Category: Microsoft

Sometimes, things just take a little bit longer than expected. At Microsoft’s Build conference five years ago, the company made a widely reported prediction that the Windows 10 ecosystem would expand out to one billion devices over the course of a 2-3 year time period. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it by the original deadline, but just a few months ago they were finally able to announce that they had reached that ambitious milestone.

Appropriately, at this year’s virtual Build developer conference, the company made what could prove to be an even more impactful announcement that will allow developers to take full advantage of that huge installed base. In short, the company unveiled something they call Project Reunion that will essentially make it easier for a variety of different types of Windows applications—built via different programming models—to run more consistently and more effectively across more devices.

Before getting into the details, a bit of context is in order. Back in 2015 when then Executive VP Terry Myerson made the one billion prediction, Microsoft’s OS efforts were more grandiose than simply for PCs. The company was still actively pursuing the smartphone market with Windows Phone, had just unveiled the first HoloLens concept devices and Surface Hub, talked about the role that Xbox One had in its OS plans, and generally was thinking more about a multi-device world for its then new OS.

Looking back now, it’s clear that we indeed entered an era of multiple devices, but the only ones that ended up having a significant impact on the Windows 10 installed base number turned out to be PCs in all flavors and forms, from desktops and laptops, to 2-in-1s and convertibles like the original Surface. In fact, the nearly complete reliance on PCs is undoubtedly why it took longer to reach the one billion goal.

In retrospect, however, that’s actually a good thing, because there are now approximately one billion relatively similar devices for which developers can create applications, instead of a mixed group of devices that were more related to Windows 10 in name than true capability. Even with this large similar grouping, however, not all applications for Windows 10 were created or function in the same way. Because of some of Microsoft’s early bets on device diversity under the Windows 10 umbrella, they made decisions about promoting a more basic (and legacy-free) application development architecture that they hoped would ensure that applications ran across this wide range of devices. Specifically, Microsoft promoted the concept of Universal Windows Platform (UWP) APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and a number of developers took them up on these initiatives.

At this point, however, because of some of the limitations in UWP, there really isn’t much need (or demand) for these efforts, hence Project Reunion. At a basic level, the goal with Project Reunion is to provide the complete set of Windows 10 capabilities (the Win32 or Windows APIs) to applications originally created around the UWP concept—in essence to “reunite” the two application development platforms and their respective APIs into a single, more modern Windows platform. This, in turn, allows programmers to have a more consistent means of interaction between their apps and the Windows 10 operating system, regardless of the approach they first took to create the application. In addition, thanks to a number of extensions that Microsoft is making to that model, it allows developers to create more modern, web and service-friendly applications.

Specifically, for example, Project Reunion is going to enable something the company is calling WinUI 3 Preview 1, which is a new framework for building modern, fast, flexible user interfaces that can easily scale across different devices. By leveraging the open-source, multi-OS friendly Fluent Design-based tools, developers can actually achieve an even more widespread reach not only across different Windows 10-based devices, but those running other OS’s as well. Plus, thanks to hooks into previous development platforms, developers can use these UI tools to modernize the look of existing apps as well as build new ones.

Another specific element of Project Reunion is WebView 2, which is a set of tools that lets developers easily integrate native web content within an app and even integrate with browsers across different platforms. As with WinUI 3 and the new more modern Windows APIs, WebView 2 isn’t locked to any version of Windows, giving developers more flexibility in leveraging their application’s codebase across multiple platforms.

Microsoft also announced new extensions that allow Windows developers to tap into services built into Microsoft 365 such as Microsoft Search and Microsoft Graph. This allows developers to create a modern web service-like application that can leverage the capabilities and data that Microsoft’s tools provide and offer extensions and connections to the company’s widely used SaaS offerings.

The Project Reunion capabilities look to finally complete the picture around the one billion device installed base that the company promised, but in a much different way than most people originally thought. Interestingly, thanks to the growing importance and influence of the PC—a point that’s really been brought home in our current environment—there’s arguably a less diverse set of Windows 10-based devices to specifically code for than most predicted. However, the new tools and capabilities promised for Project Reunion potentially allow developers to create applications for that entire base, instead of a smaller subset that realistically was all that was possible from the original UWP efforts.

