Nadella Tips Microsoft 365, Rolls Out Azure Stack to Partners

Microsoft is total steam ahead in its plan to combine all of its part productivity applications and business services into a single deject parcel. At the Microsoft Inspire partner conference in Washington D.C. this morn, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced new Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Concern offerings, and general availability of Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Azure Stack.

A calendar week later on announcing up to 3,000 layoffs among a reorganization of its Microsoft Azure sales strategy, the company has further consolidated its software portfolio nether the unified Microsoft 365 banner.

What Is Microsoft 365?

Microsoft 365 is a new product family combining Microsoft Role 365, Microsoft Windows 10, and Microsoft's enterprise mobility and security services into a deject-based suite for businesses. Microsoft 365 Business and Microsoft 365 Enterprise, the two newly announced offerings, will be bachelor this quarter co-ordinate to Microsoft.

Microsoft 365 Concern is targeted at small and midsize businesses (SMBs) while Microsoft 365 Enterprise is geared toward larger corporations. Both will feature a centralized IT console from which administrators can configure and oversee identity direction and mobile device management (MDM) by using integrated services such equally Microsoft Azure Agile Directory (Azure AD) and Microsoft Intune.

Azure Stack for Partners

Nadella also announced that Azure Stack, appear in May at Microsoft Build, is now available to social club from launch partners including Dell EMC, HP Enterprise, and Lenovo. Azure Stack is an extension of the company'south cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering to on-premises servers and hybrid data centers. Azure Stack volition be upgraded in the same fashion as Azure for enterprise customers, with infrastructure and service updates going out on a monthly cadence for enterprises. One important difference: the updates won't be automatically downloaded. On the pricing front end, Azure Stack uses a consumption-based model, charging by virtual CPU usage per hour or per month, accrued to a company'south existing Azure subscription.

Aside from new partner services, the last large announcement for businesses today is general availability of Dynamics 365, Microsoft's unified platform for customer relationship direction (CRM) and enterprise resources planning (ERP), and its integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

This is i of the first fruits of Microsoft'due south $26.two billion acquisition of LinkedIn last year. Microsoft has a long list of plans for everything it wants to do with LinkedIn, merely the Dynamics 365/Sales Navigator integration is a proficient case of Nadella'southward overarching vision of combining cloud, data, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Microsoft sees Dynamics 365 and Sales Navigator forming an end-to-end lifecycle for man capital direction, handling everything from recruiting and candidate tracking to onboarding and payroll, integrated with LinkedIn, Part, and Azure for smarter marketing and sales.

See It Now

You can already see this in the Microsoft Relationship Sales Solution, which combines Dynamics 365 for Sales and Sales Navigator Team Edition for $135 per seat per month. A salesperson looking at their pb and opportunity dashboard will see an AI-generated "wellness score" of each sales opportunity. Through integrated Azure Car Learning, the tool factors attributes such as date, LinkedIn contour metrics, time elapsed, and activeness level to score each opportunity and alert the sales rep to potential risk or opportunity.

This is only a basic instance of the kind of integrated business concern insights Microsoft is angling for with its unified cloud offerings, combined with social information from LinkedIn and AI algorithms baked into the procedure beneath the surface. Await for more data-driven "intelligent experiences" from Microsoft in the months to come.

About Rob Marvin

Rob Marvin

Rob Marvin is PCMag's Associate Features Editor. He writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture majuscule, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, Chiliad&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business department. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University'south S.I. Newhouse Schoolhouse of Public Communications. Y'all tin can also notice his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fob Concern. Rob is likewise an unabashed nerd who does occasional amusement writing for …