Microsoft for Healthcare: technology and collaboration for better experiences, insights and care

The healthcare industry’s leading minds are getting ready to educate, intrigue, and inspire attendees next week at the HIMSS19 conference—a leading healthcare IT event in the US. We expect to see many innovative ideas and solutions to the most prevalent and persistent challenges in modern health, and we are excited to show new technologies making a real difference in people’s lives and demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to transforming how healthcare is experienced and delivered.

Over the last few years, we have been learning alongside industry experts and making steady progress in helping health organizations navigate complex technology transformations. We have been so pleased by the enthusiastic response of the providers, payors, software developers, device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies we’ve been working with.

But what drives us most is the profound impact on people. As we all look for more personalized and transparent approaches for healthcare services, technology transformation will help providers deliver modern patient experiences that promote patient engagement, satisfaction, and well-being while increasing the chances of more successful treatment.

This year at HIMSS, we will talk about how Microsoft’s technology and partnerships are helping empower care teams, improve clinical and operational outcomes and advance precision healthcare, with a specific focus on putting people’s privacy at the center. To kick things off, today we’re announcing several new innovations supporting the industry’s transformation:

• Microsoft 365 for health organizations: New capabilities in Microsoft Teams that enable healthcare teams to communicate and collaborate in a secure hub for teamwork.
• Microsoft Healthcare Bot: Now generally available, this service helps organizations create AI-powered, compliant virtual assistants and chatbots for a variety of healthcare experiences.
• Azure API for FHIR®: A new tool to help health systems interoperate and share data in the cloud.

Empowering health organizations with secure messaging and AI-powered tools

People are at the heart of healthcare – physicians, nurses, clinicians and of course, their patients. We are committed to empowering care teams with the tools they need to deliver their best care as well as empowering people as they interact with various aspects of the healthcare system.

When it comes to secure communications, many clinicians report having to choose between convenience and compliance. Adhering to compliance has often meant having to wait for critical information at the point of care. Conversely, many clinicians have turned to consumer messaging apps that facilitate communication but can compromise security.

Microsoft is working hard to ensure convenience and compliance are no longer a zero-sum equation. Today, we are announcing new capabilities in Microsoft Teams, a secure hub for teamwork that enables secure messaging and collaboration workflows that tap the wealth of patient information housed in electronic medical records.

Enable secure workflows in Microsoft Teams: The new priority notifications feature in Teams alerts a recipient of an urgent message on their mobile and desktop devices until a response is received, every two minutes for up to 20 minutes; message delegation enables clinical staff members to delegate their messages to another recipient when they are in surgery or otherwise unavailable. We are also announcing the ability to integrate FHIR-enabled electronic health records (EHR) data with Teams. The ability to view EHR data is enabled through partnerships with leading interoperability providers, including Dapasoft, Datica, Infor Cloverleaf, Kno2 and Redox. Clinical or hospital staff can securely access patient records in the same app where they can take notes, message with other team members, and start a video meeting, all in a single place to coordinate care.

For health organizations looking to optimize operational processes or create new experiences for their people and patients, we are also announcing the Microsoft Healthcare Bot general availability.

Microsoft Healthcare Bot: The Microsoft Healthcare Bot service is now generally available after first being introduced as a research project in 2017. It is designed to empower healthcare organizations to build and deploy compliant, AI-powered virtual health assistants and chatbots, and includes important features like healthcare intelligence, medical content and terminology, and a built-in symptom checker. The Microsoft Healthcare Bot service is fully extensible to help organizations adjust the bot to solve their own business problems, and can connect to health systems, like EHRs. In addition to partners like Premera, today we are announcing bots available, or available soon, from Quest Diagnostics, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Clalit Health Services.

Securely connecting data for better clinical and operational outcomes

Our bodies are a lot like complex computers, and each interaction with today’s health system creates a new data point. These data points are often spread across multiple records, with valuable insights somewhat hidden in siloes. Microsoft is committed to helping address this opportunity by developing technology that connects data and surfaces important insights at exactly the right time, with privacy and security at the core.

A better-connected healthcare system would provide clinicians with more complete profiles of their patients, researchers with more complete data to study, and individuals with more information to take ownership over their health. I hear this often from leading experts in the research and care delivery communities.

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Walgreens Boots Alliance and Microsoft establish strategic partnership to transform health care delivery

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (WBA) and Microsoft Corp. have joined forces to develop new health care delivery models, technology and retail innovations to advance and improve the future of health care. The companies will combine the power of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud and AI platform, health care investments, and new retail solutions with WBA’s customer reach, convenient locations, outpatient health care services and industry expertise to make health care delivery more personal, affordable and accessible for people around the world.

