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https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/Re_WHM-hero-final-01.png Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie and Microsoft U.S. Chief Digital Officer Jacky Wright talk about finding and nurturing supportive relationships built on advocacy and trust. in April 2020 as part of the Women at Microsoft ERG Meet our Leaders series, or download the transcript to the conversation. Jenny Lay-Flurrie and Jacky Wright first met in 2012 while both were on a panel sponsored by the Women at Microsoft employee resource group (ERG). The connection was instant. Both Brits had moved to the U.S. to work with Microsoft – Jacky had just joined Microsoft as the vice president of IT Strategic Services, while Jenny had already been with Microsoft since 2006 and was moving into a new role with a dedicated focus on driving accessibility. “After sharing the stage with Jacky, I remember my overwhelming thought was, ‘Oh, I need to spend more time with her!’” Jenny said. She reached out to Jacky afterward, had lunch, and asked Jacky to be her mentor. “She’s blunt, says it like it is, and is deeply passionate about diversity and inclusion – she’s a class act and a really good human.” https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/Jacky-Jenny-225x300.jpg Jacky Wright, left, and Jenny Lay-Flurrie. Their relationship grew after learning each other’s story and recognizing the shared challenges of pursuing a career. And each taught the other new perspectives that have changed the way they work and lead to this day. Jacky describes mentorship as mutual learning. She said learning that Jenny – who is profoundly deaf but hadn’t shared the full extent of her deafness on joining the company – helped her realize the untapped potential of those in her teams who also may not feel comfortable raising the fact that they have a disability. “Gaining that insight helped me focus on how to help individuals be their authentic selves, across various identities,” said Jacky. Jenny said their conversations helped her gain confidence and empowerment. “When we first met, I was chair of the Disability ERG, just beginning my journey to move into accessibility as my full-time role. I had a large bucket full of challenges and opportunities to meet the needs of customers and employees,” she explained. “Jacky’s coaching was direct and to the point: write it down and make the change happen. It’s advice that was instrumental on the path to the role I play today.” Their reciprocal coaching has strengthened each of their commitments to lead and sponsor work that address systemic inequities. “I have felt empowered to be bolder in my leadership responsibilities to create inclusive environments, whether with my teams or with communities like the Blacks at Microsoft ERG,” said Jacky. “Creating, sponsoring and influencing has to be about initiating and creating lasting enduring change.” With Jacky’s counsel and encouragement and the help of many, Jenny helped grow the Disability ERG to about two dozen groups around the world, ultimately taking the step to become chief accessibility officer, channeling feedback and ideas from employees and customers with disabilities to the right decision-makers for action – crucial to Microsoft’s goal to empower and build a durable culture of accessibility at Microsoft. While mentorship is the guidance and coaching needed to help people in their decision making, confidence and overall career and personal aspirations, sponsorship is influencing and advocating for another when they are not in the room. The combination is critical for women, especially women with disabilities or who identify as members of other underrepresented communities. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/IMG_4046-300x225.jpg Jenny Lay-Flurrie, left, and Jacky Wright. “We’re given lots of advice, but ultimately stigma and biases can still prevent opportunity,” said Jenny. “People with disabilities are often inaccurately seen as less capable than non-disabled peers, regardless of their talent or expertise. Concerns about how an individual will be able to ‘do the job,’ or what accommodations will be needed, even fear of offending by using non-inclusive language can be barriers. Sponsorship is one of the vehicles that can ensure that the door is firmly open to talent.” Deliberate efforts to make connections are even more important now when remote work situations have become more common, and there are fewer opportunities to fortuitously meet a potential mentor, sponsor or ally like Jacky and Jenny did. Jacky offers this advice: Seek out communities where you would not normally be. Put yourself out there as someone who is offering to be a mentor. Those seeking mentors should find online communities based on personal or professional interests or common values. LinkedIn provides a great platform for that. Be courageous about asking for support. Learn to be vulnerable as that will help people understand what your specific needs are. All leaders in the organization should see themselves as advocates. Every moment can be a mentoring moment or a moment for allyship. Jenny offers this: Don’t procrastinate, just send the mail! Do your research, identify the areas you think you can learn from your prospective mentor and sponsor and send your ask with those specifics. Be bold, state clearly what you’ve seen them do, what you want to learn from them and the doors you wanted opened. You might also get two meetings in and realize it’s not a fit. If so, move on. Also don’t be put off if they don’t reply immediately or say, “Not at this time.” Every human right now is busy! Be strong, be your own best self-advocate and be a sponge. Invest your time and remember to give in return; it is the gift that keeps on giving. For more stories of women creating, innovating, leading and shaping society today visit Microsoft.com/WomensHistoryMonth. Tune in to a recording of a conversation Jennie Lay-Flurrie and Jacky Wright had in April 2020 as part of the Women at Microsoft ERG Meet our Leaders series, or download the transcript to the conversation here. The post Mutual empowerment through mentorship, sponsorship and allyship appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

If you’re in search of new maps, skins and textures, now is the time to get them on Minecraft Marketplace, as you can save up to 33%. The Spring Sale will run through 10 a.m. PDT April 6. Each day three items will be marked down to 75% and the skin pack by Tetrascape is marked down 100% for the duration of the sale (yes, free)! Head over to Minecraft.net to find out more. Continue reading...

