One may talk to Cortana everyday and everywhere, whether it is to get information about the day, to set reminders, or to answer questions. However, many people don’t just use one digital assistant. They may also speak to Alexa on a daily basis to listen to audio books or to add things to an Amazon.com shopping list. Due to this fact that many people use and interact with all kinds of products, Microsoft and Amazon have announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Cortana and Alexa, offering more choice, value, and access to both personal assistants.

Available later this year, this collaboration will allow you to access Alexa via Cortana on Windows 10 PCs, followed by Android and iOS in the future. Conversely, you’ll be able to access Cortana on Alexa-enabled devices like the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Show. By bringing Cortana to Alexa and Alexa to Cortana, more value and choice has been added for consumers and developers alike.

***Alexa* as a Guest on *Cortana***

Cortana users will be able to have Alexa shop on Amazon.com and manage their Amazon orders and access many of Alexa’s third-party skills by asking Cortana to open Alexa.

For example, say you are at work and you receive a text from your partner saying, “We’re running low on diapers.” In the future, on your Windows 10 PC, iPhone or Android phone, you could simply say, “Hey Cortana, open Alexa,” and ask Alexa to order diapers using your preferred payment method for your Amazon account.

***Cortana* as a Guest on *Alexa***

Alexa users will have access to Cortana’s world knowledge and helpful productivity features such as calendar management, day at a glance, and location-based reminders by simply asking Alexa to open Cortana. For example, what if you’re making breakfast in the morning and need to know if you have enough time to drop off the dry-cleaning before work? On your Alexa device, you can say, “Alexa, open Cortana,” and ask when your first meeting is. If you won’t have enough time, simply ask Alexa to open Cortana again and set a reminder for the end of your workday to drop off the clothes.

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By Richard Swaisgood Server Engineer, Systems Integration

Unfortunately Equifax has been extremely tight lipped about any technical information. We know that the personal information of at least 143 million Americans was stolen by an unknown group and that they are offering credit protection services for about 1 year to users affected.

The current rumors are that they were using an older API (struts) to serialize and deserialize requests from user facing java applications to their core database, allowing the hackers to inject code into the java user side app to get access to the core database and get the sensitive info. This is of course all a rumor at this point, once more data gets release we’ll have a better understanding.

There are two things people can do right now to protect themselves, sign up for credit monitoring services (preferably not with Equifax) and, if you do not plan on opening any new credit accounts, freeze your credit. Keeping a close eye on the who’s been requesting your credit reports and what accounts have been opened can save you a lot of time as you can issue a credit freeze or dispute any new accounts from being opened relatively quickly. Preemptively freezing your credit will be the best thing to protect you but can cause issues if you are in the process of buying a home, a car or applying for any kind of credit. Unfortunately, with the kind of information leaked you will need to do this for a very long time, as hackers can just wait until the free 1 year of credit monitoring services expire and with the frequency of these attacks it might be better to have the credit monitoring services going indefinitely.

As for Equifax themselves, it’s hard for me to see a way they are able to survive this breach, the effects will be long lasting to nearly half of all Americans and there is already one class action lawsuit filed against them for $70 billion dollars with much more coming their way as people start being directly affected by this breach. Hopefully this breach helps companies understand how just one breach can completely change their business or even end it outright if enough information is lost and the importance of securing your data in today’s world of constant data breaches.

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As written by Judson Althoff on blogs.microsoft.com

As we kick off Microsoft Inspire in Washington, D.C., the world is on the cusp of major technology disruption – and that brings major opportunity. Digital transformation is a wave of business innovation fueled by cloud technologies like the Internet of Things, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and data. Driving our customers’ businesses forward through digital transformation has opened an estimated $4.5 trillion market opportunity.

According to a study by the Harvard Business Review, 86 percent of companies view digital disruption as an opportunity. Companies across every industry are seeking ways to use digital transformation to empower their employees, better engage with customers, optimize operations and transform their products. Leaders recognize that successful transformation depends on their employees and culture, which is why both are at the heart of the offerings we are announcing today.