Current health care systems are a complex combination of public- and private-sector organizations, providers, payors, pharmaceutical companies and other adjacent players. While there has been innovation in pockets of health care, there is both a need and an opportunity to fully integrate the system, ultimately making health care more convenient to people through data-driven insights. This is what brought WBA and Microsoft together. Through this strategic partnership, the companies will deliver innovative platforms that enable next-generation health networks, integrated digital-physical experiences and care management solutions.

“Improving health outcomes while lowering the cost of care is a complex challenge that requires broad collaboration and strong partnership between the health care and tech industries,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Together with Walgreens Boots Alliance, we aim to deliver on this promise by putting people at the center of their health and wellness, combining the power of the Azure cloud and AI technology and Microsoft 365 with Walgreens Boots Alliance’s deep expertise and commitment to helping communities around the world lead healthier and happier lives.”

As part of the strategic partnership, the companies have committed to a multiyear research and development (R&D) investment to build health care solutions, improve health outcomes and lower the cost of care. This investment will include funding, subject-matter experts, technology and tools. The companies will also explore the potential to establish joint innovation centers in key markets. Additionally, in 2019 WBA will pilot up to 12 store-in-store “digital health corners” aimed at the merchandising and sale of select health care-related hardware and devices.

“Our strategic partnership with Microsoft demonstrates our strong commitment to creating integrated, next-generation, digitally enabled health care delivery solutions for our customers, transforming our stores into modern neighborhood health destinations and expanding customer offerings,” said Stefano Pessina, executive vice chairman and chief executive officer of WBA. “WBA will work with Microsoft to harness the information that exists between payors and health care providers to leverage, in the interest of patients and with their consent, our extraordinary network of accessible and convenient locations to deliver new innovations, greater value and better health outcomes in health care systems across the world.”

Connected, consumer-centric health care delivery and management platform

The companies will focus on connecting WBA stores and health information systems to people wherever they are through their digital devices. This will allow people to access health care services, such as virtual care — when, where and how they need it.

The integration of information will enable valuable insights based on data science and artificial intelligence (AI) that can allow for fundamental improvements such as supporting the transition of health care data into more community-based locations and sustainable transformation in health care delivery.

Working with patients’ health care providers, the companies will proactively engage their patients to improve medication adherence, reduce emergency room visits and decrease hospital readmissions. Core to this model is data privacy, security and consent, which will be fundamental design principles, underscored by Microsoft’s investments in building a trusted cloud platform.

By better connecting people, providers and the systems in which they work, the industry will be able to provide better quality patient care.

Personalized health care services

WBA and Microsoft will also focus on enabling more personalized health care experiences from preventative self-care to chronic disease management. WBA will pursue lifestyle management solutions in areas such as nutrition and wellness via customers’ delivery method of choice, including digital devices and digital applications or in-store expert advice.

Through a combination of dedicated R&D and external partnerships, a suite of chronic disease management and patient engagement applications are planned for development, alongside a portfolio of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices for nonacute chronic care management, delivered by Microsoft’s cloud, AI and IoT technologies.

Collaborating with payors, providers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to implement solutions to improve health outcomes at lower cost

Additionally, the companies will work to build a seamless ecosystem of participating organizations to better connect consumers, providers — including Walgreens and Boots pharmacists — pharmaceutical manufacturers and payors. Microsoft and WBA will leverage each other’s market research and identify the right partners to develop solutions.

For example, major health care delivery network participation will provide the opportunity for people to seamlessly engage in WBA health care solutions and acute care providers all within a single platform.

WBA to transition its IT platforms to Microsoft

Through this agreement, Microsoft becomes WBA’s strategic cloud provider, and WBA plans to migrate the majority of the company’s IT infrastructure onto Microsoft Azure. This will include new transformational platforms in retail, pharmacy and business services, new capability in data and analytics, as well as certain legacy applications and systems. The company also plans to roll out Microsoft 365 to more than 380,000 employees and stores globally, empowering them with the tools for increased productivity, advanced security, internal collaboration and customer engagement.

WBA’s transition to Microsoft’s platform will enable WBA to accelerate its speed to market, gain deeper customer understanding and insights, and ultimately provide better and more personalized care, products and services to its customers and communities. In addition, the move to Microsoft Azure accelerates the modernization and cost effectiveness of technology across WBA.

