Microsoft – Global SMC Partner Event, Key Takeaways

Last week saw me attend the Global SMC Partner Summit in Redmond. I was thrilled to represent CAE at this invite only event, where the attendees amounted to the top tier SMC partners globally. 

The event was a great opportunity to hear from Microsoft as to their advancements in key areas of the Modern Workplace and the initiatives available to us as top tier partners, to better support our customers.

By Dan Hall – CTO Office – Cloud & Data Centre Lead.

The event is also a great forum for partners to meet and discuss how we are helping customers, share in the challenges we are seeing- it’s a great community to be a part of for collaborating in that way.

As you would imagine, AI dominated the agenda, with Copilot focusing heavily. Microsoft emphasised their investment in support of greater productivity for all. This included technical solutioning for Microsoft 365 apps, Azure Open AI, GitHub Copilot (in support of the developer community), the impact on Security solutions with Security Copilot, and the need to assess Copilot usage in wider proprietary solutions.

I was privileged to be invited to participate as a panel member to explore how Partners are supporting the adoption of AI tools, my key takeaways from the session were:
  • The shift and adoption of AI is now. There has never been a greater opportunity for information workers of all types to streamline their ways of working within Microsoft 365 apps
  • The generative AI capabilities available in Copilot create the opportunity to redesign organisation digital transformation roadmap - supercharging colleague creativity and productivity
  • The rollout of AI needs to be considered in tandem with the Security in the form of an AI risk management strategy and assessment
  • Having an adoption and change management strategy or plan will be a key factor in the success of introducing AI capabilities into the workplace
  • AI opportunities are ‘use case based’ and finding the right flavour of AI to best support the use case is key. The blend of AI flavours that works for your organisation, and users, forms the foundation of your AI strategy.

    The opportunity of AI to transform an organisation is huge. The use cases are already endless, with the opportunity for us all to achieve more. If you’d like to find out more about the opportunities Copilot and AI can bring to your organisation, please contact us today via the below link.  

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