Microsoft’s Windows 10 Creators Update will launch April 11

By Frederic Lardinois as written on techcrunch.com

After months of teasing, Microsoft is finally ready to ship the Windows 10 Creators Update, the next major iteration of its desktop operating system, to its users. The free update will start rolling out globally on April 11. This process usually takes a few weeks, but users will also be able to force the update from their Windows settings.

As the name implies, the focus of the update is on “creators.” Microsoft is going for a pretty broad interpretation of this theme here, but the highlights of the release are improved support for the upcoming crop of Windows-centric mixed reality and virtual reality headsets (especially for developers), better support for games thanks to a new dedicated game mode and built-in streaming to Beam, as well as new creative tools like Paint 3D.

The update also features the new night light mode to help you sleep better, screen time limits that parents can set for their children, and updates to the Windows Hello security feature.

When I talked to Windows General Manager Aaron Woodman earlier this month, he noted that what he has been seeing over the last few years is a pivot back to the roots of Microsoft and Windows — and he sees this update as another example of this. In his view, the three big highlights of the release are Windows Mixed Reality (which was once called Windows Holographic), the new gaming features, and the updates to the Edge browser.

Indeed, while it was long fashionable to make fun of Microsoft’s browser efforts and the early Edge releases definitely had a few usability issues, it’s now become a respectable competitor. Woodman noted that Microsoft wanted to first “nail the fundamentals” like performance and security and has now worked on other areas like tab management and the integration of Cortana (which actually works quite well).

With this update, the company is doing something interesting in that it is bringing e-books to the Windows Store, which will be displayed in Edge. At first, this seems like an odd move. We have all been accustomed to using specialized apps and even devices for reading e-books. Woodman, however, argues that while this holds true on mobile, on the PC, the browser is the default place for people to consume text.

The update will start rolling out on April 11. How long it’ll take to arrive on every PC remains to be seen and Microsoft tunes the process depending on the feedback it gets.

In addition to announcing the release date for this update, Microsoft also today announced that it will bring its Surface Book and Surface Studio hardware to more markets. The Surface Book can now be pre-ordered in Austria, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It will ship April 20.

The Surface Studio (and Dial) can now be pre-ordered in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. There, too, it will ship April 20.

J. Walter Thompson pioneers new brands on a global scale with Office 365

By Jamie McLellan, chief technology officer at J. Walter Thompson as written on blogs.office.com

For 152 years, J. Walter Thompson (JWT) has been moving at the speed of culture—and in some cases even shaping it.

As one of the world’s best-known communications brands, JWT achieved this level of cultural relevance through our deep understanding of people, from our clients to our employees. And as the CTO of JWT, it is my job to make sure the technology we choose is people-first: supportive, intuitive and connected.

We are a people business, so collaboration among employees and across the agency-client line is key to getting work done. We use Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based services, like the newly launched Microsoft Teams, to support frictionless collaboration among the 12,000 people and 200 offices that make up our global workforce.

One of the most appealing features of Microsoft Teams is the ability to start a small project among four or five people, and expand that group naturally with quick and easy onboarding as the project grows. The threaded conversations, tabs and dedicated Microsoft SharePoint sites within Teams make it simple for new team members to get up to date quickly. The faster that new team members become informed, the sooner they can start contributing value to the project overall.

Microsoft Teams connects our organization with an interface that supports the way we work, and I have seen firsthand how diverse working styles and demographics can all flourish within the Teams framework. For the employees in our company who are excited about technology that mirrors the software they use at home, the immediate chat-based collaboration and feedback across devices and the engaging Teams interface are very familiar and appealing. At the same time, employees who prefer a structured working environment, or who are concerned with policy, find that Teams fully meets their needs as well. It’s the best of both worlds and it’s not often that you find a single tool that has such a wide appeal.

The responsibilities of a large IT group extend beyond providing employees with the most effective tools to do their jobs. We are also accountable for the security concerns of JWT clients, which include some of the world’s largest and best-known brands. Microsoft Teams incorporates advanced Office 365 security and compliance capabilities, giving us and our clients peace of mind. It helps, too, that Microsoft is such a trusted entity; clients are likely to feel safer interacting with us in a Microsoft platform like Teams as opposed to a third-party or start-up program.

We chose Teams as a powerful alternative to a disparate collection of ad hoc solutions. Now, our employees all use the same tool that integrates with the rest of Office 365 to support collaboration, while maintaining a high standard of security. We consider Office 365, and all the powerful tools that come with it, a major strategic investment that helps us continue to shape culture at JWT.

In the future, we envision Teams becoming our central platform for collaboration on a global scale. We see it outpacing third-party tools that are not designed for enterprise collaboration, and enticing users back onto a single platform. The value of Teams is simple and powerful: wherever we can collaborate more productively as a team, we are better able to innovate and create stronger brands for our clients.