Additionally, because of Microsoft’s significantly more open approach to application developments and open source in general since that 2015 announcement, the range of devices that Windows-based developers can target is now significantly broader than even that impressive one billion figure. Obviously delivering on that promise is a lot harder than simply defining the vision, but it’s certainly interesting to see how Microsoft continues to keep the world of Windows fresh and relevant. Throw in the fact that a new version of Windows—10X—is on the horizon, and it’s clear that 2020, and beyond, is going to be an interesting time for a platform that many had written off, albeit incorrectly, as irrelevant.

If there’s one piece of software that has held up remarkably well over several decades, it’s Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity apps. From business to personal life, the applications in Office have proven their value time and time again to people all over the world. Perhaps because of that, Microsoft has used Office as a means to push forward the definition of what software is, how it should be delivered, how it should be sold, what platforms it should run on, and much more over the last decade or so.

In June of 2011, for example, the company officially unveiled Office 365, which provided access to all the same applications in the regular suite but in a subscription-like “service” form that was delivered (and updated) via the internet. Since then, the company has added new features and functions to the service, made it available to mobile platforms such as Android and iOS, in addition to Windows and MacOS, and generally used it as a means to expand how people think about applications they use on a regular basis. In the process, Microsoft has made many people comfortable with the idea of cloud-based software becoming a cloud-based service.

Yesterday, the company took the next step in the evolution of the product and renamed the consumer, as well as the small and medium business versions of Office 365 to Microsoft 365—changes that will all occur on April 21. The name change is obviously a subtle one, but beyond the title, the changes run much deeper. Specifically, the new brand reflects how the set of applications that make up the company’s popular subscription-based offering is evolving. It also reflects how the company itself is changing.

In the case of the SMB versions of Microsoft 365, the name change is simply a branding one, which better reflects that the service includes more than just basic office productivity, particularly with the Teams collaboration tools and service. For the new consumer-oriented Personal and Family versions of Microsoft 365, the changes are more extensive.

Notably, the consumer versions of Microsoft 365 include the addition of several new applications, a number of AI-powered intelligent enhancements to existing applications and—in an important first for Microsoft—some mobile-first advancements. The new version of the Microsoft Editor function works across Word, Outlook.com, and the web, and is essentially a Grammarly competitor that moves beyond simple spell and grammar checking to making AI-powered rewriting suggestions, avoiding plagiarism and more.

The AI-based Designer feature in PowerPoint—which I have found to be incredibly useful—has been enhanced in this latest version of Microsoft 365 to support a wider array of content that it can “beautify” and includes support for a greatly expanded library of supplementary graphics, videos, fonts and templates.
The biggest change to Excel is the forthcoming addition of Money for Excel, an add-in that gives it Quicken-like money and account management features. In addition, working in conjunction with Wolfram Alpha, Microsoft is adding in support for over 100 new “smart” data types that makes it significantly easier to track everything from calories to travel locations and more. In essence, it provides the type of intelligence that people may have expected computing devices and applications to have all along.

The addition of both Teams (for Consumers) and Family Safety are interesting because of the capabilities they bring to the service and because both will launch first on mobile OSes—Android and iOS. Microsoft has had mobile versions of its main productivity suite apps, as well as its One Drive storage service for a while now, but this Microsoft 365 launch marks the first time the company will debut new apps in mobile form. On the one hand, the move is logical and not terribly surprising given how much people use their mobile devices today—particularly for communications and tracking, which are the core functions of Teams and Family Safety respectively. Nevertheless, it’s still noteworthy, because it does show how Microsoft has been able to pivot on its typical “deliver on PC first” strategy and keep itself as relevant as possible.

In the case of Teams, the company isn’t replicating its Enterprise version, but instead has developed a consumer-focused edition that allows for real-time chats, document sharing, creating and tracking lists, and more in a manner that should make sense for most consumers. Family Safety is completely new and allows parents to provide limits and controls on digital device usage and content, as well as track the physical location and even driving of other family members. Importantly, Microsoft made the point to say that it’s doing all these things without sharing (or certainly not selling) any of this information to auto insurance companies, advertisers or any other companies. While the company would have undoubtedly created a bit of an outcry if it did any of that, it was still reassuring to hear a big tech vendor emphasize these privacy and security-focused concerns. Let’s hope all major tech vendors follow suit.

