Two days ago, we announced Microsoft Teams, the chat-based workspace in Office 365. It is a new experience that brings together people, conversations, content and the tools they need—all in one place and integrated with familiar Office applications.
As Satya says, “Every individual is different, and so is the case with every team.” We see great opportunity in helping them achieve more together—and Microsoft Teams is the open, digital environment we created to make that happen.
Watch Satya unveil Microsoft Teams in this video.
Microsoft officially closes its $26.2B acquisition of LinkedIn
After getting its final European Commission approvals earlier this week, Microsoft and LinkedIn today announced that Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, the social networking site, has officially closed.
The news comes six months after news first broke of the deal.
In an internal memo, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner went through the areas where the two companies would be working together, and how they will in other ways remain independent. That memo is copied below.
LinkedIn today has over 400 million registered users, making it the largest social networking site focused on the working world. People use the service both to make work connections with other people in their fields, but also to look for jobs and hire people. As we reported earlier this week, the fact that LinkedIn essentially has a dominant position in this area meant that Microsoft had to make concessions to the EC about how it would work to allow other social networking sites to integrate on its platforms.
The fact that these concessions had to be made speaks a little to what Microsoft’s intentions might be with LinkedIn. It seems like one key area for Microsoft will be to upsell those using LinkedIn to recruit, to then buy into Microsoft’s software in areas like HR and sales to extend that functionality.
Microsoft has up to now not really been a significant player in open-ended social networking, although with products like Yammer and Skype it’s clearly put a lot of investment into the kinds of collaboration products that are in demand from enterprises and business users today. It will be interesting to see how and if it tries to marry these two sides of enterprise-focused social networking down the line.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner:
Six months ago, we announced our intention to be acquired by Microsoft. At the time, Satya and I shared the background of the deal and our joint vision for changing the way the world works. Today I’m pleased to announce that we’ve just officially closed the acquisition. I’m more confident than ever that our move to join forces with Microsoft will accelerate our mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, and ultimately help create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.
Over the past few months, the LinkedIn and Microsoft leadership teams have been meeting to understand and prioritize the opportunities ahead. We’ve been able to see first-hand the level of innovation being driven at scale — in artificial intelligence, machine learning, the cloud, devices, and more. We’ve also had the chance to build a deeper relationship with Satya and the Microsoft leadership team, and to witness the strategic and cultural shifts they are driving, and the impressive traction they are seeing as a result.
As we move forward, our day-to-day operations will essentially remain unchanged: We’ll continue to have the same mission and vision, the same culture and values, the same brand, and the same leadership team.
Our members still come first. Our commitment to privacy and security will not change. And our partners are still core to our business. We’ll continue to remain focused on growing LinkedIn and creating value for our members and customers. Over the coming months we’ll start sharing more about how we’re integrating products, especially in areas where we can leverage Microsoft’s scale, e.g.,
LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite
LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center
Enabling members drafting résumés in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn
Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties
Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup powered by Active Directory and Office 365
LinkedIn Learning available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem
Developing a business news desk across our content ecosystem and MSN.com
Redefining social selling through the combination of Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365
Getting to this point wouldn’t have been possible without the teams who have been working tirelessly on the close since we announced the deal in June. I’d like to thank them for all they’ve done to set us up for success as we begin our next chapter.
Gifts for the many varieties of gamer in your life
Does your gamer just want the latest AAA games in the coolest series, but maybe hasn’t had the chance or cash to pick them up?
Dishonored 2 has garnered nearly unanimous accolades as a worthy follow-up to the original: a highly enjoyable and well-crafted stealth action title with a lot of (optional) stabbing. (PC performance issues ought to be ironed out by the time this is received.)
Watch Dogs 2 improves on the original with a less-grimdark story, bigger world, and lots more options to create chaos using your choice of hacking tools and automatic weapons. Anybody who sunk a lot of time into the GTA series will find this right up their alley.
For the cerebral gamer
Does your gamer like to use their synapses instead of their reflexes? (Or would you rather they did?)