About Walgreens Boots Alliance

Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA) is the first global pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing enterprise and the largest retail pharmacy, health and daily living destination across the U.S. and Europe. Walgreens Boots Alliance and the companies in which it has equity method investments together have a presence in more than 25 countries and employ more than 415,000 people.

The company’s portfolio of retail and business brands includes Walgreens, Duane Reade, Boots and Alliance Healthcare, as well as increasingly global health and beauty product brands, such as No7, Soap & Glory, Liz Earle, Sleek MakeUP and Botanics.

Walgreens Boots Alliance is proud to be a force for good, leveraging many decades of experience and its international scale, to care for people and the planet through numerous social responsibility and sustainability initiatives that have an impact on the health and wellbeing of millions of people.

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Kroger and Microsoft partner to introduce digital solutions for the retail industry

The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced a collaboration to redefine the customer experience using Kroger Technology products powered by Microsoft Azure, the retailer’s preferred cloud platform for Retail as a Service (RaaS). Through this innovative partnership, Kroger will pilot a connected store experience and together with Microsoft, jointly market a commercial RaaS product to the industry.

“Kroger is building a seamless ecosystem driven by data and technology to provide our customers with personalized food inspiration. We are identifying partners through Restock Kroger who will help us reinvent the customer experience and create new profit streams that will also accelerate our core business growth. We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft to redefine grocery retail,” said Rodney McMullen, Kroger’s chairman and CEO.

“Our partnership brings together Kroger’s world-class expertise in the grocery industry with the power of Azure and Azure AI,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, we will redefine the shopping experience for millions of customers at both Kroger and other retailers around the world, setting a new standard for innovation in the industry.”

Connected Store Experience Pilot

The Kroger Technology team has developed a smart technology system, powered by Microsoft Azure and connected by IoT sensors, to transform two pilot stores located in Monroe, Ohio and Redmond, Washington, respectively, near each company’s headquarters. The pilot stores will leverage RaaS, establishing a way to quickly add innovations to create new customer experiences, enable higher levels of personalization through insights and enhance store associate productivity.

Transformative customer experiences

By using Microsoft Azure to store and process the data generated in stores, near the smart shelves and on Kroger’s app, the digital stores will introduce never-before-seen shopping experiences, including the latest generation of EDGE™ Shelf (Enhanced Display for Grocery Environment), a shelving system that uses digital displays, instead of traditional paper tags, to indicate everything from prices and promotions to nutritional and dietary information. Using Microsoft Azure AI, EDGE Shelf will connect with Kroger’s Scan, Bag, Go®, creating a unique guided shopping experience for customers.

Greater employee insight and productivity

For store associates, a pick-to-light productivity solution can reduce the time it takes to fulfill curbside pickup orders by using visual cues to help them quickly find items. Additionally, solutions like Microsoft Azure-powered video analytics will help store associates identify and address out-of-stocks to ensure customers can locate products on their shopping list.

In addition to transforming the customer experience and enhancing productivity for associates, the EDGE Shelf will enable Kroger to generate new revenue by selling digital advertising space to consumer packaged goods (CPGs) brands. Using video analytics, personalized offers and advertisements can be presented based on customer demographics.

The new pilot will guide expansion plans in 2019 and beyond.

Retail as a Service Commercial Product

The introduction of the commercial RaaS product, a Kroger solution powered by Microsoft Azure, offers a suite of capabilities to support KPIs and merchandising plans, collect customer insights, enhance employee productivity, improve out-of-stocks, better the customer experience, and allow for hyper personalization using proprietary technology including the EDGE Shelf.

The RaaS product is enablement software built by a retailer for retailers, supporting modern retail experiences and harmonizing customers’ digital and physical shopping experiences. The rapid transformation platform enables retailers to prioritize its most desired initiatives. Future commercial products include: Scan, Bag, Go; Virtual Store Manager; sensor network; and connectors to corporate systems like point-of-sale, and inventory management, tag and merchandising systems. Microsoft and Kroger will jointly bring the RaaS solution to market.

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M12 and VC partners award women-led companies transforming enterprise tech - Microsoft Certifications

Microsoft Corp. venture fund M12, in partnership with EQT Ventures and SVB Financial Group, announced the two winners of the Female Founders Competition: Acerta and Mental Canvas. The companies and their founders, Greta Cutulenco (CEO and co-founder, Acerta) and Julie Dorsey (founder and chief scientist, Mental Canvas) beat out several hundred applicants to receive $2 million each in venture funding, along with access to technology resources and more to help progress the future of their businesses.