Introducing Microsoft 365

Today at our annual partner conference, we unveiled Microsoft 365, a new set of commercial offerings that brings together Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Microsoft 365 is a complete, intelligent and secure solution to empower all companies and all workers, recognizing that people are at the heart of digital transformation. It puts people at the center, giving them flexibility to work where and how they want and giving them new ways to collaborate with others — all while protecting company data.

We are introducing two Microsoft 365 offerings today. Microsoft 365 Enterprise is the evolution of our highly successful Secure Productive Enterprise offering, and includes Office 365 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. It’s designed for large organizations and empowers employees to be creative and work together, securely.

Microsoft 365 Business, available in public preview starting August 2, is designed for small- to medium-sized businesses with up to 300 users and integrates Office 365 Business Premium with tailored security and management features from Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security. It also includes a centralized console for deploying and securing devices and users in one location.

Microsoft 365 represents a fundamental shift in how we will design, build and go to market to address our customers’ needs for a modern workplace. It’s a more cohesive approach and reflects the shift our partners and our mutual customers are making — from viewing productivity, security and device management as individual workloads to seeking a comprehensive approach to secure productivity. Microsoft 365 is great for partners, too. It represents a significant opportunity to increase deal size, differentiate offerings, and grow their managed services revenue. According to a Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study (Commissioned Studies conducted by Forrester Consulting), Microsoft 365 Enterprise increases partner revenue opportunity by more than 50 percent versus selling and deploying Office 365 alone.

Applications and Infrastructure

As more and more companies transform, it is important for our partners to think bigger and create faster. To fuel our partners’ success and help meet our goal of a $20 billion cloud run rate by 2018, we are excited to announce with our launch hardware partners, Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo that Microsoft Azure Stack is now available to order. Azure Stack is an extension of Azure that brings the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to on-premises environments and enables entirely new hybrid cloud scenarios.

Azure Stack offers a truly consistent hybrid cloud platform, providing an ideal fit for customers who want flexibility without having to build applications in a different way. From Azure datacenters to the edge of the cloud — whether miles underground in a mine shaft, away at sea on a ship, or on a factory floor dependent on continuous real-time operation — Azure Stack enables modern cloud applications that meet all business and regulatory requirements. A truly consistent hybrid cloud helps customers execute on their cloud strategy faster in a way that makes the most sense for their business.

Azure Stack extends the Azure ecosystem opportunity by helping partners grow their Azure business and reach a larger addressable market through hybrid cloud scenarios. Many of our partners have already begun to capitalize on the power of Azure Stack including Rackspace, Tieto and Resello. Partners can learn more about how to build a successful cloud practice through our Practice Development Playbooks or sharpen their Azure skills through our online trainings here.

Business Applications

I’m excited to announce two new ways Microsoft is helping our partners connect with customers and bring innovative solutions to market.

Last year we piloted a new Azure co-sell program to provide comprehensive sales and marketing support for partners building solutions with Azure. In its first six months in market, this program helped close more than $1 billion in annual contract value for Azure partners, created $6 billion in Azure partner pipeline opportunity and generated more than 4,500 partner deals.

Azure is the only public cloud providing partners with this incredible benefit through which Microsoft sales reps are paid up to 10 percent of the partner’s annual contract value when they co-sell qualified Azure-based partner solutions. This means Microsoft is uniquely incenting its sales reps to work hand-in-hand with Azure partners to drive new business together and enabling partners to leverage the Microsoft salesforce to grow their business globally.

To build on this incredible momentum, we are making additional investments to accelerate Azure co-sell over the next 12 months. We are also creating a new dedicated Channel Manager role that will be 100 percent focused on supporting partners go to market efforts, helping ensure their solutions reach new customers and integrating with our co-sell motion. Together, these represent a quarter of a billion dollar investment that materially increases our partner-dedicated personnel, and adds to Azure co-sell incentives.

