In the rapidly evolving world of technology, collaboration is the cornerstone of success. This is particularly true for Microsoft, a global tech giant with an extensive network of over 400,000 partners worldwide. These partners play a pivotal role in making innovative technology accessible to customers, especially in the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Microsoft Inspire, an annual event, is a platform to acknowledge the significant role these partners play and to share new opportunities for engagement with Microsoft products.
The 2023 edition of Microsoft Inspire kicked off with a celebration of the finalists and winners of the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. These awards, announced in late June, spotlight the success and innovation of our partners across various solution areas, industries, business transformation, and social impact.
This year, Microsoft Inspire continues to emphasize the transformative potential of AI for our customers and partners. We are thrilled to share more AI-powered solutions and demonstrate how our partners can leverage these AI innovations across their organizations. From expanding AI skilling to introducing new products and services that drive customer success, this year’s event is packed with exciting announcements.
Bing Chat Enterprise: AI-Powered Chat with Commercial Data Protection
One of the major announcements is the introduction of Bing Chat Enterprise. This new product provides organizations with AI-powered chat capabilities, ensuring commercial data protection. This addresses the concerns of many corporate customers who are keen to utilize powerful AI tools but are worried about data protection. Bing Chat Enterprise is rolling out in preview to organizations licensed for Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business Premium, and Business Standard at no additional cost. A stand-alone subscription will also be available in the future.
Microsoft 365 Copilot: A Multitude of Skills at Your Command
Another significant announcement is the pricing for Microsoft 365 Copilot. This product offers thousands of skills, grounded in business data like documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings, and contacts. By combining these with your working context, Copilot delivers richer, more relevant, and actionable responses to your questions. Integrated into the apps millions of people use every day, Copilot enhances productivity in Word, analyzes data in Excel, designs presentations in PowerPoint, triages your Outlook inbox, summarizes meetings in Teams, and much more.
Empowering Sellers and Customer Service Agents with AI
Microsoft is also enhancing the functionality of Microsoft Sales Copilot within Dynamics 365 Sales. This includes AI-generated opportunity summaries, contextualized email drafts, and meeting preparations. These additions empower sellers to improve productivity and close more deals with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) task automation, actionable real-time insights, and AI-assisted content and recommendations to personalize customer interactions at scale.
Process Mining in Power Automate: AI-Powered Insights for Workflow Optimization
Microsoft is announcing the general availability of next-generation AI features within Power Automate Process Mining. This provides customers with AI-powered insights to optimize existing processes and drive efficiencies through low-code automation.
Azure OpenAI: Expanded Availability and New Capabilities
The enthusiasm and business adoption of Azure OpenAI Service have been overwhelming, with more than 4,500 customers using the product. We are now expanding access to Azure OpenAI Service, increasing its availability in North America and Western Europe, and making it available for Asia for the first time.
New Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program
Microsoft Inspire 2023 also marks the launch of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. This program empowers every partner to deliver customer value while leveraging Microsoft AI and the Microsoft Cloud. It provides partners with a comprehensive portfolio of investments for all partner business models, at every stage of maturity.
In conclusion, Microsoft Inspire 2023 is a testament to Microsoft’s commitment to accelerating AI transformation, driving customer success, and fueling partner business growth and profitability. It’s an exciting time to be part of the Microsoft ecosystem, and we look forward to the continued journey of innovation and collaboration.