Earlier this year, M12 and its partners kicked off the global event in a bid to not only find and fund innovative female entrepreneurs, but also to spotlight the funding gap that exists and the need for more equitable distribution of capital. Hundreds of startups across North America, Europe and Israel applied, providing a glimpse into the potential opportunity and untapped talent in the market.

“Our goal for this competition was to clear a path to funding for more women entrepreneurs,” said Peggy Johnson, executive vice president of Business Development, Microsoft. “We were thrilled by the response we received and feel confident that we’ll see great returns on our two newest additions to our portfolio, but we also know there’s much more work to do. We plan to continue exploring other ways to close the funding gap using the lessons we learned from this competition: There’s no shortage of women entrepreneurs building for the enterprise, there’s more than one way to source an investment, and networking is essential to women founders’ growth and success.”

In early November, the VC firms narrowed the selection down to 10 finalists. Teams from each startup then pitched their company to a group of judges from M12 and the partner VC firms for one of two chances at the top prize: a total of $2 million in venture funding from M12, EQT Ventures and SVB Financial Group, and access to Microsoft technology. The winning companies include:

Waterloo, Ontario-based Acerta, founded by CEO Greta Cutulenco, provides an AI platform that ensures vehicle systems’ quality and reliability throughout a vehicle’s lifecycle.

New York-based Mental Canvas, founded by chief scientist Julie Dorsey, reimagines sketching for the digital age by augmenting it with spatial strokes, 3-D navigation and free-form animations, all drawn with the ease of pencil and paper.

“At SVB, we have the good fortune to work with some of the most innovative companies around the world,” said Tracy Isacke, head of Corporate Venture at Silicon Valley Bank. “This partnership provided the opportunity to meet some incredible female founders, and we were truly inspired by the depth and breadth of innovation that they are bringing to the enterprise technology market. We are proud to support Acerta and Mental Canvas as they pursue their ambitious business goals.”

“The quality and number of submissions for the competition was incredible, and the EQT Ventures team would like to congratulate both Acerta and Mental Canvas,” said Alastair Mitchell, partner and investment advisor at EQT Ventures. “Our fund is dedicated to backing founders with the ambition, drive and vision to build a global success story, and this competition not only provides a great launchpad for Acerta and Mental Canvas, it highlights the fact that far more needs to be done to close the funding gap between male and female founders. The EQT Ventures team is proud to play a part in bridging that gap.”

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. With the help of its partners and competitions like this, the company is pushing forward in its efforts to ensure women are afforded an equal opportunity when raising capital.

About EQT Ventures

EQT Ventures is a European VC fund with commitments of just over €566 million. The fund is based in Luxembourg and has investment advisors stationed in Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, San Francisco and Berlin. Fueled by some of Europe’s most experienced company builders, EQT Ventures helps the next generation of entrepreneurs with capital and hands-on support. EQT Ventures is part of EQT, a leading investment firm with approximately €50 billion in raised capital across 27 funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia and the U.S. with total sales of more than €19 billion and approximately 110,000 employees.

About SVB Financial Group

For 35 years, SVB Financial Group (NASDAQ: SIVB) and its subsidiaries have helped innovative companies and their investors move bold ideas forward, fast. SVB Financial Group’s businesses, including Silicon Valley Bank, offer commercial and private banking, asset management, private wealth management, brokerage and investment services and funds management services to companies in the technology, life science and healthcare, private equity and venture capital and premium wine industries. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, SVB Financial Group operates in centers of innovation around the world. Learn more at www.svb.com.

About M12

As the corporate venture arm for Microsoft, M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures) invests in enterprise software companies in the Series A through C funding stage with a focus on big data and analytics, business SaaS, cloud infrastructure, machine learning and artificial intelligence, productivity, and security. As part of its value-add to portfolio companies, M12 offers unique access to strategic go-to-market resources and relationships globally. The company has offices in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, London and Tel Aviv.

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Mastercard & Microsoft join forces to advance digital identity innovations

Currently, verifying your identity online is still dependent on physical or digital proof managed by a central party, whether it’s your passport number, your proof of address, driver’s license, user credentials or other means. This dependence places a huge burden on individuals, who have to successfully remember hundreds of passwords for various identities and are increasingly being subjected to more complexity in proving their identity and managing their data. Working together, Mastercard and Microsoft aim to give people a secure, instant way to verify their digital identity with whomever they want, whenever they want.

