution and figure out how to deploy it internally across Microsoft.

Microsoft Digital’s write up goes over the following areas:

  • Evaluating AI for Microsoft
  • Meeting needs and answering important questions
  • Transforming Microsoft with the AI Center of Excellence
    • Strategy. They work with product and feature teams to determine what we want to achieve with AI. They define business goals and prioritize the most important implementations and investments.
    • Architecture. They enable infrastructure, data, services, security, privacy, scalability, accessibility, and interoperability for all our AI use cases.
    • Roadmap. They build and manage implementation plans for all our AI projects, including tools, technologies, responsibilities, targets, and performance measurement.
    • Culture. They foster collaboration, innovation, education, and responsible AI among our stakeholders.
  • Key takeaways

Read the article here:

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Posted by: kurtsh | February 10, 2025

INFO: Restricting Microsoft 365 Copilot discoverability for GCC instances

For customers looking to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot but want to ensure it doesn’t accidentally discover data that wasn’t properly secured, Microsoft is providing a powerful solution that restricts discoverability & access of Microsoft 365 Copilot at no additional cost to M365 Copilot customers without requiring labelling, classification & security policies.

This solution is called “SharePoint Advanced Management” & customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses will also get complimentary SharePoint Advanced Management licenses which will start appearing in GCC tenants in the next couple months.

The process of using SharePoint Advanced Management licenses to prevent oversharing in anticipation of using Microsoft 365 Copilot are discussed here but in summary:

Not yet available for GCC however for customers with Non-Disclosure Agreements & Microsoft 365 Commercial test environments:

  • PREVIEW: Use AI Powered Semantic matching to find similar sites (Requires signed agreement)
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