Speaking of privacy and security, Microsoft took the opportunity with its Microsoft 365 launch announcement to also unveil the latest version of Microsoft Edge, the company’s significantly improved browser. In addition to several convenience-based features, such as the addition of vertical tabs, smart copying from web pages, and the ability to easily create portable “collections” of content from web-based sources, the company debuted some important privacy features as well. Password Monitor, for example, can automatically track whether any of your logins are available on the dark web and encourage you to change your passwords on sites where that may have occurred. Given the huge number of security breaches and data exposure that have impacted almost all of us at this point, this could prove to be an incredibly valuable new feature. In addition, the company added refined tracking controls that allows you to set the amount information you are willing to share with other websites as a result of your browsing sessions.

All told, it was a pretty impressive set of announcements that highlights how Microsoft has managed to continue adjusting its strategies to match the changing needs of the market and its customers. Of course, many consumers will still be content using the free versions of the basic Office applications and services that Microsoft will continue to make available even after April 21. However, the functionality that the company has built into its new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family offerings will be compelling enough for many to make the switch, and the success that the Office suite of applications has enjoyed for so long will continue with the new Microsoft 365.

Ever since the debut of multiple voice-based digital assistants—including Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana among others—there have been questions about how many the market could realistically support and what specific role these AI-powered tools could play.

As time has passed, it’s become clear that Alexa and Google Assistant have become the dominant forces in the “general” assistant market—where you basically can ask a wide variety of different questions—with Siri continuing to remain an important, but much less influential player. Microsoft’s Cortana, on the other hand (and Samsung’s Bixby, among others) has faded from prominence, primarily because of its initial positioning as a PC-focused assistant. Despite some interesting potential, it turns out that not many people are interested in interacting with personal assistants on PCs—it’s much more natural and convenient on smartphones and other types of mobile devices, and it’s more critical on devices that don’t have any screens.

Despite these setbacks, Microsoft clearly recognized that the technology behind Cortana was very sound. In fact, there have been some studies that have shown Cortana was the most accurate digital assistant for certain types of inquiries. However, the company also acknowledged that it’s AI-powered voice computing platform needed to be used and positioned in a different way in order to have the biggest possible impact. As a result, at its annual Ignite developer conference, Microsoft debuted several new ways to interact with Cortana that reflect the realities of how most people prefer to invoke digital assistants—on mobile devices. In addition, and arguably even more importantly, this pivot also reflects a more mature perspective on the evolution of voice-based computing and points the way towards more focused, and more refined applications of the technology.

Specifically, Microsoft announced the ability to use Cortana within the iOS version of Outlook (with Android support coming in spring of 2020) to read back and reply to emails purely by voice, as well as to help schedule meetings and organize calendars using natural language requests. It’s clearly a much smaller set of requirements than would be placed on a general-purpose digital assistant, but the end result will (hopefully!) be an accurate and thorough delivery of those capabilities. In other words, instead of trying to go wide, Microsoft clearly wants to go deep and leverage its AI capabilities in a category (personal information management) and an application in which it has an extremely strong legacy. While ultimate success or failure will be determined by the execution of the idea, strategically this repositioning of Cortana makes a great deal of sense.

Remember that one of Microsoft’s biggest efforts over the last several years has been the development of what it calls the Microsoft Graph—a collection of data about an individual user’s productivity habits, documents, device usage patterns and virtually every aspect of his/her working life that can be gathered. By leveraging the Graph data in an intelligent way, the AI-powered capabilities driving Cortana should have a very rich data set from which to learn. That, in turn, should give this more focused version of Cortana the ability to deliver well-informed, intelligent responses that provide a richer, more robust experience than a general-purpose digital assistant could. Again, the proof will be in the pudding, but the concept of what Microsoft is attempting makes perfect sense.

Microsoft is also leveraging its strength in the business environment with these additions to Cortana, instead of focusing on the consumer market, as most of the other digital assistant platforms have. To that end, Microsoft said that it plans to bring more productivity and enterprise-specific additions to Cortana through upcoming integration with Teams and other parts of the Office 365 (O365) suite of services. In essence, the company is using Cortana as an AI brain that can be leveraged to help bring more intelligence to O365 users. It’s a more specialized approach that, frankly, Samsung would be wise to follow with its Bixby voice platform, which has similar challenges when it comes to rates of adoption.

