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In the not so distant future, businesses may need to reconfigure their meeting spaces to better support onsite employees who collaborate with colleagues working from home. Dell and Logitech’s newest Meeting Space Solutions for Microsoft Teams Rooms offers a complete group collaboration ecosystem led by Dell’s smallest commercial desktop, the OptiPlex 7080 Micro – running Teams Room Experience for Windows, and pre-bundled with Dell Large Format Monitors and Logitech audio and video peripherals, such as the Logitech Tap Touch Controller and a Logitech MeetUp ConferenceCam, depending on the room configuration. The Dell and Logitech solution combines IntelPro technology with Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2020/10/c8621qt_logittech-tap_op7080mff_logitech-rally-plus_logitech-rally-mic-pod_msft-teams-1280x1280-1.jpeg IDC research reveals 81% of employees believe monitors with higher resolution, better ergonomics and color improve the overall working experience. Dell’s expanded UltraSharp portfolio aims to hit all these marks with mini-LEDs, a built-in colorimeter and low blue light reduction screens. Design professionals working in film, special effects and animation rely on color accurate displays to produce their creative masterpieces. The Dell UltraSharp 32 HDR PremierColor Monitor (UP3221Q) is the world’s first 31.5-inch professional monitor with a built-in Calman Powered colorimeter*, which gives creators the flexibility of on-demand or scheduled calibration with or without the PC attached. It also has 4K resolution and VESA DisplayHDR 1000 to enable precise and uniform color reproduction of film and video content. It is expected to be available worldwide on Nov. 5 starting at $4,999.99. For professionals who frequently work with spreadsheets and data-driven tasks, the Dell UltraSharp 24 USB-C Hub Monitor (U2421E) is Dell’s first monitor with ComfortView Plus – a built-in, TÜV Rheinland-certified Hardware Low Blue Light solution that maintains color accuracy on the screen and minimizes blue light emission to optimize eye comfort. The 16:10 aspect ratio in this 24-inch InfinityEdge display provides more on-screen real estate, with an extended vertical height to reduce the amount of scrolling required to view content. It is available now worldwide starting at $449.99. The Dell UltraSharp 34 Curved USB-C Hub Monitor (U3421WE) features WQHD resolution and 95% DCI-P3 color coverage, and delivers an immersive audiovisual experience with three-sided ultra-thin borders and built-in dual speakers. It is expected to be available worldwide on Dec. 1 starting at $1,199.99. *Based on Dell analysis of comparable monitors, June 2020. Continue reading...

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Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition – a game for which the Age community “generated quite a list of items they’d love to see, from must-haves to wild hopes and dreams” – is now available on Windows 10 and Steam, as well as with Xbox Game Pass for PC and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. In an Xbox Wire post by Adam Isgreen (Studio Creative Director for World’s Edge), he writes of the community’s feedback: “We incorporated every key request into the game… and then went even further.” Some of the work the team has done includes: 4K graphics with ultrawide support, completely rebuilt assets (every tree, terrain piece, building and unit) and an enhanced audio and musical score. Two new civilizations join the 14 already available. Head over to Xbox Wire to find out more. Continue reading...