The answer to these challenges is a service that would allow individuals to enter, control and share their identity data their way – on the devices they use every day. That’s Mastercard’s intention, working closely with players like Microsoft.

“Today’s digital identity landscape is patchy, inconsistent and what works in one country often won’t work in another. We have an opportunity to establish a system that puts people first, giving them control of their identity data and where it is used,” says Ajay Bhalla, president, cyber and intelligence solutions, Mastercard. “Working with Microsoft brings us one step closer to making a globally interoperable digital identity service a reality, and we look forward to sharing more very soon.”

Access to a universally-recognized digital identity could unlock new and enhanced experiences for people as they interact with businesses, service providers and their community online, including:

• Financial Services: Improve and speed the applicant identification process for establishing a new bank account, loan or payment service account
• Commerce: Enable a more personalized and efficient shopping experience online and in stores, regardless of the payment type, device or service provider
• Government Services: Simplify interactions with government agencies and services – such as filing taxes, applying for passports or securing support payments (e.g., Social Security)
• Digital Services: Streamline and provide easier use of email, social media, movie/music streaming services, and rideshare platforms

“Digital identity is a cornerstone of how people live, work and play every day,” said Joy Chik, corporate vice president, Identity, Microsoft. “We believe people should be in control of their digital identity and data, and we’re thrilled to first work with Mastercard to bring new decentralized identity innovations to life.”

This digital identity initiative could also help solve for common challenges:

• Identity Inclusion: More than 1 billion people, a majority of them women, children and refugees, are not officially recognized; a digital identity can improve their access to health, financial and social services.
• Identity Verification: A single, reusable digital identity can help people interact with a merchant, bank, government agency and countless other digital service providers with greater integrity, lower cost and with less friction.
• Fraud Prevention: A single digital identity can help reduce payments fraud and identity theft of various forms.

This initiative will serve as the foundation for new Mastercard services powered by Microsoft Azure and built-in collaboration with leaders in the banking, mobile network operator and government communities. Microsoft and Mastercard are bringing together their respective strengths – Microsoft’s expertise in identity technology and Mastercard’s expertise in securely orchestrating digital interactions in a complex, multi-stakeholder ecosystem.

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Microsoft and Nielsen accelerate retail innovation through data and AI; announce strategic alliance

Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) today released details around a newly developed enterprise data solution that democratizes one of the largest consumer data sets in the world.  This strategic alliance has been brought to life through Nielsen Connect, powered by Microsoft Azure, the trusted and global-scale intelligent cloud platform.

In today’s rapidly changing marketplace, Microsoft and Nielsen are together focused on helping Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and retail companies find growth and accelerate innovation within an open data environment.

Already, Nielsen Connect is inspiring companies to glean more value from their data and sparking a movement for the industry to reimagine its approach to data strategy.  Through advanced analytics and artificial intelligence services built on Azure, Nielsen Connect is helping companies integrate data assets to more easily spot emerging trends, diagnose performance gaps, and act faster on opportunities to grow. Most notably, this platform enables clients to use their data as an enterprise asset across all parts of their organization.

“Nielsen’s powerful data is as much of an enterprise asset as people and products,” said John Tavolieri, President, U.S. FMCG and Retail and Chief Technology and Operations Officer at Nielsen. “It’s our priority to make sure clients are maximizing their data assets, so Nielsen and Microsoft are breaking down the silos of the status quo. We are helping the retail industry reimagine its approach to data by creating a truly open and global environment of collaboration, encouraging companies to evolve beyond mere data management. Adopting a holistic data strategy will be the only way to win in FMCG and retail.”

“The first critical step toward digital transformation, especially among retailers, is breaking down the barriers between customer and operational data to fuel insights for the business,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business. “Because retail happens wherever customers are and whenever they choose, Nielsen Connect provides high reliability at a global scale 24/7. Microsoft is a natural partner for Nielsen, trusted by global enterprises to protect their data and power their critical business solutions.”

Grounded by the richest data available in the fast-moving consumer goods space, Nielsen Connect brings clarity to what’s happening in the market from every angle.  Nielsen’s deep media and consumer measurement (including retail point-of-sale data, consumer panel, e-commerce, fresh food and cross-platform media data), is integrated with a robust variety of data sources, including  data provided directly from clients as well as from Nielsen Connect Partners. Nielsen’s reference data, which provides structure to the world’s most robust retail and shopper information, powers this system to make integration across data sources and countries simple. Within this open and agile platform running on Microsoft Azure, customers can easily access data sets via APIs and connectors, allowing them to extract the data they need to fit their own technology strategy.