Last summer, we launched a global skills initiative to reach 25 million worldwide. Nine months later, we have helped more than 30 million people, learned from our projects and are ready to launch the next phase in our work. Today, I’m excited to join my colleague and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky to share the details. As you’ll see below, this extends our work, expands our vision and commits Microsoft and LinkedIn to a new promise to help 250,000 companies make a skills-based hire in 2021. Our plans are grounded in a vision of what is needed for a more inclusive post-pandemic recovery. COVID-19 has led to record unemployment numbers, disrupting livelihoods of people around the world. A century ago, the United States and other governments responded to the twin crises created by the Great Depression and World War II by investing in the infrastructure and people of their time. This included not only roads and bridges, but ubiquitous access to inventions such as electricity and the telephone and the biggest educational expansion in human history. By 1970, America’s high school graduation rate reached 80%, compared to 6% when the century began.[1] Perhaps more than any other single indicator, this explains why the 20th century not only boosted economic productivity but distributed its benefits so broadly. The world has a similar opportunity today. A new generation of 21st century infrastructure calls for new investments that will broaden access to the digital devices and broadband connectivity that have become the lifeblood of commerce, healthcare and education. And it similarly calls for a renewed commitment to the education and skills that a new generation of technology has made essential for people’s personal progress. While there are important similarities to the needs the world has addressed in the past, there are significant differences as well. A more diverse workforce confronts a wider array of educational needs and opportunities. Some careers require more formal education while others do not. More jobs require not wholesale retraining, but that people fill in specific gaps among their current skills. Employers and employees alike must increasingly identify and develop these skills and connect them with more dynamic and faster-moving hiring and promotion needs. This requires new initiatives and more collaboration across the public and private sectors. It’s a global challenge. No government or industry can fully meet this need by itself, and the impact of any single company will be even more limited. But with LinkedIn, GitHub, Microsoft Learn and a wide array of technology that supports the digital transformation of so many enterprises, we have a broad array of digital skills resources to bring to bear. Our global skills initiative has given us new insights into the practical obstacles that people confront and new ways to overcome them. Today Ryan and I share the next skilling chapter for LinkedIn and Microsoft. This will build on what has worked best for partners and participants in our global skills initiative, extending free content and certification offerings to the end of 2021. We are doubling down at LinkedIn and across Microsoft with new work to support a more inclusive skills-based labor market, creating more alternatives, greater flexibility and accessible learning paths that connect these more readily with new jobs. And we’re strengthening our work in Microsoft Philanthropies to advance digital equity through nonprofit partnerships that serve those hit the hardest by the COVID-19 downturn, including Black and African American communities in the United States. Start with what’s working… Not surprisingly, when you pursue a global skills initiative that reaches more than 30 million people, you learn a lot yourself. There’s a lot of cause for optimism, as well as some sobering reminders about the scale of work that lies ahead. The good news is that most people everywhere want to learn new digital skills. We tested this proposition last summer by providing free access on LinkedIn Learning to more than 500 online courses containing more than 950 hours of content for in-demand roles. We also connected people to Microsoft Learn for free, interactive, hands-on training on in-demand technical skills for Microsoft products and services. Finally, we provided free access to the GitHub Learning Lab and hundreds of free demonstration modules that teach technology and coding. In the eight months that followed, 30.7 million people in 249 countries and territories took advantage of these opportunities. You can see the details in the interactive map and table below. It’s not surprising that a country as large as the United States accounted for the single biggest number, with 8.1 million participants. But I wasn’t expecting 91 participants from Antarctica. Digital skilling is now literally a global phenomenon. The top 10 countries with learners in our initiative are the United States, India, Brazil, United Kingdom, Mexico, Poland, France, Germany, Canada and Spain. 30,681,893 participants in 249 countries and territories Click here to load media https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/100-Participants-by-region.jpgA second piece of welcome news is people’s focus on classes that appear to be developing the right skills needed for the most in-demand jobs. This is reflected, for example, in the extensive uptake in courses that address horizontal skills needed for a wide variety of jobs, including three of the most popular LinkedIn Learning pathways in the skills initiative. These are pathways for critical soft skills; diversity, inclusion and belonging; and digital transformation. We’re also seeing a strong correlation between the more focused classes people are taking and the jobs that are open in countries around the world. For example, the 10 most utilized in-demand, role-based LinkedIn Learning pathways in our initiative, ranked below in order of uptake, are well represented in most of the labor markets tracked around the world in the LinkedIn Economic Graph. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/200-Top-10-pathways.jpgThis wide uptake underscores the importance of bringing training tools to platforms people are already using to advance their careers. Every week, 40 million people come to LinkedIn to look for a new job. Our skills initiative created the opportunity for people to use the LinkedIn platform to identify and take courses to help burnish the skills needed for a new position. That’s likely one reason we saw just over 60% of our initiative’s participants take a class on LinkedIn Learning. This learning has helped inform the direction for the next phase of our skilling work. Develop a more inclusive skills-based labor market… As Ryan outlines in his blog, we are committed to an expansive skilling vision across LinkedIn and Microsoft. It’s all about creating more alternative, flexible and always-accessible learning paths. LinkedIn is at the heart of Microsoft’s efforts in this area, and other parts of the company will build upon and complement its advances. LinkedIn at the center. I’m perhaps most excited about the work LinkedIn is announcing today to help build the infrastructure needed for more effective skilling worldwide. As Ryan explains, we need to help everyone speak the same “skills language.” His blog illustrates well the obstacles that arise both for individuals and the labor market more broadly when people talk about the same thing using so many different and confusing terms. It’s as if the modern world has created its own skilling version of the ancient Tower of Babel. LinkedIn has an antidote to this confusion through its market-leading and widely accepted skills taxonomy in the LinkedIn Skills Graph. LinkedIn will now expand access to this Graph to help create a common skills language for individuals, employers, educational institutions and government agencies. As Ryan outlines, LinkedIn is also taking steps in two closely related areas, focused first on individuals and second on employers. LinkedIn will pull data from its Economic Graph to help people identify skills that map to in-demand jobs of potential interest. It also will extend to the end of 2021 the free course offerings from our skilling initiative on LinkedIn Learning, and will add new ways for people to demonstrate the skills they’re acquiring. One new feature, announced today, is a video Cover Story that individuals can create for their LinkedIn profile. In a world in which 75 percent of hiring managers find a standard resume insufficient, this provides a new tool for people who want to personally convey what they can bring to a new job. This new feature is in the first phase of its rollout, with captioning capabilities coming soon. While these steps are critical, the world also needs better recruiting technology. That’s why LinkedIn is piloting a new Skills Path. This will bring together LinkedIn Learning courses with Skill Assessments to help recruiters source candidates based on their proven skills. Initial participants include BlackRock, Gap Inc. and TaskRabbit. As Ryan explains in more detail, this is one piece of LinkedIn’s commitment to help 250,000 companies make a skills-based hire this year. Putting the rest of Microsoft behind a skills-based economy. We’re bringing together every part of Microsoft to supplement LinkedIn’s work to promote far-reaching digital skilling opportunities. This starts with accessible and fun computing education for students in K-12 to grow their curiosity and confidence in technology. Minecraft: Education Edition, our game-based learning platform featuring thousands of hours of educational content for students, is launching English-language learning curriculum and expanding on sustainability education for Earth Day 2021. Microsoft MakeCode Arcade, our online computing education platform, is releasing a Beginner Skillmap guide to support students learning at home through a self-paced series of tutorials that introduce students to game development and computer science concepts. Additionally, we are releasing a new Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles with Microsoft MakeCode curriculum using MakeCode Arcade for high school students. To support higher education students and institutions with workforce readiness, Microsoft is also introducing a new Teams for Education app powered by LinkedIn, called Career Coach. This will provide personalized guidance for higher-education students to discover their career path, grow real-world skills and build their network all in one place, using an AI-based skills identifier and LinkedIn integration that aligns a student’s comprehensive profile with job market trends. It also helps higher-education institutions gain insights into student skills, career goals and job market trends. We’re also supplementing LinkedIn’s work with additional and deeper offerings for more advanced skills-based learning. We will extend to the end of 2021 all the free courses and low-cost certifications we offered in our global skilling initiative through Microsoft Learn and will also extend the low-cost certification offer beyond job seekers to students. These align to 10 high-demand technology jobs. We saw more than 3.5 million people use these offerings as part of our global skilling initiative, including our learning paths for cloud foundations, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and skills relating to our Azure, Microsoft 365, Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics offerings. Finally, we expect that our new Viva Learning app for Teams will play an important role in fostering better skills-based training for employers and employees. Viva Learning will provide a central hub for learning where people can discover, share, recommend and learn from content libraries across an organization. It will include content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 trainings, third-party content providers, Learning Management Systems and an organization’s own custom content – making learning a natural part of an employee’s day. Viva Learning will be available in public preview in April. Invest in digital equity… We decided last summer to make digital equity a special focus of our global skills initiative. We based this on a recognition that the biggest brunt of the COVID-19 downturn is being borne by those with lower educational attainment, people with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, women, younger workers and individuals who have less formal education. We were especially persuaded by the insights offered by Black Lives Matter and created a special focus on Black and African Americans in the United States. As part of the initiative, Microsoft Philanthropies has invested $20 million in grants to nonprofits around the world to help people from underserved communities that are often excluded by the digital economy. This total includes $5 million in grants to 50 Black and African-American-led and -serving digital skilling and workforce development nonprofits in the United States. And we also partnered with nonprofits around the world like Africa Tikkun to reach underserved learners. One of the most striking aspects of our initiative has been the skilling successes of nonprofits that are trusted by the community. Our goal was to reach 5 million people through our nonprofit partners. To date, we have already reached nearly 6 million learners. But more important than these quantitative results is the qualitative impact of the wraparound support, coaching and mentoring, and connections that have resulted in on-track program completion rates that have exceeded those for learners that are not connected to nonprofits. For example, roughly half of the 1.1 million people in our initiative that completed the multiple courses involved in a full learning pathway had the support of a nonprofit partner. We also know that people skilled by our nonprofits need that last-mile connection to a job. Building on progress over the last year, we are launching Microsoft’s Career Connector, a new service that will help place 50,000 job seekers skilled by Microsoft’s nonprofit and learning partners in tech-enabled jobs in the Microsoft ecosystem in the next three years. Career Connector will have a specific focus on women and underrepresented minorities in technology. Microsoft’s Career Connector will anchor the next phase of our global effort to help these successful digital learners find job opportunities that utilize these new skills. One example of this work is in Northeast Wisconsin, where a significant number of service-related jobs were impacted due to the pandemic. In response, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit supported by Microsoft, New North, is leading an effort to address these job losses and help people find new work in Wisconsin and beyond. After our global skills announcement, New North brought public and private sector leaders together with a local startup accelerator called gener8tor to create a new talent development program called gener8tor Upskilling. With 700 applicants and a 79 percent graduation rate, the program is helping jobseekers quickly pivot to new careers through training, interview preparation and connections to new jobs. With support from Microsoft’s TechSpark program, gener8tor Upskilling has since expanded to Wyoming and Virginia, with plans to take the program to Alabama, Indiana and Alaska. In many ways, this nonprofit work and other aspects of our skills initiative point toward additional important innovations for the delivery of our programs. Across Microsoft we are investing in multiple learning methods – reading, video and hands on interactivity – to enable learners to use technology within the context of the content they are trying to learn. For Microsoft Learn, which leverages these different modes of learning, our completion rate for modules is 58%and our completion rate for learning paths is 21%, exceeding the industry average of 8%. We will continue to build on these multiple modes of learning to deliver content. These advances also point to a broader need. Self-paced learning without accountability and additional support doesn’t keep learners engaged and motivated to continue. We are committed to new efforts to keep learners engaged, such as project-based learning and incentives such as job interviews and network connections to help learners progress and complete learning paths. A brighter future based on digital skills… While we’re excited by these next steps, the world’s need to re-skill remains daunting. A global village comprised of private enterprises, employers, governments and nonprofits will need to join together to create the digital skilling opportunities to meet this challenge. We believe that digital technology and tools can play a central role in fostering a more inclusive skills-based labor market. But individuals will need to invest more time and employers will need to invest more energy in the hiring and training practices that will be critical to success. Governments will have a critical leadership role to play, including by providing support for people with greater needs and economic incentives for smaller businesses. And as we’ve seen firsthand, the nonprofits of the world will be indispensable in the front-line work needed to make digital equity a reality. The promise is worth pursuing. The world’s most successful nations a century ago were not prepared to leave rural communities without electricity, homes without telephones or people without an opportunity to graduate from high school and go to college. Their bolder ambitions, while always imperfect, created decades of economic growth and broadening benefits for a growing middle class. Similar success in the 21st century is within our reach. But it requires that we all work together in new ways that will not only provide people with easier access to technologies, but the skills needed to put them to use. __ [1] Robert J. Gordon, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since World War II” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 544. The post Building a more inclusive skills-based economy: The next steps for our global skills initiative appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Lenovo has announced a new generation of Windows 10 laptops that help students and educators transition between classroom and remote learning, supported by a wide range of software and services. [caption id=attachment_175489" align="aligncenter" width="1024]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/06_300w_Hero_Tent_Front_Facing_Left-1024x1024.jpg Lenovo 300w[/caption] The 3rd generation Lenovo 100w clamshell laptop and the 300w and 500w convertible models show off blue finishes, with the 500w powered by Intel Pentium N6000 processors. These new laptops have been built to withstand the rigours of remote learning. Devices need to be more mobile than ever and are at greater risk of drops, spills and knocks. All models meet the independent MIL-SPEC 801H standard, boosted by Lenovo’s own stringent education specifications that call for reinforced ports and hinges, with rubber bumpers to protect from accidental drops. Spill resistance has been improved by nearly 10%, while Corning Gorilla Glass promises better screen protection. The new designs also include features to enable more productive and inclusive learning: USB Type-C port provides flexible docking for easy connection of external devices and supports quick charging by providing up to 80% battery in an hour New HDMI port enables connection of a second display to extend the learning workspace Optional Intel Wi-Fi 6 helps network performance and stability. 4G-LTE is optional on select models for multi-location learning capabilities A physical webcam shutter enhances privacy Adding a touch enabled ThinkVision T24t mounted on an ergonomic stand can also enhance collaborative learning spaces. The 23.8-inch display provides a one-cable solution to easily connect compatible Windows devices via USB Type-C for docking and powering the device up to 75W. Natural Low Blue Light eyecare technology certified with Eyesafe and TÜV Rheinland Eye Comfort certification reduces harmful blue light wavelengths, allowing extended periods of use without eye fatigue or compromising color performance. Lenovo has expanded its portfolio to include collaboration solutions, optional services and software to appeal to the broader needs of remote learning: Lenovo Hybrid Classroom solutions bring smarter collaboration to the classroom, helping teachers create more immersive and flexible learning environments that can support students in multiple locations. The easy to setup, deploy and manage offerings include options to integrate Microsoft Teams. Zero touch deployment enables system provisioning seamlessly and securely, while also providing levels of customization. Go to Lenovo to find out more. Continue reading...