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Over the past few months, we have learned so much about productivity, flexibility, resilience and compassion. We have been working in ways we never thought possible, including managing necessary safety precautions, learning to connect with small or large teams while presenting to a screen, taking care of family and friends while being in the next room on calls, adjusting hours to address new demands and so much more. And I am deeply empathetic that this is on top of navigating the emotional toll of all that we are witnessing and experiencing. At the same time, the pandemic has raised questions about what our employees can expect in the future, so we provided some guidance this week to employees on our thinking about work flexibility. Moving forward, it is our goal to offer as much flexibility as possible to support individual workstyles, while balancing business needs and ensuring we live our culture. Flexibility can mean different things to each of us, and we recognize there is no one-size-fits-all solution given the variety of roles, work requirements and business needs we have at Microsoft. To address this, we have provided guidance to employees to make informed decisions around scenarios that could include changes to their work site, work location, and/or work hours once offices are open without any COVID-19 restrictions. Our step-by-step guidance includes considerations like office space, salary and benefits, local law, personal taxes, expenses and more. Our guidance includes: Work site (the physical space where you work, e.g. office, center, home, mobile): We recognize that some employees are required to be onsite and some roles and businesses are better suited for working away from the worksite than others. However, for most roles, we view working from home part of the time (less than 50%) as now standard – assuming manager and team alignment. Work hours (the hours and days when employees work, e.g. workday start and end times, full- or part-time): Work schedule flexibility is now considered standard for most roles. While part-time continues to be subject to manager approval, our guidance is meant to facilitate an open conversation between a manager and employee regarding considerations. Work location (the geographic location where you work, e.g. city and country): Similarly the guidance is there for managers and employees to discuss and address considerations such as role requirements, personal tax, salary, expenses, etc. Our guidance is to help employees plan ahead for the future. For now, returning to many of our offices around the world is still optional for employees, except for essential onsite roles. While we’ve shared that we will challenge long-held assumptions and seek to be on the forefront of what is possible leveraging technology, we have also communicated that we are not committing to having every employee work from anywhere, as we believe there is value in employees being together in the workplace. We will continue to evolve our approach to flexibility over time as we learn more. The post Embracing a flexible workplace appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

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One of the most gratifying parts of my job at Microsoft is being able to witness and influence the intersection of technological progress and impact: harnessing the big trends in computing that have the opportunity to benefit everybody on the planet. Frank’s post this morning from Ignite shows just how much progress is happening in many of these areas. Today, the foremost computing trend is undoubtedly artificial intelligence (AI). As we increasingly develop the ability to deploy huge AI models at scale in a way that can be leveraged by all developers and businesses, AI is becoming a platform – an environment upon which folks can build amazing new experiences, just like we’ve seen happen before with personal computers, mobile devices or the internet. Getting this AI platform off the ground requires unprecedented computing horsepower. So, this May, we expanded upon our ongoing partnership with the world-leading AI research organization OpenAI to announce one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers – a custom-designed, Azure-hosted home for training OpenAI’s equally massive AI models. Since then, you’ve probably already seen OpenAI’s announcement of their groundbreaking GPT-3 model – an autoregressive language model that outputs remarkably human-like text. GPT-3 is the largest and most advanced language model in the world, clocking in at 175 billion parameters, and is trained on Azure’s AI supercomputer. Today, I’m very excited to announce that Microsoft is teaming up with OpenAI to exclusively license GPT-3, allowing us to leverage its technical innovations to develop and deliver advanced AI solutions for our customers, as well as create new solutions that harness the amazing power of advanced natural language generation. We see this as an incredible opportunity to expand our Azure-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology, enables new products, services and experiences, and increases the positive impact of AI at Scale. Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, so we want to make sure that this AI platform is available to everyone – researchers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, businesses – to empower their ambitions to create something new and interesting. The scope of commercial and creative potential that can be unlocked through the GPT-3 model is profound, with genuinely novel capabilities – most of which we haven’t even imagined yet. Directly aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data (including code), converting natural language to another language – the possibilities are limited only by the ideas and scenarios that we bring to the table. Realizing these benefits at true scale – responsibly, affordably and equitably – is going to require more human input and effort than any one large technology company can bring to bear. On that journey, today is only the beginning of the beginning. OpenAI will continue to offer GPT-3 and other powerful models via its own Azure-hosted API, launched in June. While we’ll be hard at work utilizing the capabilities of GPT-3 in our own products, services and experiences to benefit our customers, we’ll also continue to work with OpenAI to keep looking forward: leveraging and democratizing the power of their cutting-edge AI research as they continue on their mission to build safe artificial general intelligence. That future will be what we make of it – and I believe that we’re on the right track. The post Microsoft teams up with OpenAI to exclusively license GPT-3 language model appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Today, every industry is reimagining how it uses technology to transform business. We’ve seen multiple years’ worth of digital transformation happen in a matter of months because of the impact of COVID-19. We’re so inspired by the tremendous learning and experimentation taking place in all sectors of business. And what is becoming clear is that those companies and organizations that are able to adopt technology to drive their digital transformation forward are building resilience for today and for whatever may come. As we kick off Ignite 2020, we’re also mindful of the challenges presented by COVID-19. Many organizations are struggling due to shifting priorities and needs of their customers. People are adapting to an entirely new way to work, while others are looking for safe, new ways to continue critical work amidst a global health crisis and economic uncertainty. And of course, there are many who are out of work. Through each of these challenges though, there is hope and there is opportunity – for individuals and organizations. We see it time and again from our customers, who are adopting new technologies to chart a path forward but also building their own unique capabilities and reimagining what’s possible. Every aspect of business operation is becoming more resilient and transformed with the power of digital technology. We have a front-row seat to the innovation and creativity of our customers, and today’s announcements bring additional tools to help them solve the challenges they’re facing now while building what’s possible in the future. This week at Microsoft Ignite 2020, we’ll share how we’re empowering organizations and people to build this resilience with a set of new tools and services, anchored in trust, from across the Microsoft stack. For cloud services customers: With Dynamics 365 we are focused on helping organizations digitize their end-to-end business operations so they can rapidly adapt to changing market conditions. We are introducing new capabilities focused on the most critical centers for customer satisfaction, especially in today’s business climate: Customer Service and Supply Chain Management. These enhanced solutions are business-ready, yet rapidly scalable and customizable to build unique digital capabilities. A new first-party voice channel for Dynamics 365 Customer Service, built on Azure Communication Services, will be available in private preview. By integrating voice into existing omnichannel capabilities, we are providing a seamless, end-to-end customer service experience within a single solution built on the Microsoft cloud that empowers teams to deliver consistent, connected support across all channels. Two new add-ins for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to enhance visibility and enable customers to quickly respond to changing demand and supply. The new Cloud and Edge Scale Unit add-ins allow organizations to run critical warehousing and manufacturing workloads on the using Edge Azure stack devices to improve resilience and ensure operations without interruptions even when temporarily disconnected from the cloud. The new Inventory Visibility add-in enables large volume retailers and manufacturers to easily handle millions of transactions every minute and determine cross-channel inventory accurately in real time. [*]Secure, streamlined communication with customers and the workforce is crucial in this environment, and today we’re announcing Azure Communications Services, making it easy for developers to deliver enterprise-grade communication experiences across devices and platforms, using the same secure platform that powers Microsoft Teams. [*]Hybrid adoption in the enterprise is accelerating as it becomes central to enabling remote work, prioritizing IT investments and accessing the scale of cloud computing. Today, we’re sharing updates to our Azure hybrid-enabled cloud servers, services and devices, including Azure Arc-enabled servers, Azure Arc-enabled data services and Azure Stack Edge. [*]For Azure AI, we’re updating Azure Cognitive Services with new capabilities to streamline business processes, enabling organizations to stay resilient and committed to economic recovery while deploying AI responsibly. Metrics Advisor Preview is a new service that makes it easier to proactively monitor the performance of an organization’s growth engines and diagnose issues. Spatial analysis is a new feature of Computer Vision developed with strict ethical standards and guidance on how to implement responsibly, and it can be applied to help teams and organizations re-open by creating in-room layouts that support social distancing and other health-compliance measures. [*]Continuing our focus on helping enterprises