ATLANTA, Sept. 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- At its annual Microsoft Ignite conference on Monday, Microsoft Corp. announced new products and services spanning security, productivity, intelligence and the cloud that will make it easier for IT professionals to drive digital transformation throughout their organizations. In addition, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced that Adobe is bringing its Marketing Cloud to Microsoft Azure and making it the preferred digital marketing solution for Dynamics 365 Enterprise.

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"Core to our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet is democratizing AI for every person and organization to help solve society's most pressing challenges," said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. "To do this, we're infusing intelligence into everything we deliver -- from the agent to applications, services and infrastructure."

Today's announcements address some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing technology professionals, such as security amid an increasingly complex and dynamic threat landscape, and the need to balance end-user preferences with technology investments that scale and deliver value.

Security

Security enhancements across Microsoft's products, including Windows 10, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security, offer powerful protection against security threats.


    --  Windows Defender Application Guard, coming next year to Windows 10
        Enterprise customers and soon to Windows Insiders, makes Microsoft Edge
        the most secure browser for the enterprise. It is powered by
        virtualization-based security technology and uses isolated containers
        built directly into the hardware to prevent malicious code from moving
        across employee devices and the corporate network.
    --  Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP) and Office 365 ATP
        now share intelligence mutually across both services, helping IT pros to
        investigate and respond to security threats across Windows 10 and Office
        365 more quickly and efficiently.
    --  Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection will be extended to Word, Excel,
        PowerPoint, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Other
        enhancements include dynamic delivery, which enables users to receive
        email immediately with a placeholder attachment while the actual
        attachment undergoes scanning, and URL detonation, which analyzes links
        in real time to identify unknown malicious URLs.
    --  Office 365 Threat Intelligence provides alerts and information on the
        origination of specific attacks, integrates with existing security
        incident event management (SIEM) systems, and enables customers to
        deploy dynamic policies based on the nature of the threat.
    --  Outlook for iOS and Android is now fully powered by the Microsoft Cloud
        for Office 365 commercial users, supporting Exchange Online mailboxes
        natively so that no mailbox data is cached outside Office 365.
    --  Enterprise Mobility + Security E5, a new offer that expands security to
        help the transition to mobility and cloud, will be available starting
        Oct. 1, 2016. The suite includes the new Microsoft Azure Information
        Protection service to help organizations classify, label and protect
        sensitive data.
    --  Also available Oct. 1, 2016, is the Secure Productive Enterprise, which
        offers the latest and most advanced security and productivity
        capabilities across Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise and Enterprise
        Mobility + Security.

Intelligence

New AI capabilities that span agents, applications, services and infrastructure transform what's possible for people and organizations.


    --  Microsoft will preview new skills for its personal assistant and AI
        agent Cortana, including health insights and reminders.
    --  Office 365 is getting new cloud-powered intelligent capabilities,
        including the following:
        --  Tap in Word and Outlook, which uses the Microsoft Graph to make it
            easier to incorporate content from existing documents within your
            organization into your own documents and emails.
        --  Quickstarter for PowerPoint and Sway provides curated outlines for
            any topic, including text and images, that can be used as a starting
            point to build presentations.
        --  Maps, a new chart type in Excel powered by Bing Maps, transforms
            geographic data into high-fidelity visualizations.
    --  Microsoft MyAnalytics (formerly Delve Analytics) is a personal analytics
        service in Office 365 that helps people understand how they spend time
        at work. New capabilities provide team members and leaders with insights
        to help find better ways of working together.
    --  Relationship Assistant, included in the soon-to-be-released Dynamics 365
        for Sales, makes customer engagement more intelligent than ever before
        on any device.
    --  Microsoft customers will be showcased for how they are using Cortana
        Intelligence to innovate in their industries -- Lowe's to deliver a
        digitally enhanced kitchen remodel experience; and Dymaxia Inc. to make
        healthcare more efficient and accessible. Uber announced it is using
        Microsoft Cognitive Services for its real-time ID check security feature
        to improve rider and driver security.
    --  Microsoft has deployed a new AI-enabled virtual agent across all of its
        U.S. support centers to improve customer experience.
    --  The company also announced that it has signed a global, multiyear
        agreement with Renault-Nissan Alliance to advance connected driving
        experiences worldwide. The companies will work together to develop
        next-generation mobility services for cars powered by Microsoft Azure
        that will improve customer experiences including personalization,
        advanced navigation, predictive services, remote monitoring of car
        features, external mobile experiences and over-the-air updates.
        Renault-Nissan selected Azure because of its enterprise-grade security
        and Microsoft's commitment to compliance.

Cloud platform

Building on the industry's richest hybrid cloud portfolio, the release of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 helps transform customers' infrastructure to support future-ready cloud applications, while advances in the Microsoft cloud infrastructure provide a path toward an AI supercomputer in the cloud.


    --  Windows Server 2016 will be generally available in October, giving IT
        professionals new layers of security and Azure-inspired innovation for
        infrastructure and cloud applications. Microsoft and Docker Inc. are
        extending their partnership to make the Commercially Supported Docker
        Engine available to Windows Server 2016 customers at no additional cost.
        System Center 2016 will also be generally available in October, offering
        a simplified management solution across the datacenter and the cloud for
        Windows Server 2016 software-defined datacenter features.
    --  New Azure monitoring abilities, combined with Operations Management
        Suite updates, help IT manage cloud and on-premises assets from one
        place.
    --  The next technical preview of Azure Stack brings Azure technology to
        customers' datacenters, furthering Microsoft's unique hybrid
        differentiation.
    --  Microsoft is also advancing a vision of what's possible with
        intelligence and machine learning using the world's largest deployment
        of custom developed field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), spanning 15
        countries and five continents. These FPGAs could be used to accelerate
        AI to near real time, making Azure the foundation for the world's first
        AI supercomputer.

Empowering IT pros

New free training and educational resources will help ensure that IT professionals have the know-how and expertise to help companies complete their digital transformation.


    --  The Microsoft Technical Community is a new online community that brings
        together IT professionals, MVPs and Microsoft subject-matter experts to
        exchange ideas, build connections and share best practices about
        Microsoft products and solutions.
    --  The Microsoft IT Pro Career Center and Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials
        are now available in 25 languages and 40 markets globally. The Career
        Center provides free expert advice on cloud career paths, skills and
        curriculum by cloud role, while IT Pro Cloud Essentials provides a free
        annual subscription to cloud services, priority support and
        certification.

More information and news from Microsoft Ignite can be found at the Microsoft News Center. Readers can also follow and engage with the Microsoft Twitter community at @MSFTNews and @MS_Ignite using #MSIgnite.

Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.