In the midst of numerous and difficult circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve made important observations about the future of work, and how and where our employees know they work best. What we’re learning and understanding has led us to use this period in time to grow and evolve our hybrid workplace, building additional capabilities to help our employees, customers and businesses continue to thrive. In March last year, I sent an email to our employees worldwide, indicating we were instituting a mandatory work-from-home policy for our global work sites, excepting essential on-site workers. As of today, after over a year in which most Microsoft employees have worked remotely, several of our work sites around the globe have reached a stage that meets or exceeds government requirements to accommodate more workers, while many other employees will continue to work remotely. Currently, Microsoft work sites in 21 countries have been able to accommodate additional workers in our facilities – representing around 20% of our global employee population. On March 29, Microsoft will also start making this shift at our Redmond, Washington, headquarters and nearby campuses. Since the beginning of the pandemic, our No. 1 priority has been the well-being and safety of our people. We have never stopped monitoring local health data and tracking government requirements to determine when our campuses could safely accommodate additional workers onsite. As some employees return to our global work sites and others prefer or need to work remotely, we are finding additional ways of putting our hybrid workplace into practice. At each of our global work sites, the hybrid workplace model strikes a balance, providing limited additional services on campus for those who choose to return, while supporting those who need to work remotely or feel more comfortable doing so. Our goal is to give employees further flexibility, allowing people to work where they feel most productive and comfortable, while also encouraging employees to work from home as the virus and related variants remain concerning. Taking the example of our Redmond campus, we’ve been closely monitoring local health data for months and have determined that the campus can safely accommodate more employees on-site while staying aligned to Washington state capacity limits. As we watch for progress against the virus in the region and continue to evaluate our guidance, employees who work at Redmond work sites or nearby campuses have the choice to return to those facilities or to continue working remotely, and also have the flexibility to do a mixture of both. Although we cannot predict everything the coming months have in store, we are prepared to face them with a growth mindset – learning, reevaluating and updating our response as needed. The road to our evolved hybrid workplace Flashing back one year, we were quickly learning that the virus and its impact were too complex to predict. While we initially tried to provide guidance anchored to specific timelines and the phases through which the pandemic would likely progress, we did not understand it well enough to accurately predict when each of those phases would occur. We soon discovered that we needed to develop a return-to-work site strategy that could account for constantly changing public health conditions and government guidance in order to keep our employees and communities safe. We also needed to drive a consistent approach across geographies, creating a unified COVID-19 response effort within the company. With this in mind, we developed a Hybrid Workplace Dial that anchors to six defined stages – rather than specific timelines – and allows us to quickly adjust our work sites depending on health conditions, while also staying data-driven in our decision-making. The dial helps us assign a stage to each of our work sites depending on the current local health data and government guidance. The dial can go in both directions – moving a work site forward when local disease burden improves, and also dialing back when we observe declines in progress. Each stage is defined by a set of data-driven criteria (e.g. trends in cases and deaths and government guidelines) as well as site readiness assessments, and carries with it a set of prescribed policies and actions. For example, while Stages 4 and 5 offer limited or augmented options for workers who choose to be on-site, employees are encouraged to work remotely while their site remains in Stages 1-5 and should not feel they need to return. In Stage 6, COVID-19 is no longer a significant burden on the local community and presents itself more like an endemic virus such as the seasonal flu. In this final stage of the dial, most pandemic-specific work site requirements and prevention measures are removed, enabling nearly all campus services to return. In the case of the Redmond campus, the shift planned for March 29 will represent a move on the dial from Stage 3 to Stage 4. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/5v_slide-5-stages-1024x559.jpg As some of our campuses around the world are able to accommodate more employees based on meeting or exceeding local public health requirements, we are taking necessary precautions to create a safe experience, and personal accountability will be vital to maintaining it. At each of our campuses that are in Stages 1-5, we are taking a cautious approach that includes social distancing of workspaces, face coverings, extensive cleaning procedures, daily health attestations, attendance strategies and more. The changes to our workplace as a result of these shifts are substantial, but we believe in the concept and power of this return-to-work site strategy that aligns to our core principles: Physical, mental and emotional well-being are our top priority. We support employee needs and offer flexibility to work remotely and at the Microsoft workplace, as conditions allow. We continue to serve our customers and continue critical business operations. We meet or exceed regulations, such as local, government and/or public health guidance. Taking a pulse of thousands of employees who have returned to Microsoft work sites in some capacity, we’re observing employees are embracing the flexibility to split their time between a Microsoft office and home. Based on the data, we see that 54% of survey respondents who have chosen to return in Stage 4 are spending less than 25% of their time at one of our work sites. Furthermore, 69% are spending 50% or less time on-site. We understand these responses are based on the current landscape where many employees are not yet vaccinated and many schools remain closed. We’ll continue to listen and incorporate employee feedback as conditions and circumstances evolve. Work site changes to keep employees safe Each of us recognizes the workplace isn’t the same place now as when we left it. Since most of us started working off-site last year, our teams have implemented a variety of health and safety measures to ensure we’re meeting, and in many cases, exceeding requirements set by local public health officials. This effort translates to numerous protective actions to align to our No. 1 priority of protecting the well-being of our employees: We have assessed all Microsoft work sites to understand what adjustments are needed to enable social distancing and meet local health standards and will provide all employees and external staff personal supplies such as disinfectant wipes and face coverings to use while on-site. To meet local capacity guidelines and social distancing requirements, we have implemented attendance strategies for team-based or open/shared spaces, physical space adjustments when needed, or a combination of both based on organizational needs. We have adjusted our facilities and a number of on-site service offerings. For example, we have limited capacity in conference rooms and Microsoft transportation services, posted signage in common areas and cafeterias to ensure social distancing, and provided hand sanitizers throughout our buildings. We have established similar, consistent standards that apply to our employees when they travel to our other work sites and for customers and partners when they visit our sites. While vaccination rates continue to rise and are critical to easing the disease burden in our communities, the current rates do not lessen our on-site precautions or expectations at most of our work sites. We continue to monitor the impact of the vaccine as well as public health guidance to advise on any changes to our workplace, as needed. Moving forward in a hybrid, modern workplace Looking ahead, we know that hybrid work requires a new operating model and strategy that encompasses flexible work policy, inclusive space design and innovative technology solutions. The modern workplace requires companies to meet new employee expectations, connect a more distributed workforce, and provide tools to create, innovate and work together to solve business problems. As a way to share workplace insights observed in the past year and what we can expect in the future, earlier today we released the 2021 Work Trend Index which includes new data, deep research and expert insights leaders should consider as the era of hybrid work unfolds. We believe in the value of bringing people together in the workplace. Having facilities around the globe enriches our culture with new ideas, fresh perspectives and unique local viewpoints that help us continue learning from each other. From innovation labs to briefing centers, being near our customers and having more touchpoints helps us better understand customer and partner needs, adding value to the great work we’re doing together. We remain committed to delivering spaces that anticipate the different ways teams need to work together while providing the flexibility and agility we now require. We take a thoughtful, research-driven approach to designing our workplaces and feel confident that we can still enable a collaborative, healthy and safe environment with minimal changes required to our foundational design strategy of inclusivity. Microsoft standardizes inclusive design at our global work sites and we draw on the full range of human diversity to ensure every office space we create benefits people universally. Whether employees are working from home, at the workplace or utilizing many of the outdoor collaboration spaces we have at our work sites, our approach seeks to create a sense of belonging and helps teams stay connected however they choose to work. Additionally, we’ve pulled together a group of Microsoft researchers, engineers and real estate and facilities experts to prototype hybrid meeting spaces at our Redmond, Washington, and U.K. campuses. The group is investigating different meeting configurations and technologies like multiple screens, cameras and mixed reality scenarios to understand the most effective, inclusive set-up for hybrid work. It’s still early days, but we’ve explored solutions that range from simply reconfiguring existing technologies to designing exciting new Microsoft Teams innovations for hybrid work. Empowering remote productivity remains a requirement that will involve new collaboration tools, robust cloud infrastructure and a new way of thinking about network security. We also recognize that hybrid work presents new challenges like making sure everyone feels included and engaged regardless of role or location. It is important that we are intentional about creating space for inclusive conversations and define new ways of working together. To that end, we’re supporting the hybrid work evolution through innovations within our technology tools to help people navigate both remote and (e.g. , Microsoft Whiteboard in Teams and Microsoft Teams rooms with features like intelligent capture). Though we don’t know how far off a new normal is, we are adapting to a new way of working with an expanded understanding of flexibility. We know there are thousands of ways of working – in the last year our employees have shown what is possible – and we believe that flexibility is essential to maintaining work-life balance. Frequent and transparent communication with our employees has become more critical than ever, establishing a meaningful feedback loop that allows us all to learn and iterate. Based on employee feedback, we know that some are looking forward to returning to the work site while others prefer or need to continue working off-site. Our goal is to give employees additional flexibility to support individual work styles, balance business needs and ensure we live our culture. We also understand that some jobs require employees to be on-site, such as roles that support critical infrastructure, while other jobs are performed just as well remotely. Once we reach a point where COVID-19 no longer presents a significant burden on our communities, and as our sites move to the open stage of the dial, we view working from home part of the time (less than 50%) as standard for most roles – assuming manager and team alignment. Now and in the future, we have an opportunity to reexamine traditional notions of aligning particular jobs to particular settings. With our hybrid workplace model, we will provide employees an exceptional place to work, create greater collaboration and community for over 160,000 people who work at Microsoft, and showcase an example of the modern workplace that is both flexible and hybrid. The post The philosophy and practice of our hybrid workplace appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

If you’re serious about dominating virtual battle arenas, check out the addition of the CHERRY MX mechanical keyboards on the new thin and powerful Alienware m15 and m17 R4 laptops. Gaming is better than ever on Windows 10, with games in 4K, DirectX 12 and gameplay streaming. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/MX_Comparsion_v2-1024x482.jpg Inspired by the upward-opening gull-wing doors of a DeLorean sports car, the goal was to provide PC gamers with the capabilities of a mechanical keyboard within a gaming laptop. About six times smaller than the Original Cherry MX switch, the ultra-low profile design incorporates stainless-steel mechanical components and a gold-based cross-point contacts systems to ensure absolute precision and wobble-free keystrokes. Gamers will experience responsive and tactile feedback with full-height keys that provide light actuation force and distinct acoustics at each click. They can also optimize their notebooks with fully programmable keys for macro key assignments and AlienFX per-key RGB backlighting. The laptops include 10th Gen Intel Core mobile processors and discrete graphics options up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU and for powerful gameplay. Get all the details at Alienware Arena. Continue reading...