create immersive and innovative experiences for customers, we’re expanding the portfolio of Azure Mixed Reality services to now include Azure Object Anchors, enabling developers to automatically detect, align and track objects in the physical world. [*]We are also announcing the commercialization of our industry leading 3D Time of Flight depth technology that powers the Azure Kinect enabling the development of commercial 3D cameras and related solutions to our technology to partners around the world, including Analog Devices and SICK AG. [*]To further scientific advancement, exploration and use of space data, we are extending the power of our global cloud to space. Today we’re announcing the preview of Azure Orbital, enabling customers to quickly analyze data captured from space through physical satellite capabilities. With access to low-latency global fiber networks and the global scale of Microsoft’s cloud services, customers can innovate quickly with large satellite datasets. [*]Running a data-driven organization is important as business realities shift, and today we’re announcing Power BI Premium per user, which creates an easy entry for organizations and individuals to create, view and collaborate securely over an organization’s most important and relevant data. For information workers and those working to build low-code solutions: We’re announcing new Microsoft 365 capabilities meant to equip organizations and teams with the tools they need to be resilient and thrive in the new world of work. A few of my favorites are: Microsoft Teams features that make meetings better, including new Together mode scenes and custom layouts that make presented content more dynamic and engaging, for example, by bringing the presenter’s video feed into the foreground of the shared content screen. Enhancements to Microsoft Teams Rooms and devices that support health and safety as some people return to their worksites, such as Touchless meeting experiences, like the Room remote app, Teams casting, and voice assistance with Microsoft Cortana, so that employees can meet safety guidelines without compromising the power of collaboration. New personal well-being insights and features in Teams, including a virtual commute that provides structure to long workdays from home, and integration with apps like Headspace that make it easier to de-stress and find focus through meditation before, during or after busy work days. As organizations face uncertainty and change, insights from Workplace Analytics within Teams will give managers and leaders an EKG for organizational resilience by surfacing insights that help them understand if employees are at risk of burnout, or if employees are able to maintain strong connections with colleagues and customers. Additional security and compliance features in Teams help you to protect your data, mitigate risk, and address compliance. Enhancements to Power Platform in Teams that make it easy for anyone to create and use no-code apps, bots and automated workflows that solve business challenges, as well as access data insights using Power BI, all within Teams. New management capabilities in Microsoft Endpoint Manager make it easier to secure and manage your devices across platforms from one place. With the addition of three more categories, Productivity Score provides visibility into how your organization works, insights to identify where you can make improvements, and actions you can take to update skills and systems so everyone can do their best work. And new enterprise content management solutions with SharePoint Syntex make it easier to find and work with content across your organization. SharePoint Syntex is the first product stemming from Project Cortex to be made generally available, using advanced AI to deliver content understanding and process automation. We’re also excited to share news on devices. The HoloLens 2 will be available in additional markets and we’ll start shipping Surface Hub 2S 85” to commercial customers in January 2021. For developers: The last several months have shown us that professional developers are often tasked with quickly creating business solutions to help organizations adjust in an unprecedented environment. In support of this reality, we’re announcing low code updates in Power Platform and Azure for professional developers to create custom apps, bots and workflows quickly with Azure APIM and GitHub integration. We’re announcing the preview of Power Automate Desktop, which provides a desktop automation option for citizen developers and business users. For security professionals: Security, compliance and identity continue to be priorities for our customers in these times of transition. As companies shift to hybrid work, the need to onboard users remotely, and the reality of growing security threats, mean that IT and security professionals continue to be the heroes of their organizations. We’re pleased to share updates in this area for both Azure and Microsoft 365, including changes to Microsoft Defender, our comprehensive extended detection and response offerings, enhanced protections for containers and IoT, Compliance Manager to help customers address increasing regulations, a new decentralized identity pilot and new connectors and APIs to help you to protect identities, apps and services across your cloud environments, even outside of Microsoft. For industries: Lastly, there’s no question that healthcare is one of the industries experiencing the accelerated transformation we see today. If you’ve had a virtual doctor’s appointment, you’ve experienced it firsthand. Today, we’re announcing that at the end of October, we’ll make our first industry-specific cloud, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, generally available. The comprehensive