The Witness is at once one of the simplest and most sophisticated games I’ve played in years — it caused me to doubt my own brilliance constantly, and my own sanity more than once. Not for those easily deterred or frustrated.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided may give you guns and fisticuffs, but you can also navigate its labyrinthine levels (and timely, if sometimes overreaching plot) with stealth and careful planning. It’s not a game to rush through, and the cerebral gamer will appreciate that.
For the competitive gamer
Do you often hear your gamer screaming “Oh my god! Get on the objective!” or “I need a heal!” or other strange utterances?
Battlefield 1 isn’t as different from the other war games as it would like you to think, but it’s still great fun and a nice break from the relentlessly modern multiplayer shooters we’ve had for years. The last time taking a zeppelin down was this much fun was probably Red Baron.
Titanfall 2 improves on the original’s combination of mechanized and on-foot combat in every way, with a tightly crafted single player campaign (a pleasant surprise) and Titanfall’s signature asymmetric multiplayer.
For the Overwatch gamer
Specifically, does your gamer say things like “We don’t need two Widowmakers!” or “Mei is bae”?
Millions play Blizzard’s mega-hit Overwatch, but comparatively few can bring themselves to pay for the “loot boxes” that contain cool skins for their favorite character and other bonus content, and come at an excruciatingly slow pace from in-game progress. You can’t gift boxes directly, but a Battle.net gift card will surely not go unappreciated.
For the intense gamer
Does your gamer like visceral experiences and in-depth combat?
DOOM is a fun and frantic return to form for the series, alternating between very fast-paced action and careful exploration. It doesn’t take itself seriously, instead focusing on the thrill and satisfaction of movement and power.
Shadow Warrior 2 combines slick combat with piles of loot, dozens of weapons, and levels that are different every time you play. It’s rough around the edges and the humor is juvenile to say the least, but the core gameplay is a blast. Fun for co-op, too, so buy a copy for yourself if it sounds fun.
Bonus: The inscrutable, terrifying, and bargain-priced Devil Daggers will take any overconfident intense gamer down a notch. Personal guarantee.
For the indie gamer
Does your gamer disdain the biggest releases, opting instead for titles created by a handful of people in Denmark?
Inside is a haunting, beautiful, and incredibly well made puzzler/platformer that tells a powerful story without speaking a single word. Warning: Despite appearances, it can be quite quite brutal!
Owlboy, ten years in the making, is a loving throwback to the days of the wide-ranging retro action-adventures like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. Anyone looking for a throwback will be well served by this passion project.
Bonus: If they didn’t already get it, Stardew Valley is a must-have.
For the world-dominating gamer
Does your gamer like to think about ways to take over the planet?
Civilization 6 is the only thing such a gamer needs right now. If they already have it, buy a copy for yourself and play with them. Beware: Civ games are notorious time sinks, so be ready to squander hours at a time.
For the disaffected Minecraft gamer
Does your gamer love to dig and build, but is getting tired of digging and building in the world of Minecraft?
Dragon Quest Builders is a surprisingly successful marriage of the blocky construction gameplay of Minecraft with the usual Dragon Quest adventuring. It hits a note Minecraft clones often fail to, and makes harvesting and building things its own reward.
Terraria and Starbound started as very Minecraft-like games in 2D, but have each evolved into their own unique experiences with loot, bosses, and secrets — though you’ll definitely be doing a lot of digging and building too. They’re both excellent games with active communities, so pick whether you like to go far above or deep below the surface, buy a couple copies, and go exploring.
For the role-playing gamer
Does your gamer appreciate stories that take upwards of 30 hours to complete?
Final Fantaxy XV is — apart from the remake of FFVII — probably the most anticipated title yet in the long-lived JPRG series. Whether it can live up to its years of hype we’ll soon find out, but we’re sure it’s going to be epic and at least pretty awesome, and everyone will want to play it anyway.
Tyranny is in the “Western” style of RPG, but brings freshness to the venerable genre with an unusual story that makes the player’s actions more than trivial. Hard moral decisions ahead, but for people who like playing evil or chaotic characters, this game will be a
Bonus: Persona 5 is… not coming out until April. But people are already going nuts and early reviews of the Japanese version are effusive. It’s going to be amazing. Full disclosure, I’m mainly putting this here so someone in my family will see it and buy it for me.