The joint Microsoft and Nielsen solution is live today and will serve as a one-stop-shop in creating scalable, high-performance data environments that enable greater real-time collaboration for faster results. Through this strategic alliance, the two companies will continue to work toward a mutual vision of an open and connected data universe, empowering a new generation of solutions for the FMCG retail marketplace.

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Microsoft holds annual shareholders meeting

Speaking to shareholders at Microsoft Corp.’s annual meeting on Wednesday, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella highlighted the importance of creating technology that benefits people and society broadly, and the opportunity for Microsoft to help its customers and partners thrive in a world where every company is a software company.

“I’m proud of the progress we made this past fiscal year as we innovate and help our customers digitally transform,” Nadella said. “We create economic opportunity in every community, and this broad impact – coupled with our focus on instilling trust in technology across everything we do – makes me incredibly optimistic about the opportunity ahead.”

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood shared highlights of Microsoft’s record performance over the past year fiscal year including continued growth in its commercial cloud business and strong growth across each service. Hood noted that Microsoft is confident in its ability to execute against its innovation roadmap, positioning the company for continued growth and to deliver shareholder value.

The following proposals were acted on by the company’s shareholders at the meeting. All proposals received above 95 percent of votes cast.

• Re-elected 14 directors to serve until the next annual meeting of the shareholders.
• Approved, on a nonbinding advisory basis, the fiscal year 2018 compensation of the company’s named executive officers.
• Ratified the selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company’s independent auditor for fiscal year 2019.

Microsoft’s board of directors consists of John W. Thompson, Microsoft independent chairman; William H. Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock Partners; Hugh Johnston, vice chairman and chief financial officer of PepsiCo Inc.; Teri L. List-Stoll, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Gap Inc.; Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft; Charles H. Noski, former vice chairman of Bank of America Corp.; Dr. Helmut Panke, former chairman of the board of management at BMW AG; Sandra E. Peterson, former group worldwide chair for Johnson & Johnson; Penny S. Pritzker, founder and chairman of PSP Partners; Charles W. Scharf, chief executive officer of The Bank of New York Mellon Corp.; Arne Sorenson, president and chief executive officer of Marriott International; John W. Stanton, chairman of Trilogy Partnerships; and Padmasree Warrior, chief development officer, NIO Inc. and chief executive officer, NIO USA Inc.

Microsoft acquires FSLogix to enhance the Office 365 virtualization experience

The way Microsoft 365 enables customers to shift to a modern desktop experience puts it at the heart of workplace transformation. A modern desktop with Windows 10 and Office 365 not only offers the most productive and most secure computing experience, it also saves IT time and money, and allows for a focus on driving business results. For many companies, their specific needs require a modern desktop be virtualized.

To help extend our virtualization capabilities and provide an even richer experience for Microsoft 365 customers, we are excited to announce the acquisition of FSLogix.

FSLogix is a next-generation app-provisioning platform that reduces the resources, time and labor required to support virtualization. From small businesses to very large global enterprises across numerous industries, FSLogix solutions enhance customer experience and productivity, while reducing support requirements for IT departments.

In September 2018, we announced Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop – a Microsoft 365 service that empowers customers to run a modern desktop experience on Azure. It is the only cloud-based service that delivers a multi-user Windows 10 experience that is optimized for Office 365 ProPlus and includes free Windows 7 Extended Security Updates. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can deploy and scale Windows and Office on Azure in minutes, with built-in security and compliance.

With this acquisition, customers will benefit in a number of ways. Through customer engagement, we know that Microsoft Office applications are some of the most highly used and most commonly virtualized applications in any business. Office 365 ProPlus is currently the best Office experience, and, with FSLogix enabling faster load times for user profiles in Outlook and OneDrive, Office 365 ProPlus will become even more performant in multi-user virtual environments (including Windows Virtual Desktop).

We are excited to welcome FSLogix to Microsoft, and we look forward to the impact its technology and its people will have on our customers’ virtualization experience.