cloud enables healthcare customers and partners to deliver better experiences, insights and care to people worldwide. Within its solutions, we’re also doing more to support telehealth workflows and reduce administrative complexity. With the new Microsoft Teams EHR connector, now in private preview and available through the Epic App Orchard, clinicians can now launch virtual patient visits or provider consults in Teams directly from their electronic health record (EHR) system. This streamlines user experiences, charting, and IT manageability. We’ve focused on Epic first, and support for other EHR systems is coming soon. Be sure to check out all the highlights on our Microsoft Ignite site – including key segments from Microsoft executives – and other session content available virtually. The post Microsoft Ignite 2020: Empowering businesses to build resilience for today and what’s ahead appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

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Water is essential to life. We depend on it for our survival. The basic need has shaped how human societies have advanced over time. Explorers from pre-Columbian times and the age of antiquity to NASA have lived by the motto “follow the water” as they have sought and continue to seek to discover new opportunities for the expansion of human civilization. While water is plentiful – covering 70% of the Earth’s surface – 97% of this water is saline, located in our oceans, and not fit to drink or use for crops. The world’s fresh water is not equally distributed or accessible and is found disproportionately in places where people do not live. And as human civilization has expanded, we have reached the point globally where humanity depletes the available freshwater supply at a rate of 4.3 trillion cubic meters every year – the majority of which goes to agricultural and industrial uses. This needs to change. That’s why we’re announcing an ambitious commitment for Microsoft to be water positive for our direct operations by 2030. We’re tackling our water consumption in two ways: reducing our water use intensity – or the water we use per megawatt of energy used for our operations – and replenishing water in the water- stressed regions we operate. This means that by 2030 Microsoft will replenish more water than it consumes on a global basis. As with our other environmental commitments, we hope these steps will help contribute to a growing movement to address the world’s sustainability needs. More momentum is clearly needed. Today, according to United Nations Water, more than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water. And climate change is only intensifying this water shortage. The U.N. estimates that one in four people may live in a country affected by chronic shortages of freshwater by 2050. According to the World Bank, this climate-induced reduction in freshwater availability, coupled with increased demand, could reduce water availability in cities by more than 66% by 2050. Getting ahead of the world’s water crisis will require a reduction in the amount of water humans use to operate economies and societies, as well as a concerted effort to ensure there is sufficient water in the places it is needed most. This will require a transformation in the way we manage our water systems and a concerted effort for all organizations to account for and balance their water use. As a global technology company Microsoft is prepared to act on both accounts, taking responsibility for our own water use and partnering on technology platforms to help others do the same. Over the past year we have committed Microsoft to becoming a carbon negative, zero waste company that is building a new planetary computing platform to transform the way we monitor, model, and ultimately manage Earth’s natural systems. Our pledge today to become water positive by 2030 adds a fourth pillar to this work. And as in our other areas, we’re committed not only to setting ambitious goals for ourselves but using technology to better help our customers to do the same. Water positive by 2030 By 2030 we will be water positive, meaning we will replenish more water than we use. We’ll do this by putting back more water in stressed basins than our global water consumption across all basins. The amount returned will be determined by how much water we use and how stressed the basin is. Our replenishment strategy will include investments in projects such as wetland restoration and the removal of impervious surfaces like asphalt, which will help replenish water back into the basins that need it most. We will focus our replenishment efforts on roughly 40 highly stressed basins where we have operations. This reflects a science-based assessment of the world’s water basins. The majority of the world’s freshwater is divided into 16,396 basins, each of which has been assigned a “baseline water stress” score by the World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading nonprofit global research organization that focuses on natural resources. A basin is considered “highly stressed” if the amount of water withdrawn exceeds 40% of the renewable supply. Globally there are 4,717 basins that fall into this category. All of this work will build on our ongoing investments, and advances water reduction and replenishment across our operations. This includes a sustainability design standard across Microsoft that requires water conservation at all locations globally. These include: Our new Silicon Valley campus, opening later this year in California, features an on-site rainwater collection system and waste treatment plant to ensure 100% of the site’s non-potable water comes from onsite recycled sources. An integrated water management system will manage and reuse rainwater