Microsoft Ignite is going on tour! The London event will happen at ExCeL from February 26-27 2019. There will be over 100 deep dive sessions and workshops happening, with the opportunity for one-on-ones with the Microsoft engineers who build the tools you use every day.
For more details and to register your place for free, visit the Ignite Tour website here.
Spiceworks, an online community where users can collaborate and seek advice from one another, has published its annual State of IT report for 2019. This year it is broken down into four sections: Budgets, Future Workplace Tech, IT Careers and IT Marketing.
So far the first two sections have been published, both with interesting findings after surveying over 700 business technology buyers in North America and Europe.
From the Budgets State of IT report, one of the key findings is that 89% of companies expect IT budgets to either grow or stay the same over the next year, with the need to upgrade outdated IT infrastructure being “the biggest driver of IT budget increases in 2019.”
Highlights from the Future Workplace Tech State of IT report include that adoption rates for emerging technologies such as AI, serverless and edge computing are up to 10 times higher in large enterprises than in small businesses. “Large enterprises typically have more advanced use cases and needs influencing their adoption of emerging technologies, such as the need to connect multiple sites and manage complex infrastructures,” says the report. Those in the Financial Services sector are the earliest adopters of such emerging technology, with government organisations having the lowest adoption rates.
We recommend taking a look at both reports which are available on the Spiceworks website here.
“Microsoft’s research shows that organisations already on the AI journey are outperforming other organisations by 5% on factors like productivity, performance, and business outcomes,” says a report released today. This report has taken 3 months to research and was compiled after extensive interviews with industry experts and a survey conducted with over 1,000 business leaders and 4,000 employees.
Details available via Cindy Rose’s (Microsoft UK CEO) tweet below.
Our just released report Maximising the AI Opportunity offers relevant and timely insights into the opportunity and responsibility around AI in the UK. #FutureDecoded #MicrosoftUK https://t.co/tEPYvVHQIv
— Cindy Rose (@CindyRose) October 31, 2018
Source: Twitter/@CindyRose
With over 25 performance, scalability and diagnostics improvements, the SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 3 (SP3) is now available. “These improvements enable SQL Server 2014 to perform faster and scale out of the box on modern hardware design. It also showcases the SQL Product Team’s commitment to provide continued value into in-market releases,” says the Microsoft SQL Server Engineering Team.
For the detailed list of improvements introduced in SQL 2014 SP3, see the announcement on the SQL Server blog here.
SharePoint Server 2019 is now Generally Available (GA).
In the announcement made on the Microsoft website, Bill Baer (Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft) said, “As we developed SharePoint Server 2019, we paid close attention to trends in team collaboration, user experiences across devices, and how the cloud can be blended into existing on-premises scenarios in new and compelling ways.”
He continued, “SharePoint Server 2019 represents a whole new generation of SharePoint, one born in the cloud, and representative of the ease of use we delivered in SharePoint Online. SharePoint Server 2019 was built on the same core platform as SharePoint Server 2016, providing the scale and performance you’ve come to expect in addition to new, modern experiences for users, that are both intuitive and familiar.”
There are plenty of resources available via Microsoft to help you get started with, or to learn more about the product (external links):
SharePoint Server 2019 is available now from the Microsoft Dowload Center and we welcome you to contact us if you would like help with upgrading your systems.
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