Initially, many viewed voice-based digital assistants as general-purpose platforms that were essentially capable of responding to most any type of query. As the technology and marketplace have evolved, however, it increasingly appears that there are going to be opportunities for many different types of voice-based computing platforms, some of which are optimized for specific functions, just as there are many different types of people who have specialized knowledge in different areas. It’s still not entirely clear how these various assistant platforms and voice computing models will interact with one another (and how they’ll avoid stepping on each other), but the notion of a winner-take-all approach for voice-based digital assistants looks increasingly unlikely as time goes by. Instead, as Microsoft has demonstrated here, it’s time to start thinking about a multi-platform voice computing world.

If you’ve read much about the concept of digital transformation, you’ve probably heard the idea that all companies are becoming tech companies because of the overwhelming influence that technology is having on industries of all types. On one hand, this makes sense, because technologies like cloud computing, AI, and more are enabling a level of involvement with customers and partners that simply wasn’t possible without them. On the other hand, the practical realities are that most companies don’t have the in-house technical expertise to deliver on that promise. This is particularly true with regard to the more advanced technologies—like voice-based digital assistants—that today’s tech industry leaders are starting to offer.

At the company’s Build developer’s conference in Seattle, Microsoft announced important efforts designed to bridge the gap by democratizing the use of technologies like AI and natural language processing in “non-tech-native” companies. The company delivered AI and cloud computing-related enhancements at this year’s conference that ranged from autonomous systems to IoT and beyond. The ones I believe will have the most important long-term impact, however, are those that allow regular organizations and IT people who aren’t data scientists to take advantage of these powerful new technologies. Features like Intellicode, which is built into the latest 16.1 release of their Visual Studio programming application, eases the process of creating AI-enhanced apps, and the new enhancements to their Azure chat bot frameworks look to be particularly interesting.

Voice-based personal assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana have had a particularly profound impact on the consumer market, but many businesses immediately recognized that they had important potential applications in business as well. To that end, we’ve seen initiatives like Alexa for Business get unveiled, as well as a number of efforts to create automated chatbots for online support and other applications. One of the challenges that companies who want to use these capabilities face, however, is that the “partner” provider—such as Amazon in the case of Alexa for Business—becomes the means by which customers interact with their products. So, for example, a car maker that integrates Alexa into one of their automobiles would lose the direct interaction between their brand and their customer. Needless to say, while that’s great for Amazon, it’s not ideal for the car manufacturer.

In order to overcome that gap, Microsoft announced a number of enhancements to their bot frameworks that essentially allow customers to put their own brand back into the conversation, but leverage Microsoft’s natural language processing and conversational AI tools in the background. In essence, Microsoft is serving as a platform provider and allowing partner companies like BMW and Coca-Cola to “white label” these technologies in their own products. So, for example, BMW can offer its customers a voice assistant in its new high-end cars, but the entire experience is BMW-branded and BMW-controlled.

This voice-based customization strategy looks to be a particularly smart move for Microsoft, because the company has had little success in getting people to regularly use their Cortana assistant. At this year’s Build, Microsoft did demonstrate an impressive business-focused application of Cortana, that showed it taking some important steps to becoming a truly useful personal assistant (as opposed to more of a gimmicky reminder setting tool). Thanks to new technology it acquired when it purchased a company called Semantic Machines last year, Cortana is adding the ability to switch between contexts, take specific actions and generally respond in a significantly more intuitive manner.

But the beauty of Microsoft’s platform-type approach for conversational AI means that while Microsoft Cortana-branded features will have these capabilities, eventually, so too will other customers who want to integrate a responsive, effective voice-based UI into their products and services but in the context of their own brand. Frankly, it’s a classic example of Microsoft thinking more about the platform opportunities these types of services can enable than simply the Microsoft-branded functionality that something like Cortana can provide.