and wastewater. By recycling our water, the campus will save an estimated 4.3 million gallons of potable water each year. Nearly halfway around the world, our new Herzliya, Israel campus features water-efficient plumbing fixtures that drive up water conservation by 35%. In addition, 100% of water collected from air conditioners will be used to water plants on-site. In India, our newest building on our Hyderabad campus will support 100% treatment and reuse of wastewater on-site for landscaping, flushing, and cooling tower makeup. At our headquarters redevelopment in Puget Sound, all new office buildings will reuse harvested rainwater in flush fixtures and low-flow systems, which is projected to save more than 5.8 million gallons annually. At our new datacenter region in Arizona, available for use in 2021, we are innovating ways to reduce our water use intensity and replenish water in this highly stressed region. We will use zero water for cooling for more than half the year, leveraging a method called adiabatic cooling, which uses outside air instead of water for cooling when temperatures are below 85 degrees Fahrenheit. When temperatures are above 85 degrees, an evaporative cooling system is used, acting like a “swamp cooler” that you find in residential homes. This system is highly efficient, using less electricity and up to 90% less water than other water-based cooling systems, such as cooling towers. We are also partnering with First Solar to provide solar energy rather than traditional electricity generation, which is expected to save more than 350 million liters of water annually. Our reduction in water use intensity and our replenishment commitments address the key issue of water availability, which is the amount of water that can be used to meet demand. That, however, is only part of the challenge. Equally important is the issue of accessibility, which is the supply of safe drinking water and sanitation. That is why we are partnering with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to ensure more than 1.5 million people have access to clean drinking and sanitation water. We’ll focus this work in seven countries. We’ll start by partnering with Water.org, a leading global nonprofit focused on underserved communities, to help people in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico. We’ll then expand this work with partners in China, Malaysia and South Africa. Digitizing water data We will also use our technology to better understand where water stress is emerging and optimize water replenishment investments across a region. Through our AI for Earth program we are supporting projects in each of these areas: Vector Center works with governments and companies around the world to better understand the impact of water availability and accessibility. One of the challenges it addresses is water risk and scarcity in urban communities where data is still often analog, printed and stored in stacks. It is digitizing data and has developed a platform called the Perception Reality Engine on Azure to collect, correlate and analyze data and produce an overall picture of what’s actually happening in real time, to better see how to forestall the threat of when water may not be available. It also can provide a historic view of water in a particular area. The Perception Reality Engine uses data on rainfall, surface water amounts, plant growth and more to map water availability around the world and flag where crises are occurring or may soon occur. It also overlays this information with news sources and social media to determine where the public perception is different than reality so governance, education and behavior changes can be made before water runs out in a region. The Freshwater Trust, a nonprofit that protects and restores freshwater ecosystems, and Upstream Tech, a company that develops technological solutions for water conservation, worked together to develop a tool called the BasinScout Platform. It uses satellite data, data about crop growth and farming practices, and applies machine learning to assess field-level agricultural practices and their impact on water resources at scale, including scenarios about how to be more water- and cost-efficient. This helps conserve and protect the water basins that are main sources of the public’s water supply. Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability is a California nonprofit focused on land use and transportation in underserved communities. It is working to address the challenge of drinking water availability in California’s Central Valley. About 1.5 million people in the region rely on private domestic wells for drinking water, and many of these wells often fail during drought or due to groundwater management issues. The Leadership Counsel is using AI to predict domestic well failure resulting from groundwater changes and resulting drinking water shortages. They’re providing that information to local agencies that can use this information to prevent well failure and improve water resource management and planning. Climate Innovation Fund investment: Emerald Technology Ventures Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund is investing $10 million in the Emerald Technology Ventures’ $100 million Global Impact Fund, whose investors also include Temasek, Ecolab and SKion. The fund will partner with early- to expansion-stage companies from around the world, driving innovation and its adoption in water technologies. It will focus on pressing challenges, including conserving water resources, improving water efficiency and quality, avoiding carbon emissions in water treatment, and adapting to climate change. This fund is one of the few funds solely focused on water strategy. This is the third investment the Climate