In March 2018, Sea of Thieves made its maiden voyage on Xbox One and Windows 10. Since then, 20 million pirates have charted their own tales of high seas adventure. To thank everyone for their support, Rare has a chest full of goodies and bonuses that includes the Prosperous Captain’s Sails, the Sea of Thieves Ocean Crawler Bundle and a 50% off sale in the Microsoft Store between March 18 and 21. Find out more at Xbox Wire. Continue reading...

Today Microsoft kicks off Include 2021, a global diversity and inclusion event unlike anything we’ve ever done before. This free digital event is open to all and brings together global experts in academia, social change, law, behavioral science and diversity and inclusion — experts like Kimberlé Crenshaw, co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, who will lead a discussion on understanding the social and political impacts of intersecting identities. In addition to these thought leaders, Microsoft employees and leadership will share stories and perspectives, and partners will offer insights into how they’re driving organizational change. If you haven’t yet, you can still join us for these important conversations today by registering on the Include 2021 site. Opening the conversation this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was joined on the virtual stage by Ford Foundation President Darren Walker to discuss how diversity and inclusion are essential for global businesses to succeed — and that is especially true for Microsoft, where it is woven throughout all we do. “When we talk about our sense of purpose, our mission, we say empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” Satya said. “If we want to empower everyone in the world, we better represent the world inside. More than that, we need to include the world that we represent inside.” Darren also shared that this moment is one of urgency and that diversity and inclusion is “an imperative, it is not an option.” “This issue is front and center — CEOs and boards are talking about this issue, prioritizing it, and attaching to it measures and metrics for accountability,” he said. “We are seeing genuine transformation — a move from tokenism to real transformation.” In just a few moments, I’ll join my colleagues Nick Parker, CVP of Global Partner Solutions, and Fred Humphries, CVP of U.S. Government Affairs, to discuss the neuroscience behind inclusion, share insights on how diversity drives innovation and business growth, and explore the global impact of diversity and inclusion across sectors and industries. But this is first and foremost a day about gaining insights from others. Microsoft doesn’t have all the answers and we recognize that when it comes to diversity and inclusion, we still have a long way to go. This is an opportunity to build momentum on the work we have been doing in this space for some time now. Throughout the day we will engage with many speakers who bring expertise across a range of issues, including allyship, covering, intersectionality, identity, privilege, gender, disability, race and ethnicity, age, faith, and mental health. Sessions to come include: A deep dive on allyship and how we can activate that within the workplace with Dolly Chugh, professor at Stern School of Business, New York University. A panel bringing a global perspective to conversations on race and ethnicity with Michael Eric Dyson, professor of African American Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University; Dr. Adrienne Keene, creator and author of the Native Appropriations blog; and Dr. Balmurli Natrajan, professor of anthropology at William Paterson University. A discussion on mental health and stigma with Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. An exploration of faith conversations in the workplace with the Rev. Mark Fowler, CEO of Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, and Dalia Mogahed, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. An exploration of how Brookings Institution is using research and insights to inform their focus on race and inequity. A discussion with Sesame Workshop about how storytelling can help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger and kinder, and how stories enable us to teach about topics such as race. While we don’t believe a single event will provide all the answers, our hope is that the conversations started during Include 2021 will continue long afterward. Beyond today, we will continue to encourage our community to engage in these issues with intention, purpose and relentless empathy — we invite others to do the same. For those unable to join us in real time today, some of the session recordings and partner case studies will also be available on demand later this year at our Inclusion Journey site. This site includes some of our neuroscience-based learning resources on inclusion that anyone can use, stories from our community, and additional thought leadership from external experts. We will add more partner and customer case studies, expert insights and employee stories in the coming months and years. As Darren shared this morning: “This is not easy work. If it were easy work, it would have been done a long time ago. It’s not easy because it requires intentionality to disrupt certain norms, practices, structures.” At Microsoft, we believe inclusion is a choice we each must make, both on the individual and organizational level. We know real progress doesn’t happen without real work. We hope you will join us today and in the ongoing work we will do together. The post Include 2021: Engaging on diversity and inclusion with intention, as individuals and organizations appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Today, we are excited to announce that Microsoft has acquired The Marsden Group, a leader in industrial technology innovation and rapid prototyping. The first chapter of digital transformation was heavily oriented toward consumer-focused industries. The newer opportunity in infrastructure, manufacturing and resources is enormous. We continue to see an increased pace of digital change across many industries, and we believe that velocity is here to stay, as more and more companies recognize they must commit to continuous innovation to compete over the long-term. This acquisition will further enhance Microsoft’s ability to create new customer value through experimentation and deep industry solutions based on Microsoft cloud, edge and AI products. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/MSC17_tubeForgingPlant_002.jpg We want to empower our customers to implement digital initiatives faster. That’s why we’re thrilled to welcome The Marsden Group to the Microsoft family. With its experience in technological innovation and rapid prototyping, The Marsden Group has earned a unique reputation as a powerful and trusted partner among industry leaders who seek to quickly identify business needs, ideate technology solutions and build high-quality prototypes tailored to individual customer needs. The Marsden Group has helped its enterprise customers rapidly envision, prototype and implement solutions that drive meaningful value to their businesses, employees and customers. We know that in asset-intensive industries, such as manufacturing, automotive or logistics, companies face unique challenges in adopting new technologies, for example connecting industrial equipment safely and securely to the cloud, overcoming data silos and supporting interoperability across modern and legacy systems. Through recent projects, I’ve seen firsthand what The Marsden Group and Microsoft can do, what’s possible when we bring together our cloud, edge, IoT, digital twin and AI capabilities with The Marsden Group’s speed, agility and technical creativity. In our everchanging world, we see an urgent need to build agile operations and supply chains to address disruptive market forces and consumer demands. With this investment, we are taking the next step to help our customers across all industries envision and build digital solutions faster. The post Microsoft acquires The Marsden Group, a leader in rapid industry innovation appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

We all know the feeling of password fatigue. Like when you go to make an online bill payment and can’t remember which combination of your childhood pets, random letters and special characters you chose. This fatigue can lead to some bad decisions. The more passwords you have to remember, the more likely you are to choose bad ones, like p@ssword and 123456. Head over to the Windows Resource Center to learn some ways to better manage your passwords. You’ll find out about stronger passwords, password generators like the one in Microsoft Edge and even using your face – yes your face – as a password. Continue reading...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z41PFI6KVKk View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z41PFI6KVKk Earlier this week, Microsoft officially welcomed ZeniMax Media and Bethesda to the Xbox family. What does that mean to you as a gamer? For starters, it means an awesome slate of great games has arrived on Xbox Game Pass for you to discover and play with your friends. Today, 20 of Bethesda’s most iconic and award-winning games – from franchises like Dishonored, Doom, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Wolfenstein – are available to Xbox Game Pass members. Additionally, 16 of those titles will be available everywhere you play, whether it’s PC, console or mobile devices through the cloud for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members. Head over to Xbox Wire for more, and to Microsoft Store on Windows to see the full list of games, some of which will also benefit from FPS boost on Xbox Series X|S. Continue reading...

The new Minecraft x Uniqlo Collaboration will start rolling out on March 15 (March 12 in China). To celebrate the new collection, the Minecraft team is releasing Minecraft x UNIQLO Skins Vol. 2. Wear your favorite Uniqlo x Minecraft apparel as you mine, craft, explore or virtually hang out with friends. There are 15 skins in the free pack, so you can avoid the chagrin of finding yourself wearing the same outfit as someone else in your group. Head over to Minecraft.net to find out about it all. Continue reading...

The new Minecraft x Uniqlo Collaboration will start rolling out on March 15 (March 12 in China). To celebrate the new collection, the Minecraft team is releasing Minecraft x UNIQLO Skins Vol. 2. Wear your favorite Uniqlo x Minecraft apparel as you mine, craft, explore or virtually hang out with friends. There are 15 skins in the free pack, so you can avoid the chagrin of finding yourself wearing the same outfit as someone else in your group. Plus there’s a new UT collection coming out for kids, and new adult T-shirts, hoodies and tote bags. Head over to Minecraft.net to find out about it all. Continue reading...

Forza Horizon 4 is available now for Steam starting at $59.99. With cross-play, Steam players join millions of monthly Forza Horizon 4 players driving across Britain on Windows 10 PCs, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and cloud gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. There are three ways to customize your Horizon Festival experience and car collection, with the Standard, Deluxe and Ultimate Editions offering players options in kick starting their garages. Head over to Xbox Wire to find out more. Continue reading...