As AI pervades all types of applications, industries, and products, it just makes sense that we’re going to end up with a very diverse set of voice-based assistants across a wide range of products. While Alexa or Google Assistant-branded assistants will certainly be appealing for certain users and/or certain devices (and could end up with a larger individual share of the total market than, say, Cortana or any specific application of Microsoft technology) the combined opportunity for voice assistants is likely going to be so large that individual offerings won’t matter as much. That larger opportunity is what Microsoft appears to be targeting with these new efforts, and while only time will tell, it certainly seems to be a strong strategic move on the company’s part.

We’re still in the very early days of voice-based UIs and other AI-powered capabilities, but it feels like we’re starting to get a better glimpse into how these markets are evolving (and how non-tech companies can take advantage of these capabilities and customize them for their own purposes). The image ahead looks exciting.

The concept of a business PC and the digital environment it enabled used to be pretty easy to understand. You bought a PC from a vendor like Dell, HP, or Lenovo, installed a copy of Windows and a copy of Microsoft Office on it, connected it to the network, and you were basically done.

Today, however, there is an enormous array of different solutions to bring that same type of functionality to life for the modern business worker. From different types of buying, leasing, and hardware “as a service” business models for physically acquiring the PC, to several means of delivering the Windows desktop to a given device, to multiple choices of productivity suites and means of interacting with documents created with those tools, the modern enterprise desktop has become a surprisingly complex topic.

At the recent Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, FL, the company provided yet more ways to deliver a digital workspace experience to today’s devices. First, Microsoft joined the growing movement of companies offering physical devices as a service with their Microsoft Managed Desktops solution. Like other device-as-a-service (DaaS) offerings from the big PC vendors, the Microsoft solution provides access to branded hardware products and cloud-based support and device management services for a monthly fee. Initially, the company is offering their own Surface Pros, but eventually they plan to make other PC brands available as well. In addition, Microsoft is providing some important (though likely expensive) differentiation by also bundling Microsoft 365, which includes Windows, Office 365, and integrated security features, as well as ongoing support for all that software, as part of the package.

For those who already have the PCs they need and prefer a virtual desktop offering, the company also launched Windows Virtual Desktop, which includes licenses for Windows 10 and Office 365 bundled together and hosted on the cloud by Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. This is the company’s first VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) initiative under their own brand, and it delivers a secure and managed Windows desktop to whatever PCs a company has connected. Unfortunately, the industry has fallen into the naming trap of also calling this DaaS, but in this context, it means Desktop-as-a-Service, which is entirely different (though conceptually related) to the other Device-as-a-Service. In both cases, companies are getting access to a Windows desktop for their employees, but through entirely different means. Needless to say, this naming issue is a serious challenge that can trip up IT professionals, vendors, and industry observers who often end up talking in circles before they recognize the confusion.

Despite the naming issues, however, the fact that Microsoft is now offering their own version of a managed Windows desktop via the cloud is actually a big step forward for the company and the whole concept of virtualized computing models. Many companies have large investments not only in lots of Microsoft software, but also service and support relationships, and this new offering will give companies who want to move for moving some of the tedium of desktop management, updating, etc., to a partner like Microsoft.

In the process of developing this solution, the company was careful not to cut out partners, such as Citrix, who have had desktop-as-a-service offerings for some time. In fact, Citrix just announced a new partnership with Microsoft that extends from being a Microsoft certified Cloud Services Provider through a variety of channel and service offerings. As part of it, they will offer a new version of Citrix Workspace offering that builds on Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop offering. In addition, they will be developing a new DaaS solution that leverages Windows Virtual Desktop but also includes Citrix’ extended capabilities for multi-device support, app virtualization, app management, desktop management, and integration with other Citrix tools.

On the Office side of the desktop experience, Microsoft announced a number of important new initiatives that add more contextual intelligence and overall smarts to the applications. While it’s hard to imagine finding new capabilities that don’t already exist in the feature-laden MS Office suite, the all-inclusive search capabilities delivered via Microsoft Search, as well as the AI-driven Ideas functions look to be attractive new add-ons for most users. Integrating enterprise-wide search across Office 365 lets users get access not only to files, but even elements of files, such as charts and data, that can be incorporated into their own documents, which can be a huge help in many organizations. Ideas builds on the concepts found in the AI-powered Designer feature introduced in PowerPoint last year and helps make suggestions not just on elegant designs, but spelling, consistencies, and other details that just make using the applications feel smarter. I’ve been an active user of Designer, and I look forward to how the Ideas instantiation of the concept extends the capabilities even further.
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In addition, Microsoft has incorporated Ideas into Excel by adding what look to be some very clever new capabilities that can look for patterns and anomalies in data. For those of us who work with large sets of data, these capabilities can be both incredibly powerful and tremendous time savers.