Innovation Fund has made in one of company’s four sustainability focus areas. The first was focused on carbon and the second on waste. Empowering our customers Microsoft is also developing solutions to help customers understand water-related risks due to climate change; use data to reduce water use and make smarter decisions about water; and, improve water quality and conservation. Technologies like IoT and AI are playing a critical role in improving water quality and water efficiency. For example, the Azure IoT Central government app templates includes remote, real-time water quality monitoring and water consumption monitoring, geared toward reducing water consumption. Ecolab, a leading global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services, is a Microsoft customer and a partner that is using data and technology to help its customers be more water efficient and use less water across their operations. The data Ecolab collects from more than 42,000 connected smart water sensors around the world is used to make informed recommendations to improve processes and reduce water consumption. It leads to a “virtuous cycle” of less water, better results and much lower operating costs. Using Microsoft technologies like Azure, Azure Machine Learning, Power BI and more, Ecolab is accelerating net zero water usage around the world in sectors including energy, agriculture, food and beverage, manufacturing and hospitality. Schneider Electric (SE) provides energy and automation digital solutions for efficiency and sustainability; combining world-leading energy technologies, real-time automation, software and services into integration solutions. They have recently co-innovated solutions on Azure to improve water and wastewater management along the water cycle through smart water technology and services for optimized water and waste operations, water and energy, safety and enterprise sustainability. This includes recent work to help restore the water quality of the Bogotá River with the expansion of the Salitre II wastewater treatment plant. Working with the Bogotá Colombia Water treatment plant, the largest in Colombia and under execution by Aqualia, new digital technologies are making the plant more efficient. The Bogotá River is polluted, and this is threatening the environment and health of the 8 million inhabitants of Bogota. The wastewater treatment plant is an important part of the remediation efforts. Grundfos is a global water technology company headquartered out of Bjerringbro, Denmark. They pioneer solutions to the world’s water and climate challenges improve quality of life for people. Grundfos utilizes Microsoft to support their business’ transformation in digital and water solutions with the expected outcomes of improving customer satisfaction, increasing innovation and operational excellence. Two ambitious water goals are to provide safely managed drinking water to 300 million people in need and save 50 billion cubic meters of consumable freshwater by 2030, which is why a lot of innovation is going on. To provide water also means to reduce the amount of energy needed to heat our cities – enter the Grundfos iGRID system built on Azure. Azure services, such as the IoT Hub, are utilized by iGRID to optimize heat distribution in cities to save energy. Grundfos can reduce heat losses by 20%, which means iGRID on Azure will be reducing the energy usage in our cities, improving the longevity of our existing networks and lowering the costs to the everyday citizen. Seequent is a New Zealand-based Microsoft customer and partner. They rely on Azure to drive their geospatial and geoscience work, including important work to address water quality and quantity with the Water Replenishment District (WRD), the largest groundwater agency in the state of California. WRD’s service area covers a 420-square-mile region of southern Los Angeles County and accounts for approximately half of the region’s water supply. The WRD is using Seequent’s Leapfrog Works to create 3D models of the local water basins, creating better understanding of groundwater flow and identifying contamination. These models are helping WRD maintain their Water Independence Now Program, which has made the region sustainable using local resources including advanced treated recycled water to replenish groundwater supplies. Water Resilience Coalition We understand that no one company or organization can solve the world’s water crisis. The private sector also has a significant opportunity to have a positive impact on water availability and accessibility: 150 of the world’s biggest companies have the potential to influence one-third of global freshwater use. Launched earlier this year, the Water Resilience Coalition is an initiative of the United Nations Global Compact CEO Water Mandate. Founded by seven companies, including Microsoft, the coalition has since grown to 16 industry-leading corporations, all of whom have pledged to work collectively on water issues. We are working together to identify priority basins for collective action and to set targets for improving conditions in those basins. As part of our water goals, we will partner with Water Resilience Coalition members to co-invest in availability, accessibility and quality projects in water-stressed basins and we will actively recruit other companies to join us in this important coalition. Policy Governments also play a fundamental role in ensuring the availability of safe, clean drinking water, maintaining and expanding water infrastructure, protecting critical water ecosystems, and responding to water crises. We will use our voice at the local, national and global levels on public policy that would increase water access and availability and improve quality. Improving Data in Water Stressed