October 26, 2021

Deepen and engage customers with AI

Microsoft Analytics and AI accelerates digital transformation that deepens engagement, predicts outcomes, and automates operations. Subscribe now!

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Common myths (and facts) about open source

For some companies, the idea of adopting open-source software doesn't seem viable. There are many myths about open source, but the truth is that it can facilitate security, be easy to maintain and integrate, and scale to whatever heights you require. Sign up to stay connected on using Microsoft Azure DevOps with GitHub and Visual Studio, and we can help you unravel the myths and facts about open source.

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Why You Need an Open Source Software Strategy

Collaboration helps drive innovation, which is why open-source software is the future of digital technology. In 2020, there were more than 1.9 billion global open-source contributions. When facing a new technological challenge, open source can be the key to unlocking new opportunities—but it's critical to have a

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Adapt business processes to changing technologies and demand

Modernize, automate, and adapt with Microsoft tools. Discover how to update technologies to solve changes, cut costs, and save time—transforming your organization. Microsoft solutions and business applications make the process seamless. For all the latest insights into agile business processes, plus news and tips, subscribe now.

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Shipping company navigates to the cloud, boosts security, cuts operating costs by 50%

Qatari shipping and maritime company Nakilat has one of the world's largest fleets of liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, transporting LNG from Qatar to global markets. To increase its competitive advantage, Nakilat wanted to improve employee productivity and mobility, without compromising on data security. It uses Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Cloud App Security to deliver highly secure cloud-first workplaces—shipboard and in the office. Nakilat also adopted the Microsoft Azure platform to optimize its operations and improve business continuity, reducing operating costs by 50 percent. See more in this video.

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October 25, 2021

What is digital transformation? A necessary disruption

Digital transformation, accelerated during the pandemic, is redefining the way companies use technology, people, and processes to apply new business models and discover new revenue streams—while striving to meet constant changes in customer expectations surrounding products and services. The digital transformation consists of five basic steps, starting with the alignment of objectives with business goals. Emerging technology and revamped processes are important for digital transformation—but nothing is more important than having staff with the right sets of skills. From software engineers to data scientists and UX designers, each plays a key role in the success of digital transformation within a company. Review the five steps for digital transformation, find real-world examples, and see which pitfalls you'll need to avoid.

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Allstate transforms the customer experience with Azure AI

This video showcases how Allstate is transforming customer support with artificial intelligence. With Azure Cognitive Services, Allstate is capturing insights from customer calls to enable a more seamless customer experience.

Microsoft Threat Protection stops attack sprawl and auto-heals enterprise assets with built-in intelligence and automation

Attackers will cross multiple domains like email, identity, endpoints, and applications to find the point of least resistance. Today's defense solutions have been designed to protect, detect, and block threats for each domain separately, allowing attackers to exploit the seams and threshold differences between solutions—leaving the business vulnerable to attack. Microsoft Threat Protection stops attack sprawl and auto-heals enterprise assets with built in intelligence and automation. Read on to learn more.

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Risk management best practices

Part of the natural landscape of every business is risk—some level of uncertainty that comes from not knowing how events will unfold as you and your team innovate. However, understanding risk management best practices can help anticipate potential issues and develop a plan. From securing cloud-based options to identifying cyber threats and other financial crimes, risk management is crucial in building business agility. Review our latest infographic to learn what you can do to minimize risks and reduce your exposure across key aspects of your business.

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Modernize sales productivity

Discover how to streamline your sales processes and get seamless Microsoft Office 365 integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales Professional. Focus on what's most important with complete customer interaction history, guidance toward optimal outcomes, and rich interactive dashboards. Streamline seller workflows with sales capabilities embedded in Office 365, mobile apps, and built-in collaboration. With Dynamics 365 for Sales Professional, modernizing seller productivity is the simpler way to build sales momentum and boost productivity.

October 20, 2021

Overcoming misconceptions about open source

Driving adoption of open-source DevOps becomes easier after addressing four common myths. Myths like open source isn't secure, or open source isn't enterprise-grade. For debunking these and more, this infographic has the answers.

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Greater Security

Greater security at lower cost with the expertise and power of Microsoft security solutions. Learn more about simplifying and fortifying with Microsoft security.