Every company is a technology company, but most don’t behave like one
In 2011, Marc Andreesen famously wrote a Wall Street Journal essay declaring that “software is eating the world.” Five years later, the five largest companies in the world by market capitalization are all software companies.
However, in today’s information economy, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook are not the only important large technology companies.
As technology becomes more and more pervasive across industries and functions, companies like Exxon, GE, Citi, and Walmart are all racing to become technology companies as well.
Today, we are less interested in the distinction between technology and non-technology companies (because there are very few successful companies that are not technology companies). Instead, it’s more interesting to ask questions like – Tesla is a technology company rapidly learning to become an automobile company, and Ford is an automobile company rapidly learning to become a technology company – which one is going to get there first?
In short, software is eating the world, but software companies aren’t the only ones taking a bite.
How do companies in real estate, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, or other industries that have traditionally not been recognized as technology industries become technology companies? What are some of the key learnings that we see from startups and companies that are successfully making this transition?
It starts at the highest level of leadership
Leading a transformation to become a successful technology company is not a job that can simply be tasked to the CTO or CIO. The level of engagement and investment to lead a successful transformation requires the CEO and board of directors to not only be fully bought in but to be the main drivers of the change.
Goldman Sachs has known for many years that technology is a key competitive advantage in financial services. In one recent WSJ article, a top Goldman executive valued a license for their risk measurement system at well over $1 billion, and possibly even up to $5 billion. They have since open-sourced the system in a move to attempt to drum up new business.
More importantly, however, Goldman Sachs’ Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein has repeatedly stated that “Goldman Sachs is a technology firm” and highlights the fact that Goldman Sachs actually employs more engineers than companies like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and often competes for talent and wins against top internet companies.
Talent is the most important asset of a technology company
One of the key drivers for the rapid growth of new technology companies is the low capital requirement to build a company today. New companies no longer need to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of servers and equipment; instead, they can pay for servers on demand from cloud providers when needed.
This dynamic makes it more important than ever for companies to hire great people. In fact, a recent survey Madrona conducted in conjunction with its annual CIO Summit found that 89% of Fortune 500 CIOs say hiring top talent is their number one concern today.
GE has likely made the largest investment in this space to change the story that young engineers and college graduates hear about the company with a series of Youtube videos and television ads. Though it remains to be seen whether these videos work, GE has recognized that filling its talent pipeline with young engineers and technologists is critical and is investing accordingly.
Technology needs to be at the core of company culture, not an afterthought
At a company like Microsoft or Facebook, engineering positions are the most prestigious, highest status roles at the company. The founders and CEOs of technology companies are often engineers and may have even built early version of the products themselves.
For companies to successfully make the transition and become a technology company, cultures need to change to take into account the unique way that software development works and to highlight the importance of technology and the people who manage and build it.
One example of a move towards a developer friendly culture is happening at Walmart. WalmartLabs recently open sourced Electrode, the application platform that powers Walmart.com. Electrode is a modular platform that helps improve application performance, and Walmart is open sourcing the software to give back to the open source world and benefit from additional contributions from the community.
It is important to keep in mind that building a technology-driven culture is not just about free lunches and massages. As Joel Spolsky CEO of Stack Overflow said in a recent interview, “If you want to attract and keep developers, don’t emphasize ping-pong tables, lounges, fire pits and chocolate fountains. Give them private offices or let them work from home because this uninterrupted time to concentrate is the most important and scarcest commodity.
Companies need to move fast and adopt agile practices
The pace of technology adoption is getting faster and faster every year. For example, it took decades for electricity and telephones to reach 50% of US households, but today it takes only years for new technologies like smartphones and tablets to reach a majority of the population. This underscores the importance for companies to continuously adopt new technologies that can enhance productivity and also to continuously experiment with new technologies that have the potential to be disruptive to the business.
An interesting anecdote from The Lean Startup, one of the manifestos for startup founders, is that Intuit holds themselves accountable to being innovative and agile by using two key metrics: (1) the number of customers using products that didn’t exist three years ago and (2) the percentage of revenue coming from offerings that did not exist three years ago. Historically for Intuit, it took a new product an average of 5.5 years to reach $50 million in revenue; at the time the book was written, they had multiple products generating $50 million in revenue that were less than a year old.