Growing up in a rural village in India, was expected to follow the example of the women before her: stay close, get married and have children. She defied her community’s expectations to forge her own path. She learned how to use a mobile phone and access online maps, which made her confident when traveling by herself. And she quickly picked up on how search engines could help her find other answers. “I no longer feel any fear with so much direct access to knowledge,” she says. Now she works full-time educating teachers – more than 300 so far – using technology to help them be more effective in class. [caption id=attachment_175446" align="aligncenter" width="1024]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/05-New-Realities_India_Ashwini-Doddalingappanavar-Basavaraj-Hoogar_resize-1024x680.jpg Ashwini Doddalingappanavar with women in her village (Photo by Basavaraj Hoogar)[/caption] “I got a lot of pressure to marry and settle down because of my culture and family values, but I wanted more,” Doddalingappanavar says. “I felt like I had to come out of my comfort zone and needed to break the box that I was in. The feeling to do and be more was so strong that it gave me the courage to go for training. I decided to speak up and tell my family that I wanted to become independent. It was hard to convince my parents. That was the first time I left my village, and that was the first time I was away from my family. It was a big fear. But, leaving and being on my own was a huge breakthrough in my life.” The 24-year-old got a job with Meghshala, helping to train teachers in Bangalore. She’s also pursuing an MBA. Doddalingappanavar is one of 10 women featured in New Realities, a Lenovo-backed project that debuted in October and showcases each woman through an immersive 360-degree virtual reality (VR) film series. With the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8, Lenovo turns the spotlight back on the women and how they’ve continued their journeys. It all began with a report last year. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/All-New-Realities-posters-1.jpg Lenovo’s 2020 Empathy and Technology Report revealed that 78% of those surveyed believe an “empathy gap” prevents them and others from seeing the world from perspectives other than their own. But the company also glimpsed a ray of hope in another observation: 51% of Gen Z (18- to 24-year-olds) surveyed acknowledged that technology makes them more empathetic, because it helps them experience life through other people’s eyes. “As a result of these findings, we challenged ourselves to create a unique, technology-driven project to amplify the voices of young women who are part of Gen Z, hoping that if the world heard their stories of hope and change, the combination of their passion, creativity and use of technology could begin to narrow the gap and bring us all closer together – particularly in the time of societal unrest, COVID-19 and social distancing,” says Dilip Bhatia, Lenovo Chief Customer Experience Officer. “Told in the first person, they invite us to see the world through their eyes. Together, the 10 stories build into a picture of an entire generation, transcending borders and actively working for a better world.”These are stories and voices we don’t normally hear – young women from diverse racial, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.Each of the women featured in the New Realities films received Windows 10 Lenovo devices specifically to support their mission, such as the enterprise-grade ThinkPad X1 Yoga laptop for coding, or the Yoga C940 for music. “I am learning Python with the help of this system – and I am enjoying learning,” says Doddalingappanavar, referring to her Lenovo IdeaPad D330 laptop. “It makes expanding my knowledge much easier. It makes presenting to my peers, teachers and students much easier. It is very user-friendly. Personally, I love it.” Lenovo partnered with Girl Up (the gender equality initiative of the United Nation Foundation), award-winning American filmmaker and activist Ava DuVernay, One Young World and other nonprofit organizations to develop the stories and then to reach a wider global audience. Lenovo has also committed $100,000 in grant money and scholarships to help these young women pursue fields of study that align with their goals, and create opportunities for the next generation of budding “changemakers.” [caption id=attachment_175449" align="aligncenter" width="1024]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/06-New-Realities_USA_Kemi-Dauda_Credit-Sylvia-Jarrus_resize-1024x682.jpg Kemi Dauda (Photo by Sylvia Jarrus)[/caption] One of the women profiled in New Realities, , leads a team of nine high school and college-age women in the nonprofit she founded as a college freshman in 2017, Bringing Hope Back Home (BHBH). Majoring in psychology and minoring in Afro American & African studies at the University of Michigan, she will be graduating this spring. BHBH provides Detroit high school students with college prep resources. It initially began as summer workshops at Dauda’s high school, covering topics such as financial aid, SAT prep and essay writing. The group transitioned from in-person programming to virtual webinars and 1:1 video calls and started helping students outside of Detroit, hoping to be more helpful. [caption id=attachment_175448" align="alignright" width="683]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/08-New-Realities_India_Ashwini-Doddalingappanavar-Basavaraj-Hoogar-1024x682.jpg Ashwini Doddalingappanavar filming her video for New Realities (Photo by Basavaraj Hoogar)[/caption] In one case, the team decided it would be too risky to send a crew to film, so they delivered equipment to the woman and then trained her – remotely – to shoot her own film. “By overcoming this obstacle, a shining creative moment emerged,” Bhatia says. “Ashwini, who lives in rural India and had no real experience with technology, was able to bring viewers into her world, on her own terms, resulting in an amazing, heartfelt film that gives viewers a chance to experience the world as she sees and lives it.” “While the pandemic had us reconsider and adapt nearly every single part of our original project, New Realities’ mission of showing how smart technology can help to increase understanding and deepen our empathy became even more critical,” says Bhatia. Check out all their other stories at the New Realities site. Lead photo: Ashwini Doddalingappanavar working on content for her New Realities video. (Photo by Ramesh Hulageri) Continue reading...

I’m excited that you’re here to learn about what we’ve been doing to further improve Microsoft Edge and Bing! In my last post we announced our new sleeping tabs feature and I’m happy to share initial findings from our latest Beta build that a sleeping tab increases battery life by using 26% less CPU on average compared to a non-sleeping tab, and also reduces memory usage by 16% on average. This is great news for all you gamers and tab-hoarders out there! More exciting things are in the works for you later this year. Last month we also announced beautiful new themes for Microsoft Edge and I love to hear that Halo, Satin Stacks and Wandering Fields are the top fan favorites. This month we’re excited to start to apply our modern design principles to Microsoft Bing with new experiences that are visually immersive, and which help you find the information you are looking for faster. For those who already have Microsoft Edge installed, launch it and check it out. If you’re on a Mac or mobile device download it and let us know what you think! Without further ado, here’s what’s new in Microsoft Edge and Bing this month. Make the most of your time online Move your tabs to the side with vertical tabs in Microsoft Edge https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/W10_20H2_Laptop_Edge_Vertical-Tabs_16x9_en-US.gif I’ll admit it, I’m a tab hoarder. I like to have several tabs open at once to keep the right information at my fingertips. News sites, work reports, metrics dashboards, marketing plans – all of these help me stay on top of my life and work, but at some point I have so many open that it becomes hard to find the tab I need. To make tab management and organization easier, vertical tabs is now generally available this month. Now everyone can view and manage their tabs from a pane on the side with a single click. This allows you to clearly see the tab titles and controls, making it easier to find and switch between the tabs you need, regardless of how many you have open. Pair this with sleeping tabs and you get a browser built for more performance at lower power! To get started, click on the vertical tabs icon in the upper left corner of your browser frame. Read more about how our teams created vertical tabs and get a behind-the-scenes look into the user research and design that inspired features like vertical tabs and tracking prevention. Get an easier way to view and manage your history in Microsoft Edge https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/W10_20H2_Laptop_Edge_History-Hub_16x9_en-US.gif We’ve heard feedback that many of you are missing the Hub experience from our legacy version of Microsoft Edge. Hub allowed you to view and manage your favorites, history and more directly from a pane on the side. This month, we’re excited to bring a more efficient way for you to quickly access and manage your history without losing context of the page you’re on. Now when you go to history, it will open as a lightweight dropdown from the toolbar instead of opening the full page view in settings. This means that you can easily search, open and manage your history without navigating away. If you want it to stay open, you can pin it to the side. Go to “…” and select History or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + H to try it out. Find information fast with new modern Microsoft Bing experiences At Microsoft Bing we're looking for ways to give you back time so you can focus on the things that really matter. We’re also looking for ways to move thoughtfully beyond a list of links, to a world of search results that seamlessly combine information with visually rich imagery in a single beautiful view. With that in mind, we’re excited to announce several new search experiences that quickly deliver information in a way that’s intuitive and engaging. The result is a visually rich format that allows you to quickly find what you are looking for without having to sift through large blocks of text. These new features are just the beginning as we look to evolve the search experience across all of Microsoft Bing! Get inspired with intuitive, interactive Bing search results One of our goals is to deliver a search experience that moves beyond a static set of results. One way we’re doing so is by updating our search result pages so that they adapt to intuitively highlight the content you’re engaging with as you go. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/Recipes-GIF.gif For instance, with more people cooking from home, we’ve heard many mention that they are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of recipe options online, and frustrated by recipes hidden below long introductions and ads. To help with that, we’ve released an updated recipes experience that extracts and aggregates the most relevant recipes content and presents it in a single view on the search results page. This view shows recipe pictures along with high-level information like calories per serving and user reviews. If a recipe includes a how-to video, we’ll show that as part of the answer, and it will play if you hover over it. Seamlessly click from one recipe to the next and see them expand inline so you don't have to bounce from page to page. The expanded view shows more information such as: an ingredient list and possible substitutions for when you don’t have everything on hand, a drop-down menu for you to scale the recipe to a certain number of servings, and nutritional information. You can see this feature for yourself with queries like “fish tacos recipes” or “easy mac and cheese recipes” to see how it can help you quickly decide on a recipe and get right to cooking. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/visual-SERP_v2.gif We applied similar principles to search results for those looking to catch up on home improvement or for creative projects to do with their kids. Search for things like “DIY coffee table” and “vegetable garden ideas,” and you’ll get a rich view of results that can serve as a starting point for your inspiration. From there you can click an idea that catches your eye to visit its home site for more details, save it for later, or find other similar suggestions or ideas! While exploring these visual results, you might see something you like but that’s difficult to describe with words. That’s why we’ve also integrated visual search into the experience, so you can quickly search using an image. For example, in the “DIY coffee table” result, you may see wicker baskets that fit the table’s look and feel. With just a click, you’ll get image results of similar-looking items, and can directly click off to retailer sites to purchase a particular basket if you’re sold on it. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/Carousel-GIF.gif We’ve also made a few updates to our carousel experiences, with intuitive hover-over experiences that can help you, for example, quickly organize your book or movie lists. To see it in action, search for things like “chef documentaries” or “space books,” and you’ll get a rich carousel of answers that showcases just the results’ high-level information to avoid crowding the page. If you decide you want to learn more about a specific result, hover over it, and Microsoft Bing will then expand the result with more detailed information. Quickly get informed with infographic-inspired experiences Another part of our vision for modern search is to thoughtfully aggregate information for more detailed topics, and to design the page in such a way that you can quickly find what you’re looking for. Our goal is to provide both style AND substance. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/giraffe-updated-3.3.png For example, you can search for broad topics like “Kenya” or “giraffes.” Results for these move beyond a dense summary of text results and blue links, and aggregate the top text and visual results into an infographic-inspired experience (you can see the updated experience alongside the previous experience above). Curiosity piqued? Click off to sites that contain more detail or explore other related topics. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/Staycation-GIF.gif Another feature that showcases this design approach is our local answers, which can help if, for example, you’re trying to stay close to home and want to be a tourist in your own hometown. Search for things like “things to do in Seattle” or “Eiffel Tower,” and you’ll get aggregated information from a variety of sources. Instead of just a single carousel of images, or just a text summary of one aspect of what you’ve searched for, you will now see a comprehensive overview of the topic – inclusive of Bing Maps, top images, visitor reviews and more – so in a single view you can learn more about the area and focus on whatever is of interest to you. This experience is flighting and will be fully available in the U.S. in coming weeks. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/list-bing-beat.jpg We’ve applied similar principles to more list-centric queries like “best rivers to visit” or “most interesting volcanoes.” Instead of getting just a text result, or information on a single answer, you get an explorable overview of relevant image-led content. We hope you’re as excited about these new experiences as we are! Stay tuned in the coming months for more visually immersive experiences across the product. As always, you can provide feedback by clicking the feedback button on the lower right corner of the results page. Startup boost makes your browser start up to 41% faster https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/Startup-boost-settings.png When working and browsing online, speed matters. Startup boost maximizes your computer’s performance by significantly reducing the time it takes to open the browser after a device reboot or reopening the browser. This new feature rolling out this month powers faster browser launches after you reboot your device and when relaunching Microsoft Edge. Initial tests show startup times improve from 29% - 41% percent with this feature. Startup boost will be automatically enabled this month and you can access your browser settings menu to personalize Microsoft Edge even more. Thanks again for your help making Microsoft Edge better than ever with your ongoing suggestions and feedback. We hope you love Microsoft Edge and we can’t wait to share what’s coming next! Continue reading...