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October 19, 2021

Supply chain maturity

Read the data: the top digital technologies being invested in over the next 3 years include Analytics and Cloud. It took 30 years for the industry to get from Reactive Identification to Management by Exceptions. Since technology refresh cycles are becoming rapidly compressed, Frost and Sullivan estimates that continued investment in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will spur the industry to reach level 6—analytics driving self-loop optimization—within the next 7 years. Check out the infographic for details.

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9 pro tips to get started with low code

Developing apps is often seen as complex, costly, and time-consuming. However, using an innovative approach known as low-code development, anyone can create powerful business apps without requiring traditional coding skills. The low-code approach is simple enough for beginners to build high-value apps—and sophisticated enough to meet the needs of professional developers tackling complex challenges. In both scenarios, it dramatically reduces the amount of work involved in getting an app up and running. Read here for more:

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Essential Key Performance Indicators for Small and Mid-Size Business

Industries, customers, and markets change. Even where and how we work is changing rapidly. As are, no doubt, your business strategies, goals, objectives, services, and products. The ability to quickly diversify, scale, and change your business models is a competitive advantage in any market. Understanding your customers' opinions, attitudes, and emotional connections to your brand is called brand sentiment. This leading indicator can help inform how you're doing in terms of your customer experience, product quality, price competitiveness, and loyalty. Sign up to stay in touch and download the e-book "Essential Key Performance Indicators for Small and Mid-Size Business." See how easily and accurately you can measure business outcomes from brand sentiment, and let us know when you're ready to make a change.

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Alaska Airlines makes shopping easier

A great online shopping experience begins with great software. Alaska Airlines is using microservices, Microsoft Azure, and Windows Server Containers with Docker to launch new e-commerce features faster—in minutes versus days. Travelers get new offers sooner, which translates to happier customers and higher revenues. By running its e-commerce engine in Azure in hybrid fashion, Alaska can also scale more easily and cost-effectively, ensuring its sites run at the optimum point of performance and cost.

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Kennametal embraces Microsoft cloud strategy to drive business innovation

Kennametal has invested heavily in Microsoft cloud technologies as part of its digital transformation journey to reduce costs, increase productivity, and empower workers to deliver superior results for their customers. In this video, see how they utilize Microsoft Azure cloud platform and services to Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications to Microsoft 365 productivity, security, and mobility tools. Kennametal believes that Microsoft resources will help the company fulfill its business promises.

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October 18, 2021

Bertrandt's HARRI is a self-driving success, thanks to Microsoft Azure

What drives a self-driving car? A tremendous flood of data. To make Bertrandt's Level 4 self-driving car project HARRI a reality, far too much data was needed than could be stored onboard the vehicle itself. It required Microsoft Azure Services to provide access to volumes of mapping data for an autonomous vehicle. Azure DevOps facilitated the efficient coordination of work between developers and ops —and the QA needed to develop such exacting software.

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Security Solution Play Sales Guidance

Digital security has become infinitely complex, as data grows increasingly more valuable every day and is harder to protect. This value prop deck outlines how Microsoft security solutions provides comprehensive protections against attacks for your customers, and how it keeps their information safe with a layered approach to secure corporate and customer data.

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Office 365 and Dynamics Relationship Analytics for Sales

See a demonstration of how Microsoft's Office 365, Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn are better together and give sales teams a unique advantage that drives more revenue. The video showcases how Microsoft business applications give sales teams an advantage to close sales, specifically for Office 365, Dynamics 365 App for Outlook, Dynamics 365, Power BI, Relationship Analytics, Relationship Health, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Who Knows Whom.

Automate code-to-cloud workflows with a seamlessly integrated DevOps platform

With the ability to commit changes and quickly deploy them to the cloud using tools such as GitHub Actions and Microsoft Azure Pipelines for CI/CD, developer teams gain agility in deploying and maintaining their apps. Cloud adoption has transformed the way teams are building, deploying, and operating applications. Together with the use of DevOps ideals and tools, they now have a greater opportunity to improve their practices and better serve their customers. Sign up to say connected—we can help you learn more about how to use Azure DevOps with GitHub and Visual Studio to build your next great solution

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Kenyan company improves food quality from farm to fork with Microsoft cloud solutions

Farmer's Choice has been delivering quality meat products to Kenyan tables for the last 40 years. The customer-oriented company uses advanced technologies with the existing agriculture ecosystem to enhance productivity, ensure food safety and quality, and reduce waste. Its commitment to sustainable farming practices began with the adoption of collaborative Microsoft 365 solutions. Next, the organization extended its cloud portfolio to include Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is now stepping up its services with Microsoft Power Apps.