Particularly, as the world is moving towards cloud computing, continuous development, and continuous updates are the name of the game. Agile development practices enable you to continuously deliver better experiences for your customers and waterfall development methodology is a relic of the past.
Companies need to look forward and avoid getting caught in the innovator’s dilemma
The classic case for why legacy competitors can do everything “right” and fail is the force of disruptive innovation described in Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma. Businesses can reject innovations based on customers’ current needs while innovative upstarts develop products in a way that meets customers’ future needs.
Recently, we have seen automakers take very innovative approaches to automotive technology as autonomous vehicles move to the front and center of the startup world with the acquisitions of companies like Otto and Cruise and public pilots of new technologies like Uber’s self-driving cars in Pittsburgh or Tesla’s Autopilot feature.
Ford, in particular, has been very vocal about the autonomous future and the importance of working differently in the context of today’s technology-driven world. Ford’s CEO, Mark Fields, has written that “As little as four years ago, our approach was aligned with the thinking of most automakers today, which is taking incremental steps to achieve full autonomy by advancing driver assist technology. This is not how we look at it today. We learned that to achieve full autonomy, we’d have to take a completely different pathway.”
Conclusion
The race to become the market leader across a variety of sectors and geographies is speeding up amongst older incumbents and promising, young startups. Startups have a lot to learn from the established management and financial practices of incumbents, but incumbents have a lot to learn from startups as well. The companies, young or old, that use technology to best create competitive advantages for themselves will win.
Technology needs to be a fundamental fabric of the company’s DNA and culture as companies truly internalize that “Every company is a technology company”.
Want to learn more about how to bolster your company's technology? Contact us here!
The public preview of SQL Server on Linux has arrived!
The public preview of the next major release of SQL Server brings the power of SQL Server to both Linux and Windows. SQL Server enables developers and organizations to build intelligent applications with industry-leading performance and security technologies using their preferred language and environment. With the next release of SQL Server, you can develop applications with SQL Server on Linux, Windows, Docker, or macOS (via Docker) and then deploy to Linux, Windows, or Docker, on-premises or in the cloud.
You’ll find native Linux installations made easy with familiar RPM and APT packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu Linux, and a package for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server will be coming soon as well. Finally, the public preview for SQL Server is also available on Azure Virtual Machines on Windows and Linux and as images available on Docker Hub, offering a quick and easy installation within minutes.
Tooling on Linux
We have also released updated versions of our flagship SQL Server tools including SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Visual Studio SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and SQL Server PowerShell with support for the next release of SQL Server on Windows and Linux. We are also excited to announce the new SQL Server extension for Visual Studio Code that is available now on the Visual Studio Code marketplace. Developers can use the SQL extension for VS Code on macOS/Linux/Windows with SQL Server running anywhere (on-premises, on Linux and Windows, in any cloud, in virtual machines, Docker) and with Azure SQL DB and Azure SQL DW. Native command-line tools are also available for SQL Server on Linux.
Get started today
Try the SQL Server on Linux Public Preview today! Get started with the public preview of the next release of SQL Server on Linux, macOS (via Docker) and Windows with our tutorials that show you how to install and use SQL Server on macOS, Docker, Windows, RHEL and Ubuntu and quickly build an app in a programming language of your choice.
Microsoft has made a major breakthrough in speech recognition, creating a technology that understands a conversation as well as a person does.
In a paper published Monday, a team of researchers and engineers in Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research reported a speech recognition system that makes the same or fewer errors than professional transcriptionists. The researchers reported a word error rate (WER) of 5.9 percent, down from the 6.3 percent WER the team reported just last month.
The 5.9 percent error rate is about equal to that of people who were asked to transcribe the same conversation, and it’s the lowest ever recorded against the industry standard Switchboard speech recognition task.
Newly updated Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit can help speed advances in deep learning
Microsoft has released an updated version of Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, a system for deep learning that is used to speed advances in areas such as speech and image recognition and search relevance on CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs.
The toolkit, previously known as CNTK, was initially developed by computer scientists at Microsoft who wanted a tool to do their own research more quickly and effectively. It quickly moved beyond speech and morphed into an offering that customers, including a leading international appliance maker and Microsoft’s flagship product groups, depend on for a wide variety of deep learning tasks.