We also are making it easier for partners to modernize existing business applications, and build new ones, with a new program we are calling ISV Cloud Embed. Through this new program partners can purchase core Dynamics 365, Power BI, Power Apps and Microsoft Flow capabilities as embeddable “building blocks” at discounts of up to 50 percent. In the same way that partners today build their apps on Microsoft Azure, they can now also use our business applications platform to easily add sales automation, service line and operational backend functionality to their own apps. This helps lower development overhead and costs by putting our engineering resources to work for them. Partners receive tiered go to market support and an opportunity to reach Office 365’s 100 million active monthly users and a growing community of Dynamics 365 customers through Microsoft AppSource.

From building on Azure to industry leading co-sell support and new embeddable business application services, no other vendor provides a more comprehensive approach to helping partners accelerate their transformation and their business.

Putting Partners First

Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and our partners bring that mission to life every day with our customers. Our partners employ more than 17 million people around the world, and IDC estimates that Microsoft and its partner ecosystem will garner almost a trillion dollars in revenue in 2017, according to IDC Microsoft Footprint Model 2017.

Together, we are helping companies in every industry grow faster and more efficiently than ever before, through business innovation fueled by cloud technologies like the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, data, and through opportunities like the integration of LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 and the expanded global Mixed Reality Partner Program announced today. At Microsoft Inspire, executives from KPMG, Schneider Electric, Sephora, Adobe, Track’em and more will demonstrate how they are driving digital transformation in their respective industries. KPMG, for example, is working with us to create the KPMG Digital Solutions Hub and, with KPMG “Clara” on Azure, will be the first of the “Big 4” professional services firms to bring its auditing platform to the public cloud.

However, the transformation our partners drive with customers is not new. For more than 40 years, we have been a partner-led company, which is proven by fact that we generate more than 95 percent of our business through our robust and constantly evolving partner ecosystem. Today, Microsoft has more than 64,000 cloud partners — more than AWS, Google and Salesforce combined. Our partners tell us they choose Microsoft because we are more than a technology provider– we are their business partner. Notably, 30 percent of our partners joined our network in the past year, and we are adding more than 6,000 partners each month. But, we can achieve more together.

To help partners innovate more, go to market faster and connect with the right customers at the right time, we are transforming how we engage with our partner community by bringing our partner-facing roles into one organization. We have aligned all partner-facing roles to three primary functions: Build-With, Go-To-Market, and Sell-With. This will simplify and optimize our engagement, drive increased collaboration and foster a culture of work that puts our partners first.

Microsoft Inspire will gather more than 17,000 people for our most important partner event of the year. More than 145,000 meetings take place during the event, and past exhibitors have experienced a 30 percent year-over-year sales increase. Tune into the live stream keynotes to hear what the buzz is all about. In a world where transformation is inevitable, the opportunities for our partners are endless.

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[vc_row][vc_column][grve_single_image image="17396"][vc_column_text]As written by Frederic Lardinois on techcrunch.com

In the shadow of its Inspire partner conference, Microsoft today launched in preview three new tools for small businesses: Microsoft Connections, Microsoft Listings and Microsoft Invoicing. These join the company’s existing stable of small business tools like Microsoft Bookings and the Outlook Customer Manager.

Microsoft Connections allows its users to create Mailchimp-like email marketing campaigns. The new service, which is available on the web, Android and iOS, will offer the usual trappings of an email marketing campaign tool, including the ability to manage subscribers, monitor campaign performance (open rates, clicks, new customers, redemptions, etc.) and, of course, create the actual campaigns. While the details about how exactly the service works remain sparse, Microsoft says it will offer users a number of pre-designed templates for their newsletters and “simple ways for people to join your mailing list or unsubscribe.” A company spokesperson also told us that the new tools will be available at no extra cost.[/vc_column_text][grve_single_image image="17398"][vc_column_text]The idea here is obviously to tie users deeper into the Office 365 ecosystem and give them an alternative to the likes of MailChimp. Microsoft argues that getting started with email marketing “can be overwhelming.” While its competitors will surely disagree, there can’t be any doubt that those small businesses that already use Office 365 as their productivity suite of choice will appreciate the addition of this new tool.