Microsoft 70-745 Exam Study Guide - Implementing a Software-Defined Datacenter

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Microsoft MCP: Implementing a Software-Defined Datacenter (70-745)

Microsoft 70-745 Certification Exams Syllabus and Prep Guide - vceexamstest.com

Plan and Implement System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Core Infrastructure

• Install and Configure Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
  • Determine requirements for Installation of System Center Virtual Machine Manager; install VMM server, VMM Administrative Console, and VMM local agents; configure SQL database requirements for the VMM database; add Hosts; upgrade VMM from previous versions of VMM including performing a rolling upgrade from Windows Server 2012 R2 host clusters; create service accounts for VMM; uninstall VMM; reinstall from a retained database.
• Install and Configure VMM Host Servers
  • Determine requirements for bare metal installation of host servers; perform Hyper-V host deployment to bare-metal machine; integrate Windows Deployment Services (WDS) with VMM to provide PXE services for bare metal deployments.
• Manage VMM Infrastructure
  • Integrate Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) with VMM infrastructure; plan and orchestrate updates and patches on VMM servers, SQL database host agents, and management consoles; create Update Baselines; run compliance scans; remediate host servers and clusters; manage host groups; backup and restore VMM servers.
• Manage VMM Libraries
  • Install and configure library servers; add library servers and library shares to VMM; enable Data Deduplication on library server; synchronize libraries; manage library association; manage object equivalence.
• Implement Highly Available VMM Infrastructure
• Determine component requirements for Highly Available VMM infrastructure; create a highly available VMM management server; create a Hyper-V Host cluster by using Failover Cluster Manager; determine requirements and options for SQL server high availability; determine single site and multi-site high availability options; create highly available library servers; implement Scale-Out File Server; perform Scale-Out File Server cluster deployment to a bare-metal machine; implement Distributed Key Management Solution; determine upgrade scenarios and options for a highly available VMM deployment; perform Cluster-Aware Updating; implement Rolling Cluster Upgrades; implement stretch clusters; manage mixed-mode clusters.
• 
  

Implement Software-Defined Networking (SDN)

• Implement Core Network Fabric
  • Create logical networks; create logical network sites; create IP pool; configure uplink port profiles; configure virtual port profiles; configure port classifications; create and configure logical switches; configure Hyper-V extensible virtual switches; integrate VMM switches with Top-of-Rack (TOR) switches; implement max bandwidth policies; enable NIC teaming; enable Switch Embedded Teaming (SET); create and configure MAC pools; configure Domain Name System (DNS); configure and enable NIC offload technologies such as virtual Receive Side Scaling (vRSS) and Virtual Machine Multi-Queue (VMMQ), and configure Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) on capable NICs.
• Plan for and Implement SDN solution
  • Plan for software-defined network infrastructure; define and document fabric resource endpoints such as host servers, logical networks, software load balancer (SLB) multiplexers (MUX), VLANs and service credentials; implement SDN using VMM Service Templates; configure for single tenant and multi-tenant scenarios; define front end Virtual IPs (VIPs) in multi-tier scenarios; define back end Dynamic IPs (DIPs) in multi-tier application scenarios; install and configure the SDN Host agent; configure DNS integration with SDN; configure DNS integration with Internal DNS Service (iDNS); create and configure Access Control Lists (ACL) for use in multi-tenant environments; configure virtual subnets.
• Configure Network Controller (NC)
  • Determine usage scenarios and requirements for the Network Controller; implement Network Controller in domain and non-domain environments; test successful Network Controller deployment; query Network Controller resources and provisioning state; define resource objects by using scripts; implement multi-node Network Controller deployments; implement highly available Network Controller resources; set up an Internet Protocol Address Management (IPAM) server.
• Configure and Manage Software Load Balancer (SLB)
  • Determine infrastructure and tenant usage scenarios and requirements for load balancer deployment; configure SLB host agent; configure Border Gateway Protocol (BGP); configure SLB Multiplexer (MUX) to advertise Virtual IP Address (VIP); configure SLB rules to map virtual IP (VIP) and ports to back end Dynamic IPs (DIP) and ports in multi-tier application scenarios; configure NAT for inbound and outbound traffic; configure North-South and East-West load balancing; scale SLB Multiplexers; configure health probes.
• Configure Windows Server Gateway
  • Determine usage scenarios and requirements for Windows Server Gateway (WSG) deployment; deploy WSG using SCVMM Service Templates; implement a Layer 3 gateway; implement Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnelling; implement multi-tenant gateways by using PowerShell; implement IPsec Site-to-Site (S2S) tunnel; create M+N redundancy gateway pools; scale gateway pools; manage gateway by using Network Controller; integrate gateways with SLB; integrate VLAN networks with SDN gateway for Azure hybrid networking; configure BGP routing for gateway; assign gateway pools for tenant usage; configure Windows Server Gateway as a forwarding proxy; implement highly available Windows Server Gateway.
• Manage SDN Infrastructure
  • Install updates on network controllers, Software Load Balancer components, and gateway components; configure health probes; query configuration state health information in load balancer MUX object; configure NC/SLB and GW logs; manage SDN components for service branching and patching considerations; troubleshoot SDN stack by using Network Controller diagnostics.
• Manage Tenant Virtual Networks
• Use network virtual appliances on virtual networks; configure network Quality of Service (QoS) for tenant VM network adapter; connect container endpoints to a tenant virtual network.
• 
  

