Takeaways from Microsoft Inspire 2021 - partner event of the year

“Every company will need to be a technology company in their own right”.  So said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft at this year’s global partner event, Inspire. This has never been truer than since the Covid pandemic, which has tipped the world on its axis and has forced businesses to accelerate their digital adoption at an unprecedented level. The pandemic really has become a catalyst for innovation.

But with a need for rapid innovation comes many challenges as organizations grapple with the mounting need to access and leverage data for greater customer insights and experience alongside demands on security, speed of feature release and governance.

Read on to learn how Microsoft’s cloud is helping businesses power their digital capabilities and how Gold Partners like Codurance are well-placed to support customers on the journey.

Microsoft is expanding hybrid cloud offerings to enable apps to build and run everywhere. For example the Azure Arc platform powers businesses to run apps on premises, on the edge or on the cloud, offering greater flexibility than ever before. However to take advantage of these gains, businesses also need well-built, modern cloud native apps that are designed to run in the cloud - it is this challenge that Codurance is helping many clients face and overcome by modernizing their existing legacy applications and supporting them with the architecture, skills and capability to scale at pace. 

Data is a business’s most strategic asset. We will create more data over the next 3 years than the entire last 30. To stay relevant and ahead of the competition, businesses are increasingly accessing their data and using AI, and tools like Azure Synapse to query and make predictions using AI for greater customer insights. Optimising the underlying architecture and having good quality, clean and accessible data is critical to make accurate queries and decisions using AI and machine learning - this is where Codurance is accelerating clients success with data whilst adhering to governance and compliance guidance.

The way people work has changed forever. The new hybrid working (a combination of working in the office and from home) is the biggest change to the way we work for over a century and with 73% of workers saying they want hybrid working to get a better work/life balance, it is surely here to stay. Using technology to support collaboration and innovation in the office and from home has been key to the ongoing productivity of the global workforce during the pandemic. Some businesses like Toyota have embraced VR technology using Microsoft Lens to train people remotely to maintain productivity and creativity of new product development. Personally, Codurance has also embraced this new way of working and is supporting more customers than ever before using remote collaboration tools and adapting to new ways of working individually and in teams, providing the same deep partnership with clients no matter where they are located geographically. 

Some industries have rapidly transformed during the pandemic as peoples’ behaviours have altered. For instance since the onset of Covid:

•  75% of retailers report that their customers have tried a new shopping ‘channel’.
• There has been a 50X increase in the number of patients seen via telehealth.
• 91% of industrial companies are investing in digital manufacturing.

Microsoft partners continue to support clients in these challenges by helping them build the solutions to rapidly pivot and support their end customers in evolving markets. Find out how we are supporting clients here. During the event, Microsoft also announced new updates to its industry clouds that provide key cloud services to help businesses rapidly scale up in key sectors.

Highlighting the 4 key strategies customers say they are focusing on to drive success - these perfectly align with Codurance’s approach to software modernization to align the business and technical goals:

1. Investing in technology and people fuels new growth.
2. Reducing technical debt accelerates technology and application modernization.
3. Modernising business operations is key to removing silos and increasing collaboration.
4. Recognising the importance of having the right skills and culture to drive growth is key.
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6. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Codurance can support customers to identify the business priorities, build a roadmap to align technology to the business goals (‘strategic advice’) and implement the plan through our software modernization and training services to empower them to build the right culture for ongoing success.
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8. Finally Microsoft’s FY22 (financial year ending 2022) Azure priorities were outlined that encompass:

• Innovation across platforms
• Migrating and optimizing existing apps
• Innovating with new apps and modernising existing apps
• Enabling customers for successful cloud use. 

It is clear that Codurance is perfectly positioned to support Microsoft customers as they modernize or build new apps to drive their business forward. With our existing Gold competencies plus our strategy to add more Advanced Specializations to further differentiate our expertise, its created the perfect balance to leverage the power of the Azure cloud.

Talk to us about your challenges at hello@codurance.com 

Discover the key announcement from Microsoft Inspire 2021 in The Book of News or watch the recordings.

Codurance is a Microsoft Gold Cloud Platform, Gold Application, Gold Application Integration and Silver Data Analytics Partner. We build and modernize applications and transfer knowledge to help our customers leverage the power of the Azure cloud.