Also new is Microsoft Invoicing, a new tool for — you guessed it — creating invoices and estimates. From what we can see, it’s a pretty straightforward service and the standout feature for many businesses is likely that it can be integrated with PayPal so small businesses can easily accept credit card payments. There also is a QuickBooks connector that lets you connect your accounting software (and your accountant) with this new invoicing tool.[/vc_column_text][grve_single_image image="17399"][vc_column_text]The third new tool is Microsoft Listings, which allows you to manage your business listings on Facebook, Google, Bing and Yelp and monitor online views and reviews. It obviously competes with a number of similar tools that do the same, but just like with the other new offerings, it’s a way for Microsoft to keep its users inside its own ecosystem.

The new applications are now available through Microsoft’s Office 365 First Release program.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As written by James Phillips on community.dynamics.com

At Microsoft Inspire this year, more than 17,000 partners, customers and business leaders will hear our CEO and leadership talk about the critical role our partners play in enabling customers to transform their businesses across industries. Microsoft invests billions annually in innovation to bring the best products to market to support our customers, and to give our partners a set of technology solutions and services they can build their business atop.

This ecosystem of Microsoft Cloud Partners is 64,000 strong – one of the largest in the world. As our partners look to develop or grow their cloud practice we offer them the most comprehensive cloud - spanning Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), application-platform-as-a-service (aPaaS) through leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. These services are enterprise ready and have been built from the ground up to work together.

ISV’s have always been able to build on Microsoft Azure. In fact, we have over 35,000 partners already using Azure IaaS and PaaS services for their apps. Increasingly we’re being asked by these partners to make our higher-level cloud services – particularly those that make up our business applications platform – available as embeddable building blocks.

We pioneered this with Power BI – which has been available as a partner-embeddable building block for nearly a year. Since then we’ve watched ISVs take advantage of Power BI Embedded to add powerful business analytics capabilities to their applications.

Now we want to give our partners even more capabilities with our award-winning business application services, such as:

Dynamics 365 for Sales, Service and Operations – ranked by top industry analysts like Forrester and Gartner as leaders in their respective markets
PowerApps – in June, PC Magazine named PowerApps editor’s choice calling it “a power user’s dream” and ranked it ahead of Salesforce’s rapid application development offerings

Announcing ISV Cloud Embed

Today we are making it even easier for ISV partners to modernize their existing business applications, and build new ones, with a new program we are calling ISV Cloud Embed. Later this year, we will extend the number of higher-level services available as embeddable “building blocks” to include:

Dynamics 365 Embedded – rapidly create business applications tailored for specific industries or regions without starting from scratch
Microsoft Flow Embedded – enable ISVs to offer the ability to allow power users and information workers to add and customize workflows to automate business processes as part of their application
PowerApps Embedded – provide an easy extensibility model for you application that can be delivered in the browser or in a mobile application
Power BI Embedded– allows users to easily embed fully interactive reports and dashboards. Partners will be able to transact this offering through CSP, as part of ISV Cloud Embed.

Benefits to ISV Partners

In addition to being able to embed and build atop these new capabilities, partners also receive critical go to market benefits, based on deal volume, to support their business:

Partners can focus on innovation while we provide the platform, keep it up to date and add new capabilities on a continuous basis.
Discounts of up to 50% allow partners to grow a profitable business.
Microsoft Azure partners can easily leverage this program – for instance hosting their apps on Azure and then extending their functionality with capabilities from ISV Cloud Embed services.
Opportunity to reach 100 million commercial active users of Office 365 and a growing community of Dynamic 365 customers through Microsoft AppSource – the destination for business users to find and try out line-of-business SaaS apps from our partners.