“We’ve taken it from a research tool to something that works in a production setting,” said Frank Seide, a principal researcher at Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research and a key architect of the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit.
With the latest version of the toolkit, which is available on GitHub, developers can use Python or C++ programming languages in working with the toolkit. With the new version, researchers also can do a type of artificial intelligence work called reinforcement learning.
How mixed reality and machine learning are driving innovation in farming
Farming is, by far, the most mature industry mankind has created. Dating back to the dawn of civilization, farming has been refined, adjusted and adapted — but never perfected. We, as a society, always worry over the future of farming. Today, we even apply terms usually reserved for the tech sector — digital, IoT, AI and so on. So why are we worrying?
The Economist, in its Q2 Technology Quarterly issue, proclaims agriculture will soon need to become more manufacturing-like in order to feed the world’s growing population. Scientific American reports crops will soon need to become more drought resistant in order to effectively grow in uncertain climates. Farms, The New York Times writes, will soon need to learn how to harvest more with less water.
And they’re right. If farms are to continue to feed the world’s population they will have to do so in manners both independent of, and accommodating to, the planet’s changing and highly variable climes. That necessitates the smart application of both proven and cutting-edge technology. It necessitates simplified interfaces. And, of course, it necessitates building out and applying those skills today.
Fortunately, the basics for this future are being explored today. For example, vertical farming, a technique allowing farmers to grow and harvest crops in controlled environments, often indoors and in vertical stacks, has exploded in both popularity and potential. In fact, this method has been shown to grow some crops 20 percent faster with 91 percent less water. Genetically modified seeds, capable of withstanding droughts and floods, are making harvests possible even in the driest of conditions, like those found in Kenya.
If farms are to continue to feed the world’s population they will have to do so in manners both independent of, and accommodating to, the planet’s changing and highly variable climes.
But managing such progress, whether indoors or in the field, is a challenge unto itself. Monitoring acidity, soil nutrients and watering time for each plant for optimal growth is, at best, guesswork or, at worst, an afterthought. But it’s here new interactive technologies may shine. A small family of sensors can monitor a plant’s vitals and provide real-time updates to a remote server. Artificial intelligence’s younger cousin, machine learning, can study these vitals and the growth of some crops to anticipate future needs. Finally, augmented reality (AR), where informative images overlay or augment everyday objects, can help both farmers and gardeners to monitor and manage crop health.
Plant.IO* is one system that shows how it can be done: A cube of PVC pipes provides the frame for sensors, grow-lights, cameras and more. A remote server dedicated to machine learning analyzes growth and growth conditions and anticipates future plant needs. A set of AR-capable glasses provides to the user an image, or a representation, of the plant, regardless of location. If the AR device is capable, like the Microsoft HoloLens, it also can provide a means to interact with the plant by adjusting fertilizer, water flow, growth lights and more.
This methodology, when paired with gamification, may lend itself to a new, simplified form of crop management. Together, AI and AR make it simple and fun for everyone from adults to adolescents to monitor and manage their own gardens from home and afar. This idea is at the heart of Plant.IO: a fun, workable solution for an agriculture-based scenario where digital information can overlay a physical object or area without losing context.
In fact, this sort of management system could extend beyond gardens and farms. Any scenario where a physical environment exists alongside measurable data could, potentially, benefit from an AR/AI deployment. Industrial operations, such as warehouse management, are a promising area. Industrial farming, where the combination of AI and infrared cameras to measure a field’s health, is another.
With the right formula of AR and AI, users can monitor and nurture plants from virtually anywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter if they’re growing plants on their kitchen counter, or preparing for their next harvest. Better yet, they can do this with the latest information on a plant’s acidity, nutrient, watering levels and more in an environmentally sound manner.
The first industrial revolution helped us go from the fields to the cities with the productivity gains from machine farming. This industrial revolution is using machine learning and other digital “implements” to take farming even further — and to feed the world.
*Disclosure: Plant.IO is an open-source digital farming project created by Infosys.
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Newly updated Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit can help speed advances in deep learning
How mixed reality and machine learning are driving innovation in farming