Implement Software-Defined Storage

• Implement Software-Defined Storage Solutions
  • Implement Storage Spaces Direct in hyper-converged scenario by using VMM; implement Storage Spaces Direct in a disaggregated scenario by using VMM; implement storage tiering; implement iSCSI storage; implement Storage Spaces fault tolerance; implement Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs); determine usage scenarios and requirements for SMB 3 storage; configure and enable NIC offload technologies such as SMB Direct on Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and SMB Multichannel on capable NICs for use as part of storage infrastructure; implement SMB file storage; encrypt cluster volumes; implement Storage QoS policies for Min/Max IOPs and Max Bandwidth; implement aggregated and dedicated QoS policies; provision Thin and Thick storage solutions; allocate Storage Array to a Host Group; create a LUN for a Hyper-V Cluster from allocated storage; allocate File Share to a Hyper-V Cluster; implement storage classifications for storage pools.
• Manage Software-Defined Storage
• Implement Storage Replica solutions; implement Hyper-V replica solutions; integrate Hyper-V Replica with Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for secondary on-premises site; implement Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX); determine LUN usage; decommission storage from Hyper-V Host; optimize Storage Spaces Direct storage pools; implement network QoS policies to control RDMA and SMB storage connections; implement SAN copy to rapidly provision VMs.
• 
  

Implement Datacenter Compute Solutions with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)

• Implement Compute solutions
  • Determine requirements and usage scenarios for virtualized deployments; determine requirements for application deployments in virtualized infrastructure; create and configure virtual machine templates; configure hardware profiles; configure guest operating system profiles; configure application profiles; manage custom properties and placement rules; deploy and manage Nano server containers; perform operating system deployments using unattend.xml options; integrate sysprep with unattend.xml answer file; migrate existing virtual machine deployments to VMM; create and manage checkpoints; clone virtual machines; perform Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) virtual machine conversions; implement and manage Linux virtual machines; deploy virtual machines from an existing VHD, template, P2V conversion, or VMM library; deploy containers by using VMM templates; manage guarded hosts.
• Implement Service Templates
• Create and configure Service Templates; implement availability sets within a template; add tiers to a Service Template; add network components to a Service Template; implement Active Directory Service Template; configure SharePoint Server Service Template; deploy Service Templates; update and modify Service Templates; import and export Service Templates; implement Guest Clustering.
• 
  

Secure your Software-Defined Datacenter

• Secure the Compute Environment
  • Determine the requirements for Host Guardian Service, implement Host Guardian Service; implement shielded VMs for new VMs by using templates; implement shielded VMs for existing virtual machines; implement Guarded Fabric solutions; implement DHCP guard; configure Run as accounts and User Roles; implement Role Based Access Control (RBAC); implement Code Integrity solution; implement secure boot for Windows and Linux guests; implement Credential Guard; implement self-service.
• Secure the Network Environment
• Create and use port ACLs with VM networks, VM subnets and virtual NICs; create and use Global Settings for all VMs; implement Datacenter Firewall solutions using VMM; create ACL Rules using Datacenter Firewall; configure and apply Network Controller network policies; secure tenant networks; plan for integration of security appliances into tenant network infrastructure.
• 
  

Monitor and Maintain the Software-Defined Datacenter

• Install and Configure System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
  • Determine requirements and usage scenarios for implementing Operations Manager; perform single and distributed deployment options for Operations Manager; install Operations Manager Agents by using Discovery Wizard or the command line; secure user access; create, install, and manage sealed and unsealed Management Packs.
• Monitor and Manage Infrastructure and Virtual Machine Workloads using System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
  • Tune Monitoring using Targeting and Overrides; configure maintenance schedules; suspend monitoring temporarily; configure notifications; configure reporting; integrate Operations Manager and VMM; enable Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) tips in VMM; determine requirements and usage scenarios for backing up and restoring Software-Defined Datacenter workloads and Virtual Machine Manager with tools such as Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Microsoft Azure.

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