In Max Brooks’ first Minecraft book, “The Island,” readers follow the inner thoughts of Guy, a man who wakes up and finds himself having to survive in a weird world of blocks. Now, in the sequel, “The Mountain,” Guy strikes out across the sea to see what else the world holds, and he lands on a frozen taiga coast. There, he encounters another person, Summer. Now Guy is going to learn how to survive with someone else. If you enjoy the audiobook versions of stories like this, you’ll hear familiar voices on both: Jack Black and Sean Astin, who both went to high school with Brooks. Explore Summer’s mountain base in a free adventure map, available now. Get Minecraft for Windows 10 and find out all about The Mountain and its free map on Minecraft.net. Continue reading...

In Operation 6, the latest update to Gears 5, you’ll meet new characters, such as Colonel Victor Hoffman, and find a new map of a pre-Locust-war district. You’ll also see a new Horde event to kick it off: Escape from Kadar. Find out more at Gears 5. Continue reading...

We all have moments when we realize the world got smaller and our imagination got bigger. I remember the first time I travelled internationally. I got on a plane in Cherry Point, North Carolina, fell asleep and woke up in Rota, Spain. The sense of age and time for the city, the food, the culture – it was something I’d never experienced before, and my perspective changed all at once. The flight had been a portal to a completely new world. When I got my first cellphone, I went outside during lunch and called one of my friends from the car. “Guess where I’m calling from?” I said, not realizing how transformational that invention would become, that I could be present for someone, no matter where I was. Maybe you felt it when the Xbox first came out. Suddenly you were talking smack through your headset while dunking on your buddy from 3,000 miles away. Again, technology helped me connect, be present in a way I hadn’t seen before. This is a long way of saying that in this world there are certain moments that feel like they throw open a door to change. And that advances in technology often power these moments. Now more than ever, we need conferences like Microsoft Ignite If this were any other year, right now we’d be holding our Microsoft Ignite tour events in person around the world. Instead, we’re hosting more than 150,000 technology leaders and practitioners virtually for a 48-hour event. The challenges of this past year have forced these kinds of changes. And the things that have kept us going – curbside ordering, telehealth, remote manufacturing, video calls with team members at work and family members at home – have more often than not relied on the public cloud. These capabilities were not made possible overnight. They were available when we needed them because of a decade’s worth of investments in new technologies and new thinking. And they took on new meaning and importance over the past several months as countless innovations were put on an accelerated path. So now, as an industry and as a company, we must reflect on what’s next. We must anticipate what the world requires to continue its digital transformation and to continue making lives better through technology. As Satya shared in his keynote, we believe five attributes will drive the next generation of innovation from the cloud: First, ubiquitous and decentralized computing; second, sovereign data and ambient intelligence; third, empowered creators and communities everywhere; fourth, expanded economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce; And fifth, trust by design. If you were not able to join live, I encourage you to watch his keynote on demand. The people who come to Microsoft Ignite are dedicated to being on the forefront. They’re here because they know the world will continue its digital transformation, and because they know that Microsoft is committed to enabling IT developers, IT implementors and IT leaders of all kinds with the platform and tools they need to be ready for the next disruption. This week we’re going to walk you through how that future is taking shape across industries now and offer a look at some exciting things to come. And with that, let’s get into the steps we’re making toward that vision today — starting with our next big “whoa.” Step into a new reality with Microsoft Mesh During today’s keynote, Alex Kipman revealed how we’re bringing mixed reality to collaboration through a first-of-its-kind immersive keynote experience, delivered through a new platform, Microsoft Mesh. In my examples above, I talked about how technology like cellphones and connected gaming gave me the ability to feel present, regardless of geographic location. Microsoft Mesh takes this to the next level. It is a mixed-reality platform that creates a real feeling of presence. People feel like they are in the same room as each other even when they’re on different continents. They can interact with 3D content or with each other through Mesh-enabled apps across any platform or device. We’re starting with the ability to virtually travel and meet with people as if you’d gotten on that airplane and were sitting with them in a conference room. But like everything with Microsoft, this is a platform opportunity for the ecosystem to build on. And the opportunities for this are really unlimited. A travel company could create an experience for you to virtually tour the ruins of ancient Greece, or an architectural firm could design a first-of-its-kind building by creating a virtual model that allows team members to create and collaborate no matter where they reside; and on a manufacturing floor, a remote expert could work virtually right next to their colleague. Like our partners who were with us in the keynote, Ocean X, the world’s best scientists can collaborate from anywhere in the world, creating new discoveries from a shared perspective. It’s really interesting and inspiring to imagine what’s possible. We’ll be integrating Mesh with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365, and we expect our partner community to do what they always do and build a wide variety of new and exciting experiences on Mesh. For now, it’s fun to daydream about what’s next. YouTube Video Click here to load media The hybrid work world We may start to move back to offices and classrooms in 2021, but there’s no going back to our pre-pandemic reality. As you will hear from Jared Spataro in his session, people often think of 2020 as the year work moved home. But in reality, it’s the year work moved to the cloud. In a hybrid world where people work from home, office and everywhere in between, we’ll need cloud-powered solutions to keep up. Companies need to rethink workspaces to accommodate both physical and digital presence. Microsoft Teams is an organizing layer for all the ways we work, providing the modes of communication, the collaboration tools and the ability to extend it with other apps and services. At Ignite, we’re announcing Teams Connect, which provides the ability for multiple organizations to collaborate across company boundaries. We’re also introducing new presenter views in Team meetings, and building upon last month’s launch of Microsoft Viva, our new employee experience platform. Check out the new Microsoft 365 and Teams announcements here. Continued cloud innovation and control Azure cloud services have become more important than ever to help companies survive and thrive in a constantly evolving world. While performance, reliability and security will always be the foundation of Azure, we’re also working to make the platform much more useful and powerful so our customers and partners can innovate with data. At Ignite we are announcing many powerful new features and updates to unlock the power of the cloud. Azure Percept will help customers build and manage edge AI solutions. Azure Synapse Pathway will accelerate migrating workloads to our limitless analytics service. We’re bringing more options to Azure Purview to help customers map and understand their data. Azure Arc-enabled machine learning for hybrid cloud is now in preview as well. Azure Communication Services now interoperates with Microsoft Teams. Security is everyone’s priority We’ve seen some unprecedented attacks lately and we know security is more critical than ever. Microsoft is always working to bring its two security superpowers together — our integrated end-to-end approach and our AI and automation capabilities — to tackle security from all angles, at scale. At Ignite, we’re announcing several new enhancements to empower users and organizations, and to protect devices and back-end systems. There’s one in particular that a lot of customers are pretty jazzed about: Users everywhere can rejoice in the fact that password-less authentication in Azure Active Directory is now generally available, eliminating the need for passwords in many instances. There’s a lot more, including new Threat Analytics reports in Microsoft Defender and Secured-core coming to Windows Server and Edge devices to enhance protection from current and emerging vulnerabilities at the firmware layer. We’re also announcing that Teams will support end-to-end encryption, which has many benefits including protection of sensitive online conversations. Deliver great customer experiences More than ever, great customer experiences result from a coordinated effort across every touchpoint from frontline to fulfillment, back office to service. This requires breaking down barriers between CRM and ERP — to ensure everyone is empowered to act on insights, innovate and rapidly adapt. Together, Teams and Dynamics 365 offer a unified platform that ties together collaboration and business processes. At Microsoft Ignite, we will spotlight new integrations to enhance workflows across the organization, and new customer journey orchestration capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing to personalize every moment that matters for customers across all channels and touchpoints. We’re also announcing a new application, Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, enabling organizations to re-imagine omnichannel fulfilment to meet order and fulfilment complexities while supporting newer delivery methods like curbside pickup. Low-code experiences to make building transformational solutions easy Power Platform enables anyone, regardless of technical ability, to build apps and automate cumbersome processes. And over the past year we’ve seen amazing adoption among citizen developers creating low-code apps and automations without having to write any code, and increasing use among professional developers relying on low-code to enhance their productivity alongside their favorite professional developer tools. At Ignite we’re announcing two key Power Platform updates. Starting on March 2, Microsoft Power Automate Desktop — which offers robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities that easily automate time-consuming manual work — will be available to Windows 10 users at no additional cost. We’re also announcing a new open-source, low-code programming language called Microsoft Power Fx, a language for low-code based on Microsoft Excel. Using formulas already familiar to hundreds of millions of users, Power Fx allows a broad range of people, from business users to professional developers, to bring skills they already know to develop low-code solutions. Three new Industry clouds Last week we announced our expanded industry investments with three new clouds for the manufacturing, financial services, and nonprofit sectors. These join our already available healthcare cloud and our retail cloud, currently in private preview. What exactly are the industry clouds? Think of them as clouds that can speak an industry’s language. Our industry clouds help organizations make faster, more intelligent decisions – so they can be more agile, more efficient and derive value faster from their cloud investments. This is all aimed at helping organizations provide better experiences and value to their own customers and employees. At Microsoft Ignite, customers can learn more about the industry clouds and how to join in the coming previews. Come join us at Ignite Whew, that’s a lot, but there is so much more coming this week. If you weren’t able to catch it live, I’d encourage you to watch Satya’s keynote on demand and to check out all the highlights on our news page. We have several new customer stories to share, and there are also more than 300 sessions available to watch virtually. The post Ignite 2021: A resilient, reimagined future and next big ‘whoa’ moment appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

