Blog: Flexible Work
Flexible work in the hybrid world

Our takeaways from Microsoft Ignite: 2021 Edition

Blog: Flexible Work
Flexible work in the hybrid world

Our takeaways from Microsoft Ignite: 2021 Edition

Get inspired by new Microsoft solutions for the modern hybrid workplace.

The past year brought unprecedented levels of change to the workplace. Digital transformation became a necessity, businesses moved into the cloud, and the modern workplace became a collaborative model that is less about “place” and more about teams working together from anywhere.

These changes are here to stay. The future of work will involve flexible options that are a hybrid of in-office and work-from-home. In fact, approximately 80 percent of managers say they are expecting more flexible work-from-home policies after the pandemic, according to data from Microsoft’s work trend index.

The question is: are you ready? A hybrid modern workplace requires cloud-based solutions to support people working from the office, home or anywhere. Some of the exciting announcements made at the recent Microsoft Ignite 2021 can help to make your workplace more dynamic and flexible to meet the needs of a modern work-from-anywhere workforce.

Highlights from Microsoft Ignite this year:

•  New features in Microsoft Teams. You already know Teams as a collaboration hub that gives you the power to share, communicate and work together from virtually anywhere. Microsoft says Teams now has 115 million daily active users, and the company introduced more than 100 new features in 2020. At Ignite, Microsoft announced even more Teams features, such as:

  • New presenter views including PowerPoint Live, Presenter Mode and Dynamic View. Each of these gives you options so you can deliver presentations more effectively and engagingly.
  • Interactive webinars with up to 1,000 attendees from both within and outside your organization, as well as a new 20,000-person view-only broadcast experience through to the end of this year.
  • Teams Connect, which lets you share channels with anyone inside or outside your organization.

•  More details about Microsoft Viva. Viva is a new employee experience platform that was first introduced in February 2021. It brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources and insights to build a workplace culture where people and teams are empowered to be their best from anywhere.

•  Mixed-reality platform Microsoft Mesh. Mesh is an innovative new platform powered by Azure that allows people to work remotely in a mixed-reality world through collaborative and shared holographic experiences.

•  Security for all in a Zero-Trust world. Among the many security announcements at Ignite is the general availability of passwordless authentication in Azure Active Directory. This is an important milestone in Microsoft’s strategy to move organizations toward the elimination of passwords while still offering industry-leading security.

Let FSi Strategies help you make the most of these exciting new announcements.

We are ready to help you unleash the potential of these new releases. Talk to us about how strategic IT solutions like these can help you thrive in the new hybrid, work-from-anywhere world.

Start a conversation today.

Ask us about integrating your tools & platforms together – with architectural coherence and extensibility. Designing, implementing and supporting Modern Workplace technology is what FSi Strategies specializes in. We’ve helped hundreds of businesses implement modern security strategies in support of their missions. We invite you to discover how together, we can leverage the intelligent Cloud for the security and privacy needs of your business.