ISV Cloud Embed – like all Microsoft partner programs – delivers increased benefits based on usage and deal transaction volume. Go to market support is provided at all tiers. For partners whose apps drive significant consumption, we offer co-selling support from one of the world’s largest enterprise salesforces. Today’s post from Ron Huddleston provides more detail on this aspect of the program.

Getting started

Any ISV that builds qualified, finished applications can participate in ISV Cloud Embed at different levels and benefits based on the partner’s preference. To learn more about the program, please go to the ISV Resource Hub. If you would like to sign-up, there’s a simple online form to get started.

We look forward to seeing you at Inspire this week where we will share more about this program, and we look forward to building with you in the coming months.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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As written by Kirk Koenigsbauer on blogs.office.com

At Microsoft Inspire in Washington D.C., we introduced a fundamental shift in how we will design, build and go to market to address our customers’ needs for a modern workplace.

Introducing Microsoft 365—Satya Nadella unveiled Microsoft 365, which brings together Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security to deliver a complete, intelligent and secure solution to empowers employees. To address the commercial needs from the largest enterprise to the smallest business, we introduced Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business. Read our summary from Microsoft Inspire to learn more.

New business apps in Office 365 Business Premium—We also introduced the preview of three new apps in Office 365 Business Premium: Microsoft Connections, Microsoft Listings, and Microsoft Invoicing. These apps are designed to help you run and grow your small business, and are part of the new Office 365 Business center. MileIQ—the leading mileage tracking app—is also now included for Office 365 Business Premium subscribers. Read the announcement to learn more.

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Create and present more effectively with updates to Office apps

This month’s Office 365 updates make it easier to create professional-looking presentations and to identify and correct errors while editing documents.

Turn text into timelines in PowerPoint—Now PowerPoint Designer recognizes times, dates and topics on your slides and intelligently redesigns your content into professional-looking timelines, making it easier than ever to create high impact presentations. Start with a list of dates, then simply select Design Ideas in the Design tab and choose your favorite layout from the set of suggestions.

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Support for 3D in Office apps—Starting this month, you can now add and edit 3D objects in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Easily insert a 3D object from the Remix 3D catalog or your desktop, change its perspective and use transitions like Morph in PowerPoint to create cinematic animations between slides to bring 3D objects in your presentations to life.

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Read Aloud in Word—We continue to improve the Learning Tools available in Word and have moved Read Aloud to the Review tab. This latest update allows your document to be read back to you with simultaneous highlighting—from right within your workflow. This makes it easier to recognize and correct errors as you write, improving reading and editing accuracy for everyone, especially users with learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

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Additional updates for Office 365 commercial customers

Updates to Outlook and StaffHub make it easier for our Office 365 commercial customers to connect and manage tasks across their organizations.

Outlook adds a smarter To: line and redesigned conversation view—Powered by intelligence from the Microsoft Graph, Outlook on the web and Windows desktop now offer improved contact suggestions and profile pictures when composing an email. This update makes it easier for you to find and communicate with the right people throughout your organization.

Additionally, the redesigned conversation view in Outlook for iOS shows more of your discussion at once, allowing you to quickly review your message history and pick up right where you left off.

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Enhancements to Microsoft StaffHub—Throughout July, we made several updates to Microsoft StaffHub, an Office 365 app designed to help Firstline Workers manage their workday. In industries like manufacturing, retail and healthcare, firstline workers often serve as the first point of contact between a company and its customers. Now team members can use the StaffHub app to assign, manage and complete tasks from co-workers and management, as well as access company-wide announcements—making it easier to keep everyone in sync.

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Learn more about what’s new for Office 365 subscribers this month at: Office on Windows desktops | Office for Mac | Office Mobile for Windows | Office for iPhone and iPad | Office on Android. If you’re an Office 365 Home or Personal customer, be sure to sign up for Office Insider to be the first to use the latest and greatest in Office productivity. Commercial customers on both Current Channel and Deferred Channel can also get early access to a fully supported build through First Release. This site explains more about when you can expect to receive the features announced today.

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