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October 13, 2021

Don't miss another post! Subscribe now!

Stay in the loop on all things DevOps. For tips, tricks, and news on Microsoft DevOps with GitHub, Design Visual Studio, Azure, and more—subscribe now!

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Connect your business to drive productivity and profits

Many businesses fall into common traps: • siloed data • poor pricing decisions • unsecured data • inability to pivot or keep up with faster-moving competitors With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can connect operations across your business and supercharge your growth. Legacy systems can't always manage the complexity of a growing business. Incomplete data and tedious reporting can create blind spots that lead to faulty decision-making. With Dynamics 365, you can create a single source of truth by seamlessly sharing data across every line of business, helping your employees work faster and smarter. See some of the reasons 92% of ERP adopters report success, and some of the risks for lagging behind, in this detailed infographic.

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October 12, 2021

Why your business should be based on the recurring revenue model

It's possible to build a successful business on one-off sales, but it's difficult and not always sustainable. If you're thinking about starting your own business or taking the one you currently have to a new level, then you really need to consider the recurring revenue model. Whether you're in the business of software, content creation, physical products, or productized services, the recurring revenue model is based on predictable revenues occurring at regular intervals—and that might just be the secret to success.

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Reduce time and costs by optimizing everyday tasks with intelligent automation

Optimize with intelligent automation. To learn more about agile business processes to enhance your operations, subscribe now.

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RapidDeploy helps first responders defend public safety with Azure Sentinel

RapidDeploy creates its Cloud Aided Dispatch systems to help first responders act quickly to protect the public. There's a lot at stake, and the company's cloud-native platform must be secure against an array of serious cybersecurity threats. So, when RapidDeploy implemented a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system, it chose Microsoft Azure Sentinel, one of the world's first cloud-native SIEMs. See the full story in the video below.

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Microsoft Aims To Simplify Cloud Native Development With The Dapr Project

Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr) enables developers to build portable microservices applications, whether writing new code or migrating existing code. It's an open-source project that simplifies building cloud-native applications using all programming languages and developer frameworks. Dapr is based on containers, integrates well with Kubernetes, and does the plumbing and heavy lifting involved in developing a modern, highly distributed-application— so developers can focus on what they really want to: business logic and migrating legacy code. They can lean on Dapr to provide their applications with the required scale, resiliency, and elasticity of cloud-native architectures.

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H&R Block delivers with Azure DevOps and Microsoft

With recent changes in the tax industry, H&R Block made plans to stay ahead, providing seamless multichannel experiences and unifying its disparate data sources to better serve its customers. By moving its various workloads to Microsoft SQL Server 2017 and Microsoft Azure and using Azure data services, the tax provider has been able to enhance service delivery, scale to meet its peaks in demand, and accelerate innovation. Watch this video for the story.

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October 11, 2021

Securing the hybrid cloud with Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel

Infrastructure security is top-of-mind for organizations managing workloads on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid. Azure Security Center provides unified security management by identifying and fixing misconfigurations and providing visibility into threats to quickly remediate them. Azure Sentinel collects data from Azure Security Center. Learn more about this integrated and efficient solution in this article.

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GitHub Actions for Azure

With GitHub you can deliver software faster and more securely by combining the practices and tools that support the largest developer community in the world with seamlessly integrated Microsoft Azure products and services. From automating code-to-cloud workflows to accelerating developer velocity, GitHub and Azure combine the best tools to create your next great solution. Sign up to stay connected—we'll help you learn more about using Azure DevOps with GitHub and Visual Studio from Microsoft.

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Learn with Visual Studio Remote Office Hours

Remote Office Hours is a new live broadcast directly from the Microsoft Visual Studio team. It's about everything Visual Studio, with rare insights into the inner workings of features, processes, and the people that make it all happen. The style is conversational, light, and casual—a show by developers for developers. Read on to learn more here:

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Microsoft Sentinel

Azure Sentinel is intelligent security analytics for your entire enterprise. Collect data, detect threats, investigate incidents, and rapidly respond with Sentinel.