Areas: We can’t solve a problem that we don’t fully understand. Governments ought to develop more accurate and up-to-date assessment of ground and surface water levels and how they are changing over time. This data can help local stakeholders calculate and forecast demand and supply balances; track water quality; facilitate disaster prevention and early warning systems; and ultimately develop innovative solutions. We are encouraged to see the EU’s plans to create a Common European Green Deal data space, as part of the European Strategy for Data, that aims to harness the potential of environmental data to help achieve the EU’s ambitious climate objectives. To support such efforts, Microsoft will work with partners to deploy tools that provide better hydrologic data that enable enhanced water management. Upgrading Water Infrastructure: We need governments to invest in upgrading and expanding water infrastructure. This is critical to provide safe drinking water, treat storm and wastewater, manage water levels, and protect against climate impacts, particularly in the most vulnerable communities. These investments can also provide much needed job creation. National governments should look for opportunities to integrate water infrastructure into COVID-19 recovery packages and foster innovative solutions. We applaud the EU for including water-related green infrastructure in the InvestEU Programme as well as recent bipartisan effort by the U.S. Congress to consider reauthorization of critical water infrastructure funding. We will encourage national governments to prioritize these critical investments in the months and years ahead. Integrating water into climate strategies: Water is the primary means through which climate change will be experienced. As such, we need government to address climate and water challenges in a more integrated way. One way to do this is through the long-term goals that countries set as part of their national climate plans or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) under the Paris climate agreements. As national governments work to update their 2030 climate plans, in advance of COP26, the annual UN climate conference, in 2021, they should include an explicit water-related target in their climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. To help advance these policy efforts, we will join WaterEurope to promote smart water solutions and will encourage our other trade associations and advocacy partners in the U.S. and EU to play a more active role in advocating these policies. Enlisting our employees As we have with each of our previous sustainability commitments, we will enlist our employees by inviting them to participate in volunteer opportunities associated with the replenishment projects we will be investing in. Our employees have volunteered with NGOs we’re partnering with on water replenishment projects, including the restoration of Lake Sembakkam in Chennai, India; restoration of Crow Creek in Cheyenne, Wyoming; and, habitat restoration along the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota. In regions without active replenishment projects, we will provide information about volunteer opportunities with nonprofits working on water projects in their communities. While our commitments focus on fresh water we recognize the need to protect the world’s oceans, which generate more than 50% of the world’s oxygen, absorb half the carbon produced and account for 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. Oceans also are critical to our globally economy and food security, with more than 100 million households dependent on the fisheries for their livelihoods, and 3 billion dependent on seafood as their primary protein. Protecting the world’s oceans The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that by 2030 the value of the ocean economy could exceed $3 trillion and more than 40 million jobs. To realize this potential economic impact, the private and public sectors and civil society must work together to reverse declining ocean biodiversity resulting from climate change, pollution and overexploitation. That requires good data, governance and policies, and technological innovations like smart sensors, autonomous robots, data analytics and AI to better monitor, model and manage oceans. That’s why we’re joining the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network for ocean innovation and technology in Norway (C4IR Ocean). It’s dedicated to using data, technology and governance frameworks to protect the world’s oceans and increase the sustainability of ocean-based industries. Unlike roads, oceans have not been adequately mapped, so we are not making informed decisions. We’re one of the organizations working with C4IR Ocean on its Ocean Data Platform. This global, open-source platform gives data scientists, app developers and marine spatial planners access to data coming from historic and real-time data sources to develop solutions to improve ocean health. *** Our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. We believe that the purpose of business – and our responsibility – is to produce profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet. That’s why we’re working every day with our customers, partners, NGOs and others around the world to address the climate crisis. What’s good for the planet is ultimately good for Microsoft. The post Microsoft will replenish more water than it consumes by 2030 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

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ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft. We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas. The post Microsoft statement on TikTok appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...