On Tuesday at Microsoft Ignite, the company announced that Power Automate Desktop is now available at no additional cost, allowing Windows 10 users to harness the power of low-code robotic process automation (RPA). The technology is available as a download and will be included in Windows Insider Preview builds in the coming weeks. This user-friendly, low-code application empowers coders and non-coders alike to optimize personal and professional workflows by automating repetitive and time-consuming manual tasks in Windows 10. Since RPA in Power Automate was introduced in 2019, the Microsoft Power Automate team has seen tremendous growth, with hundreds of thousands of organizations using the technology and taking billions of actions each month. Head over to the blog post by Stephen Siciliano to find out more. Continue reading...

Windows is the heartbeat of modern work: consistent, reliable, familiar, intuitive – quietly supporting the apps and experiences in Microsoft 365 that empower people to do more, achieve more. Enabling IT to manage and secure devices regardless of how, when and how frequently they connect. We believe that the work of the future will be powered by the cloud. As the world’s workforce begins a hybrid working style where files, apps and data need to be accessible from both home and the office – and everywhere in between – it’s up us to make sure that they can work from any device, access whatever they need, print from anywhere, and keep everything secure at all times. The need has never been greater for IT to offer their workforce secure, productive, cloud-connected experiences so that business continuity can be maintained. This is why we are making this Microsoft Ignite a moment for Windows. A moment to remember that Windows isn't just a product; it's a universe, an ecosystem of over 1 billion devices and millions of people using those devices. We've developed many new capabilities over the past year in direct response to your feedback and we continue to innovate to ensure that you are prepared for the future. With that said, let's fill in you on the sessions and experiences at Microsoft Ignite 2021 that will bring you up to speed on all the latest Windows, Surface and Microsoft Edge capabilities – and give you a look at where we're heading. Live sessions | add to schedule The heartbeat of modern work: A Windows fireside chat with Panos Panay and Roanne Sones Tuesday, March 2 – 11:30 AM PST Panos Panay, Roanne Sones Join Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay and Azure Edge + Platform CVP Roanne Sones for a quick, lively dialogue about the difference makers and the recent Windows innovations for commercial customers and the IT community. Start your Windows journey at Microsoft Ignite with us and let's talk about the features and innovations coming to life across Microsoft experiences and services. Engineer to engineer: Let's talk Windows! Wednesday, March 3 – 4 p.m. PT and Thursday, March 4 – 1:30 a.m. PT (replay with live Q&A) Aidan Marcuss, Ramya Chitrakar, David Weston, Gabe Frost Together Windows CVP Aidan Marcuss and pivotal members of the Windows, security and endpoint management engineering teams discuss the features, capabilities and shiny new things that will help prepare commercial organizations for the future and ensure that IT receives the hero’s welcome it deserves. This session will be supported with live Q&A so bring your questions! Ask the Experts: Windows & Devices Wednesday, March 3 – 5 p.m. PT and Wednesday, March 3 – 11:30 p.m. PT Get your questions answered by a broad group of product experts, servicing experts and engineers representing Windows, Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune, Configuration Manager), security, Surface, Microsoft Edge, FastTrack and more. Ask the Experts: Microsoft Edge Tuesday, March 2 – 11:30 p.m. PT This your chance to ask questions and learn about the latest security and productivity innovations, as well as the continued integration of Microsoft Edge and Microsoft 365. Our mission is to be the best browser for business and your input is a key ingredient. We've been listening and learning from you, and we'll share how all of that feedback fits into Microsoft Edge. Featured sessions on demand | save to backpack Microsoft Surface | Delivering the best in modern end point security from Microsoft Mary Beth Anderson, Frank Buchholz In today’s hybrid workplace, security is more important than ever. The Surface engineering team has been using a unified approach to firmware protection and device security since 2015 through complete end-to-end ownership of hardware design, firmware development and device updates and management. Hear from subject matter experts across Microsoft, how Surface and Microsoft 365 give people the freedom to work their way from anywhere, protected by Microsoft security and modern manageability. Top reasons why customers love Microsoft Edge Colleen Williams Microsoft Edge launched just over a year ago, and it’s been a whirlwind year! Come learn why both end-users and IT admins love using Microsoft Edge, why using Microsoft leaves everyone more secure, and what’s next. Deep dives, demos and more opportunities for Q&A For those looking for in-depth digital learning and demos on the topics discussed in our live and featured on-demand sessions, we'll be releasing new content in the Video Hub on Tech Community. We'll also hold daily Windows Office Hours on Tech Community through the conference. For more detailed information on these activities, see the post on Windows & Devices at Microsoft Ignite 2021: March edition in the Windows IT Pro Blog. Hope you can join us! Windows is a known entity, but the potential for innovation is still vast. We invite to take this journey with us at Microsoft Ignite 2021 and thank you for being part of the Windows family! Continue reading...

https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/JPG-MSC19_singaporeDigiGirlz_004-1-scaled.jpg I started to realize my journey to empowerment at age 17, standing inside Mumbai airport for the first time in my life and getting ready to fly 8,000 miles away from home. I had received a Rotary Youth Exchange Scholarship to study in the United States for my senior year of high school. After going through exit immigration, I turn around and could see my parents waving with tear-filled eyes. As I left, I reflected on how much of a leap of faith they had made. Although it was almost inconceivable that a young Indian woman would leave her parents’ home so early to embark on such a far-flung adventure, my parents took a tremendous leap of faith and supported me. They saw my potential, wanted me to be unbound by tradition and encouraged me to chart my own path. Their support and unwavering trust are what gave me the confidence to be independent and to step alone into a culture unlike any I had previously experienced, leaving behind family, friends and most of what was familiar at the time. I eventually stayed on in the U.S. and pursued my passion for engineering. My parents strongly influenced my conviction to empower others, and my belief that helping others find their voice and confidence to reach their full potential is an essential part of my role as a leader. When women are empowered, society wins Around the world, barriers continue to keep many women from fully realizing their potential. Conscious and unconscious biases place real and perceived boundaries on opportunities for girls and women. Traditional gender roles and societal expectations have kept women out of the workforce or redirected career paths. Even personally, I experienced moments where I have seen these kinds of bias radically influence decision making, perceptions, attitudes and reactions. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/03/PNG-Mala_Anand-214x300.png Mala Anand One clear path to empowerment is to get more women into higher-skilled professions, including technology. As the world becomes more digital, all sectors will be recruiting workers with technical skills. Microsoft has long been involved in expanding access to technology for women and girls across the globe. Starting with youth, our TEALS program brings technology education resources to schools, while the DigiGirlz program is in its 20th year of building girls’ passion and skills in tech, impacting more than 65,000 young women in 92 countries. In response to the pandemic’s severe impact on parts of the labor market, Microsoft launched its Global Skills Initiative to help 25 million people worldwide acquire digital skills and certifications to find new jobs. I am especially proud and grateful for Microsoft’s work in India, my home country, to train 2,000 young women toward Microsoft certifications in partnership with NASSCOM Foundation and the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. Start from a place of empathy Empowerment can come in many other forms. At Microsoft, we aspire to help people of all genders and backgrounds thrive and create the conditions for empowerment at moments that matter for our employees, customers, partners and communities. It is vital to foster an environment where all genders can connect with each other and with allies. Often, having a role model, a sounding board or a confidence booster can be deeply impactful to one’s growth. We do this through our Women at Microsoft employee resources group, which organizes executive speaking events, mentorships, leadership development and skill-sharing programs. These efforts equip our employees to support each other and to empower our customers, partners and communities more effectively. We also recognize the importance of helping the next generation of female technology leaders succeed. Through our M12 Venture Fund, we host an annual Female Founders Competition to support women-led companies with seed funding and mentorship to grow their businesses in the tech ecosystem. Another form of empowerment comes from employee policies that back up our commitment to advance equality among all genders. The pandemic has highlighted a real need to shift social norms and help all members of a family support their family’s needs. Companywide, we have grounded our managers toward empathy and care, and to offer flexibility. This includes 12 weeks of Pandemic School Closure and Childcare Leave for any parents who need it. When all employees, regardless of gender, are offered paid leave, it counteracts caregiving stereotypes and removes some pressure from women to be the only ones who prioritize family. I strongly believe that empowerment is such an effective way to live your core values. With the solution set being so vast, every one of us has a part to play to move this needle. As long as we all start from a place of empathy, and commit to taking action, we can give women at every level an opportunity to grow in the ways that are most meaningful to them. Ways to take action include giving time to youth education programs, supporting mid-career technical skilling programs, being a mentor or simply becoming an ally to the women around you. Women’s History Month is an opportunity to not only look back at what women have achieved, but to look forward at how we can continue to help all women thrive. I was lucky that my parents granted me the inspiration, confidence and freedom to reach my career aspirations, and I firmly believe in paying this forward. If we each do our part to elevate the freedom and confidence of all women everywhere in the world, we can generate tremendous impact and create lasting benefits for our communities and society as a whole. Empowerment enables creative problem solving and exponential contributions to society and the world. Empowering her empowers all of us. Find stories of women empowering themselves and so many others at Microsoft.com/WomensHistoryMonth. The post Empowering her empowers all of us appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

The latest Minecraft Dungeons DLC, Flames of the Nether, is now available alongside a substantial free update, on Windows PC or Xbox One. Over at Minecraft.net, you can find out more, including resources that may help before you jump into the game. Continue reading...