Altogether, the combination of new ways to deliver Windows and Office experiences in easier (and smarter) ways adds up to a surprisingly useful set of additions to what many often perceive as a very slow-moving market. They also highlight how the combination of the cloud and AI are extending their influence well beyond more esoteric applications of the technology into our day-to-day computing experiences. From my perspective, that’s definitely an important step forward for us all.

Here’s a link to the original column:

Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.

In case you haven’t been paying attention recently, one of the hottest topics in the tech industry is the concept of “the edge.” Virtually every major tech company has been talking about their strategic approach to this new method of computing recently, and the announcements are bound to keep coming.

Standalone PCs are an example of edge devices, but when most companies talk about the edge, they really mean things like drones, smart home gadgets, sensor-based industrial devices, autonomous cars, and so on. While these devices can—and often do— connect to the Internet, they can also compute independently, courtesy of built-in x86 processors or Arm-based microcontrollers, and embedded software.

At Microsoft’s Build developer conference in Seattle, the company had a particularly strong focus on what they term the “intelligent edge” and touted it as one of the next major revolutions in computing. The “intelligent” moniker stems from the use of AI, machine learning and other advanced computing concepts in these edge devices, bringing a whole new level of capability—and attention—to them.

As appealing as the concept of intelligent edge computing may be, however, there have been some real challenges in enabling the potential of these new devices. The biggest issue is around creating software to run on the often novel architectures used inside of them. To that end, Microsoft has been making a great deal of effort both on the platform side, as well as the application development side.

Because there are a wide range of different devices with various levels of sophistication and diverse amounts of hardware, Microsoft now has several platform choices, including Windows 10 IoT Core, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, and Azure IoT Edge Runtime, which the company is now open-sourcing. The Azure Runtime offering, in particular, is ideally suited for the enormous array of smart products appearing everywhere from our homes to hospitals to factories, farms and more.

Technically, the Runtime is collection of programs that runs on top of the various types of Linux, Windows or other embedded operating systems found in these smart devices, hence the name. What it does is create a common platform for which applications can be created. Without the consistent capabilities enabled by the Azure IoT Edge Runtime, developers would have to create new or different versions of their applications for each potential hardware/software combination—an impossible task.

In addition to this common base, Microsoft’s Azure IoT Edge Runtime leverages the same cloud-based computing platform offered by “regular” Azure that the company uses in its cloud computing offerings. This is very important for developers because it means they can use the same development tools and methodologies that they use for cloud-based programming models, including containers, to create software for these intelligent edge devices. This, in turn, makes it much easier for companies to build edge applications without needing people with entirely new types of programming skills.

Microsoft used their Azure platform approach to build and release a set of AI-based computer vision processing tools called Custom Vision that can leverage cameras and Qualcomm-based image processing silicon on edge devices. Part of what Microsoft calls Azure Cognitive Services, Custom Vision essentially brings “eyes” to the edge, letting companies build applications that react to visual information that these smart edge devices see—without needing a connection to the cloud.

A great example of this showed off Microsoft’s new partnership with DJI, the world’s largest drone maker. Using a DJI drone running Custom Vision on Azure Edge IoT Runtime, the two companies showed how you could create an app that would be capable of seeing and visually annotating (in real time) anomalies or other faults on a pipe that was being inspected by a drone. Microsoft is also working with DJI to build a Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 10 devices that allows for the creation of flight control and real-time vision or sensor-based applications for DJI drones.

With Qualcomm, Microsoft announced a vision AI developer kit that uses Azure Machine Learning services to create vision-aware applications for edge devices that can be accelerated by Qualcomm silicon and the Qualcomm Vision Intelligence Platform and Qualcomm AI Engine software tools that they have created. In practical terms, this means that developers could create applications such as smart home visual doorbells or security cameras equipped with certain Qualcomm chips to recognize specific objects, or individuals, and react appropriately—such as providing security notifications only if a person isn’t “known” to the household, and so on.