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Tivoli Gardens delights guests with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Tivoli Gardens, the second oldest amusement park in the world and the most beloved in Europe, continues its long tradition of imagination and innovation with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. With more than 4.5 million guests each year, Tivoli Gardens prioritizes and continually looks for ways to improve the customer experience. In this video see how Microsoft tools help them achieve this goal.

October 6, 2021

Deliver software faster and more securely with the world's leading developer platform

Microsoft Visual Studio, coupled with GitHub and Azure DevOps, helps you achieve your goals with the freedom and flexibility to build, manage, and deploy your applications anywhere—with speed and security. Use your preferred languages, frameworks, and infrastructure, even your own datacenter and other clouds, to solve challenges large and small. Sign up to say connected—we'll help you learn more about Azure DevOps with GitHub and Visual Studio from Microsoft to build your next great solution.

October 5, 2021

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Simplify and fortify with Microsoft Security solutions, wherever you work. For more insights, news, and features, subscribe to our channels now.

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Power Platform

This infographic shows how to build custom Teams solutions with low code tools that can save money, install efficiency, and engineer innovation. Develop apps, automate workflows, and dashboards with Power Platform and use them in Microsoft Teams for businesses big and small.

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Adapt faster—gain flexibility to create adjustable financial and operating models

The world today moves fast, and you need the flexibility to adapt quickly to disruption, the competition, and daily challenges. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central connects teams across finance, sales, service, and operations so you can monitor insights and pivot when needed. Sign up to stay connected. We can help you get the most from your ERP.

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Cincinnati Children's makes tough times easier

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is well known for excellent care and its commitment to the well-being of the families it serves. To reduce strain for parents and make their lives easier, the hospital created the Caren mobile app using Microsoft Azure and Azure services. Parents turn to Caren for help navigating the hospital, getting answers to their questions, and entertaining their children. Using the app lets parents focus more on their families and less on stressful details.

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St. Luke's University Health Network secures digital health transformation with Microsoft 365

St. Luke's University Health Network (SLUHN) looks to the cloud to define a new way of providing health services of its ten hospitals and 300 sites across ten counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. This video outlines how the health network embarked on a digital health transformation journey using the Microsoft 365 productivity cloud to empower more than 15,000 employees. The intuitive tools protect sensitive information in cloud applications, simplifying security with interoperable solutions to save time while enhancing the hospital network's security posture. In turn, this optimizes health team collaboration and improves patient experience.

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October 4, 2021

How Microsoft helped HB Concepts automate and streamline its operations

HB Concepts is a female-led distribution company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that has sole distribution rights of LPG endermologie, the global brand fighting for natural beauty. The company supplies more than 200 clients with a full range of equipment, offering popular European treatments and cosmetics for spas, hospitals, hotels, and wellness centers. To manage inventory and deliver quality customer service, the company implemented an ERP solution using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

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Navigate data protection and risk in the cloud era

Microsoft invests in compliance and risk management to help your customers more easily protect and govern their data, address regulations and standards, and mitigate insider risks. The how-to guidance article announces new capabilities in Microsoft 365 that use machine learning and intelligence to help your customers address compliance and risk management in their organizations.

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The DevOps Imperative: Keep Up or Get Lost

When the software industry is moving faster than ever, security testing must keep up. The only way to sustain a high release cadence is to progress through the software development life cycle (SDLC) the right way the first time.

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Omnichannel Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Omnichannel for Customer Service provides a modern, customizable, high-productivity app that lets agents help customers across different channels via a unified interface. It lets organizations choose the channel that suits their business needs. In this video, get clarity around the current functionality available in one of our newest offerings, Omnichannel for Customer Service.

thyssenkrupp Steel Europe forges a modern way of working with Microsoft 365

GitHub can be a great resource for quickly building a templated solution. Case in point: thyssenkrupp Steel Europe developed their Company Communicator app for Microsoft Teams using an open-source Teams app template from GitHub. Now executives can share company information and other news with employees and even host virtual town hall events—which proved invaluable in keeping hundreds of workers connected during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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