Over the past year, we have experienced dramatic disruption around the world. Companies in every industry have turned to digital technologies for the resilience and agility necessary to survive. The urgency for entire industries to transform at scale has never been greater. In response, we have accelerated our efforts to support and co-innovate with customers and partners — both now and long term — with industry-specific cloud offerings that can provide a launchpad for further innovations. Today, we’re announcing another milestone in those efforts with three new industry-specific cloud offerings: Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit. We are also announcing the first update to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, and the public preview timing for Microsoft Cloud for Retail, introduced in January at NRF. We created the Microsoft industry clouds by bringing together common data models, cross-cloud connectors, workflows, APIs, and industry-specific components and standards, with the breadth of Microsoft’s cloud services, including Microsoft 365 and Teams, Azure, Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and security solutions. Through these industry clouds, we aim to empower everyone to deliver value faster, adapt quickly to changing conditions, build for the future and do all of this with security at the core. Microsoft’s deep investment in industry solutions is not new. Across the company, embedded industry experts among our employee base are informing our priorities — doctors working alongside engineering teams on healthcare challenges, retail executives imagining new customer experiences, financial experts helping us understand fintech, banking and payments and nonprofit leaders shaping our vision and solutions to impact those helping others. YouTube Video Click here to load media Designed with industry challenges in mind, these clouds can enable organizations to jump ahead and deliver value at record pace. This is because they provide an on-ramp to the broader portfolio of Microsoft cloud services, enabling customers to begin with the areas where the need for technology transformation is most urgent. Because of the breadth and depth of the Microsoft partner ecosystem, Microsoft industry clouds also provide new opportunities to strengthen and extend for the last mile of industry execution. Partners bring new innovation and expertise to deliver tailored solutions for unique customer needs. Here’s what today’s announcement means for organizations in these industries — and why we believe these new clouds are a meaningful opportunity for our partners, too. Financial services: Comprehensive services at customers’ fingertips with the highest security and compliance standards at the core The financial services industry is deeply traditional and has been steadily disrupted the past few years by trends like e-commerce, fintechs and cryptos. The industry was already shifting from brick-and-mortar locations to digital services, but global lockdowns accelerated this trend. Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services brings together Microsoft solutions, unique templates, API’s and additional industry-specific standards, along with multi-layered security and compliance coverage to deliver differentiated customer experiences, improve employee collaboration and productivity, manage risk and modernize core systems. Using these capabilities, retail banks can create a 360-degree view of the customer with greater insight and suggested next best action, embed digital collaboration into their process workflows to create real-time visibility to status and streamline hand-offs, enhance insights to help reduce fraud — all with the scalable and hybrid deployment options financial services organizations require to modernize their systems. For example, a new feature called Loan Manager will enable lenders to close loans faster by streamlining workflows and increasing transparency through automation and collaboration — a critical function in the current remote-everything world. Public preview is planned for March 2021, and customers like ABN AMRO and Manulife are already taking advantage of some of its capabilities. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/02/Resized_FSI-IMAGE-GettyImages-1216167869-1-1024x683.jpg Manufacturing: Intelligent systems and agile factories Manufacturers have been moving toward data-driven automation, IoT, machine learning and AI for years. If anything, 2020 showed just how critical those capabilities are. As factory floors ground to a halt, even the most sophisticated, just-in-time supply chains were impacted. Available for public preview by the end of June, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is designed to deliver capabilities that support the core processes and requirements of the industry. These end-to-end manufacturing solutions bring together new and existing capabilities across the Microsoft portfolio as well as partner solutions that together can seamlessly connect people, assets, workflows and business processes, helping organizations become more resilient. Many of these capabilities were on display during the VentilatorChallengeUK, where a consortium of companies helped the U.K. increase ventilator production from 50 to 1,500 per week. Partners like Accenture, Avanade, PTC and Siemens responded using Microsoft’s cloud capabilities for manufacturing. Nonprofit: Enabling and accelerating mission-driven impact Nonprofits are addressing many of our world’s most pressing challenges, providing critical services and support to communities everywhere. Yet, nonprofits are often challenged with a patchwork of disparate systems and pockets of disconnected data. Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit creates a connected, intelligent platform to empower staff and volunteers to focus on the work that matters most — their mission. Launching in public preview by the end of June, Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit connects the trusted cloud capabilities of Microsoft to the most common nonprofit scenarios such as constituent engagement, program design and delivery, volunteer management and fundraising, all brought together by the nonprofit common data model. Right To Play is a global nongovernmental organization dedicated to protecting, educating, and empowering children using the power of play. Using capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit, the organization has scaled from 100 to more than 3,000 new monthly donors, deepening engagements and building better programs to serve more than 2 million children worldwide every week. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2021/02/Resized_RETAIL-IMAGE-GettyImages-2-1024x682.jpg Retail: Blurring the lines between the physical and the digital Retail is a constantly evolving industry, and those efforts have taken on a breakneck pace over the past 12 months to accommodate record online sales, shifts in customer loyalty, a surge in “buy online, pick up in store” and curbside pickup. Microsoft Cloud for Retail brings together different data sources across the retail value chain and uniquely connects experiences across the end-to-end shopper journey, using a set of capabilities that deliver more relevant personalized experiences and optimize operations for sustained profitability. Using this industry cloud, retailers can build more targeted and relevant customer recommendations and notifications, expand their fulfillment options, simplify payment processing and benefit from comprehensive fraud protection. Currently in private preview, Microsoft Cloud for Retail will be available for public preview in March. Athletic headwear company Lids is already using Microsoft products included in the cloud, like Dynamics 365 Commerce, to bring greater visibility into its sales and supply chain and modernize its point-of-sale system. “We are excited to explore Microsoft Cloud for Retail as another crucial tool to bring together our stores, product and marketing systems, and unlock the power of our data,” said Britten Maughan, senior vice president of product and partnerships at Lids. Healthcare: Increased resiliency for the challenges ahead With the expertise of partner Avtex, Mary Washington Health System is deploying a solution built on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare that helps securely connect providers digitally with patients who have canceled or deferred important elective procedures. Solutions like this allow patients to reconnect with their healthcare providers and restart those procedures that have been delayed — while also helping providers recover in a post-pandemic world. The core elements of our industry vision Microsoft will always be a trusted advisor, partner and co-innovator to our customers and global ecosystem of partners. Today’s news is the next step on our journey to deliver industry-specific clouds that enable every organization to adapt to a constantly changing new reality. Across these announcements, we believe three key factors allow Microsoft to deliver on our industry vision unlike no other company. First, our industry approach is core to our mission to empower people to achieve more. Every organization in every industry relies on the hard work and ingenuity of individuals to achieve its goals. With our industry-first approach, we are putting specific solutions in the hands of people closest to the problem. This helps organizations with whom we partner to act faster and make more intelligent decisions — ultimately providing better experiences. Second, our approach proves the power of partnership. Our global partner ecosystem is unmatched in adding deep expertise and building high-value solutions for virtually any scenario or function. We work with industry-leading independent software vendors and system integrators to ensure our customers have the solutions they need to address their business challenges. Finally, we have a deep commitment to security, compliance and trust. Our offerings incorporate industry-recognized standards from edge to cloud, with more than 90 certifications and more than 35 industry-specific compliance offerings. This creates value for partners too, allowing them to invest in opportunities and scale their business rather than apply for certifications. Additionally, our approach to customer data underscores our commitment to trust — customer data belongs to our customers, not to us. The complexity of our world is increasing daily, and the lessons of 2020 are showing up as organizations everywhere learn to be more agile and resilient. They are counting on Microsoft to help them master this complexity so they can move faster, innovate thoughtfully and be positioned for success. To learn more about the clouds, we invite you to join the coming previews and tune into dedicated sessions at Microsite Ignite next week and visit our industry site for more product information. Members of the media can find additional resources in our press room: https://news.microsoft.com/industry The post New industry clouds offer launchpad for innovation appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Last week the Microsoft Flight Simulator team released World Update 3, giving “simmers” a dazzling flight experience throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. “Take flight into a region rich with tradition, culture and heritage — not to mention a fair share of myth and legend,” writes Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann in a post on Xbox Wire. “From seats of royalty to centers of finance, bustling metropolitan hubs to sprawling farmsteads and cliffside villages, the splendor of the United Kingdom and Ireland is on full display with dramatic upgrades and visual enhancements.” Microsoft Flight Simulator is available on Xbox Game Pass for PC, Windows 10 and Steam. Head over to Xbox Wire to get all the details. Continue reading...