What’s particularly intriguing about this example, is that it’s one of the first of what will likely be many AI edge applications that can take advantage of the unique characteristics of certain types of silicon. Look for many more accelerated AI edge applications to come.

The potential opportunities with intelligent edge computing are already enormous, and that’s why there is now tremendous excitement within the tech industry about how these technologies can be applied. There’s still several hurdles ahead and a fair amount of work involved, but real progress is being made. As Microsoft demonstrated, we’re starting to see some critical strategic steps towards simplification on what can be a very complex topic. As a result, it shouldn’t be long before a much broader range of developers can start leveraging capabilities such as vision on the edge. When they do, the kinds of applications and services we can enjoy are going to be amazing.

Sometimes, context and comparison can really make a difference. At the company’s combined Envision and Ignite events in Orlando this week for both business and IT professionals, Microsoft showed off its ability to reach the extremes of computing. It talked about both new low-end (sub-$300) Windows 10 S-based notebooks, as well as entirely new types of computing with a circuit board, prototype device, and programming language built for a functioning quantum computer.

On a practical level, the new Windows 10 S devices coming soon from HP, Lenovo, and Acer are probably a much better iteration of what 10 S-based computers should look like. Recall that Windows 10 S is a “simplified” or cleaned-up version of Windows 10 that can only run modern Windows 10 applications available from the Microsoft store, and was (until now) primarily targeted towards the education market. Specifically, the apps must comply with all the “rules” that Microsoft has defined for the most optimized performance and long-term stability on Windows.

In theory, 10 S is a great idea that can rid the world of problematic applications, allow PCs to run faster and more consistently and, best of all, avoid the inevitable Windows “rot” that slows your computer down as you use it over a period of time. In reality, however, there are a lot of applications that don’t conform to all of Microsoft’s rules—especially in business environments, where custom applications are extremely common.

Not surprisingly, as a result, 10 S has seen relatively little adoption in the enterprise, even though Microsoft initially tried to drive a higher-end view of 10 S by installing it on the pricey Surface Laptop. With this week’s announcement, however, Microsoft is targeting Windows 10 S at what it calls firstline workers—everyone from receptionists, to sales clerks, and 2 billion others who are often the people that first interact with a business’ customers on the front lines. The argument is that many of these workers have more simplistic computing needs, so a less expensive, less powerful, and less flexible device will still be more than sufficient.

While it’s easy to pick apart some elements of Microsoft’s position, frankly, this is the same group of workers that companies who build and sell thin clients have successfully focused on for years. At least with these new Windows 10 S notebooks they get a mobile computer and local storage—two key detractors against thin clients. Plus, it comes at a price point that is actually cheaper than some desktop-only thin clients. Finally, and most importantly, one of the real distinguishing parts of this new offering is a low-cost version of Microsoft 365, which combines Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity applications, along with security and manageability services. Taken together, it’s a pretty compelling package that I think will finally bring some life and opportunity to Windows 10 S in business.

At the other extreme, Microsoft’s announcements on quantum computing were absolutely revolutionary. The company has chosen to follow the path of topological quantum computing—apparently, one of several options being researched around the world—and discussed an array of extremely complex math, physics, and computer science challenges coming together via a 12-year effort.

Using a vocabulary that practically sounded like a foreign language—qubits, Majorana fermions, decoherence, etc.—the company described its efforts to turn mathematical theory into practical reality via a chip that can perform quantum calculations, a steampunk-looking computing device that operates at near absolute zero (the extreme cold is currently necessary to manipulate qubits), and even a programming language built into Microsoft’s Visual Basic programming environment that can create algorithms designed for quantum computing applications.

All told, it was an extremely impressive, though still confusing, discussion of where the next several decades of computing will likely be focused. To make it a bit more practical, the company even announced the ability to create quantum computing algorithms that, for now at least, can be simulated on the Azure cloud computing platform.

While Microsoft never made any comparisons between the low-cost Windows 10 S notebooks and quantum computing announcements, as an event attendee, you couldn’t help but notice how stark the difference was between them. Some might argue that the range was a bit too wide, but it reflects the breadth of Satya Nadella’s vision for Microsoft, and how the company has extended its idea of computing across an enormously broad spectrum of possibilities.