Microsoft goes all-in on Gen AI: Everything it announced at Ignite

Microsoft’s annual Ignite conference, held in Seattle this 12 months, was packed this morning with bulletins and updates on the corporate’s imaginative and prescient and expertise round generative AI.

The bulletins, which included every part from new AI chip {hardware} and software program to safety, and open supply format strikes, present Microsoft is pulling out all the stops it may possibly to exert management in within the rising expertise space.

Listed here are a number of the highlights from the occasion:

• Microsoft broadcasts Mirroring, a solution to copy databases. Mirroring is a brand new characteristic that’s a part of quite a lot of updates to Microsoft Material that allows customers to duplicate exterior databases, even in proprietary codecs. This in flip permits prospects to extra simply consolidate their information inside Microsoft Material, and save prices. Microsoft mentioned that the replication expertise will begin working at the moment for purchasers of Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL DB, Snowflake, and Mongo DB. Extra information sources will likely be added 2024, the corporate mentioned. Once more, unifying information is a requirement for stylish Gen AI.

• Microsoft strengthens infrastructure play with in-house Maia and Cobalt chips for enterprise AI. The chips present enterprises with environment friendly, scalable and sustainable compute to benefit from the most recent cloud and AI breakthroughs. Microsoft says they signify the ultimate piece of the puzzle in its mission to ship versatile infrastructure methods – with its personal and partner-delivered {hardware} and software program – that may be optimized to fulfill totally different workload necessities. Maia is an AI-centered GPU, designed to run cloud-based coaching and inference for generative AI workloads. Cobalt is an Arm-based chip for general-purpose workloads.

• Microsoft goes all-in on Gen AI with Safety Copilot and Defender XDR. Microsoft launched a sequence of recent cybersecurity options designed to establish, detect, and reply to threats enterprises face, lots of which present detection and response methods can’t detect or cease. The corporate’s new concept of cybersecurity relies on utilizing generative AI to seek out threats and share that data with all of its functions, copilots, prolonged detection and response (XDR) methods, the cloud, and hybrid clouds in real-time. Gen AI is the brand new DNA of Microsoft’s broad safety technique. Microsoft’s resolution to go all-in on generative AI to unify risk intelligence throughout all safety apps, copilots, clouds, and platforms displays their enterprise prospects’ urgency for an answer to cease these assaults that always go undetected.

• Microsoft broadcasts expanded Copilot capabilities at Ignite for gross sales and repair. The tech large unveiled a set of modern, AI-driven Copilot options, geared toward boosting gross sales productiveness and bettering customer support experiences throughout organizations. The brand new updates aren’t nearly gross sales and repair operations utilizing Microsoft Dynamics, moderately they’re a a lot deeper integration throughout the Microsoft portfolio. Customers will have the ability to extra simply combine Microsoft 365 with supply of gross sales and repair information, than was beforehand doable.

• [Update: The following news was not part of the Ignite event, but was reported exclusively by VentureBeat on the same day] Microsoft and Google be part of forces on OneTable: In a brand new open-source partnership improvement effort introduced at the moment, Microsoft is becoming a member of with Google and Onehouse in supporting the OneTable challenge, which may reshape the cloud information lake panorama for years to come back. Persistently formatted, dependable information is a requirement for all AI initiatives.

These are simply a number of the bulletins that Microsoft made at Ignite. For extra particulars and knowledge, keep tuned for additional updates on VentureBeat.