Getting Excited About FY23
Innovation never fits nicely or simply into a fiscal year structure – innovation is a continual process of courageous experimentation supported by a combination of opportunity, ideas and technology driven by people willing to think differently. The more we experiment, the more we create a foundation and culture of change that can help accelerate economies, create inclusive communities, and ultimately change lives.
At Microsoft, we recognize that enabling innovation is not something we do alone. Innovation only comes from working with and facilitating the success of our partners, and with that the awesome responsibility to build platforms that let partner ideas shine.
During the year, the technical team and I are constantly looking at the waves of technology coming to market, and how we apply these to delivering new capabilities or enhanced value through our partner community to customers.
I asked the team what some of the highlights are that they see coming in FY23 in their respective solution areas, and what should our partners be looking forward to.
Application Innovation (Vito Chin, App Dev Cloud Solutions Architect)
There has never been a greater time for Digital & Application innovation than now. APAC as a market never looked better: Unicorns rising! Digital Banks! Beloved partners let us show the world how APAC can create the most inclusive, best-in-class applications.
Here’s the new technologies that help us do that. For App Modernization, accelerate projects with GitHub Copilot, your Artificial Intelligence (AI) pair programmer! For the Java bunch, check out Azure Spring Apps: quality production environments had never been easier. For Azure Kubernetes Service fans, this is the year to get into gear with GitOps and MLOps.
Did I mention GitHub Enterprise Importer? Yes, DevOps partners! We heard you! Let’s achieve Infra, Data and Security excellence by shifting left and defining Everything-As-Code! GitHub Actions and Advanced Security can then help transform your code to the best-in-class and inclusive cloud we all want. Look forward to experiencing what we all make together with our customers.
Business Applications (Nikhil Biyani, Business Applications Cloud Solutions Architect)
Data-driven, AI-driven, and collaboration-centric solutions are defining the new era of business applications. As a strong foundation for success, Dynamics 365 and Power platform are well positioned to enable partners to redefine the business applications experience.
As part of our FY23 Business Applications execution strategy, we will pivot from a product-oriented approach to an audience-oriented approach.
In collaboration with our partners, we will offer our customers solutions that are tailored to their specific needs. In our solution offerings, we have divided them into five categories: Sales, Service, Operations, Finance, and Low Code, and these categories reflect where we want to go and who we intend to reach.
Dynamics Migration Program (DMP) is another crucial focus area, as many legacy Dynamics solutions will be retired in 2022. We have an exciting opportunity in APAC to move thousands of on-premises accounts to the cloud. Working with our partners, we will accelerate migrations and drive adoption of cloud services.
Converged Communications (Hwee Kian Neo, Converged Communications Cloud Solutions Architect)
Converged Communications, in Microsoft’s context, consists of Microsoft Teams Phone and Microsoft Teams Rooms. Microsoft Converged Communication aims to create a well-integrated communications and collaboration environment from rooms to phone to meetings with the aim to improve the flow of work.
Teams Phone, a telephony solution on Cloud platform, while not exactly new, evolves calling experiences and is essential in making “Hybrid Work” successful end-to-end. From Microsoft Calling Plans, Direct Routing to Operator Connect, Teams Phone is ever delivering higher-quality calling experiences to customers.
Teams Rooms, a solution with Surface and partnership with Certified Microsoft Device Partners, aims to empower our customers to create the latest modern meeting experiences throughout all their workspaces and extending the best value of Teams Meetings for both remote and in-person attendees. With more countries easing the Covid-19 restrictions and offices opening, Teams Rooms presents tremendous opportunities. Companies and enterprises are assessing how workspaces are being used and re-designing offices to meet the needs of hybrid work. And, the list of Certified Microsoft Device Partners is ever-expanding, from Poly, Yealink, Logitech to Neat, EPOS and AudioCodes.
Data & AI (Poonam Brijesh Sampat, Data & AI Cloud Solutions Architect)
By the end of 2025, the world will potentially generate 181 zettabytes of data, an increase of 129% over 2021’s 79 zettabytes1. Spending on AI systems will rise from $17.6B in 2022 to around $32B in 20252. Much of the spending will come from the banking industry, which is investing in AI systems to mitigate risks and detect fraud. This is followed by state and local governments, which are increasingly deploying AI in public safety and emergency response applications.
For Microsoft and its partners, it is an opportunity to develop an industry lens to provide analytic solutions to solve business problems. Another prevalent trend is data modernization, legacy applications are being modernized, databases be it SQL or NoSQL are being redesigned to harness the potential of cloud.
FY23 is key to data modernization which leads to consolidation of data and building analytics solutions to better business outcomes for our customers!
1 Total volume of data: https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/
2 AI Spending in APAC markets: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252515671/APAC-organisations-to-spend-more-on-AI#
Infrastructure (JeongAe Lee, Infrastructure Cloud Solutions Architect)
Cloud Computing continues to thrive today and into the future, with worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services forecasted to grow 20.4% in 2022, $494.7B from $410.9B in 20213. Infrastructure-as-a-Service spending experienced highest growth in 2022 at 30.6% ($119.7B) and followed by Desktop-as-a-Service at 26.6% ($2.6B).
Various surveys also showed organizations will continue to accelerate cloud adoption and many don’t believe they are effective in optimizing their cloud computing infrastructure. Organizations are addressing this through development of Cloud Centers of Excellence (CCoE), FinOps, and tools and partners to drive rapid cloud adoption, and increase values and return of investment.
Organizations are also making it clear that cloud cost, security, automation, and resource optimization remain key concerns. Well-architected framework and cloud adoption framework, and migration remain keys for many organizations success in FY23.
3 Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Reach Nearly $500 Billion in 2022
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220512005238/en/
ISVs (Nhi Tran, ISV Cloud Solutions Architect)
FY23 is the year of recovering. Are your solutions ready to serve increasing demand? How do you improve your team productivity and agility to innovate faster, safer, securer and stay relevant to your business and take the trend? How do you think about increasing the discovery capability of your solutions so that it can be reached globally and simplify the procurement for your customer?
Here in Microsoft, I am excited to share that we have all the tools and technology that help you achieve these goals and grow with us. Well-architected framework and application modernization will optimize your solution ready for faster innovation and take advantage of new services capability of Azure. Devops and DevSecOps practices with GitHub or Azure DevOps will improve developer velocity and productivity without scarifying security.
SaaSification and being able to transact on the marketplace will give you the ability to reach the world. Azure Marketplace transactable offers will be the key to sell your solution globally. Come build and sell with us as an end-to-end journey.
Security (Kiran Kumar NR, Security Cloud Solutions Architect)
FY23 will be the year of cybersecurity, and we’re excited about our investments and rebranded solutions. We have several high-rated security solutions that customers and partners appreciate.
For XDR (Extended Detection and Response) and SIEM (Security Incidents Events Management) we have built Microsoft Defender and Sentinel. They provide threat protection for identity, email, data, apps, and more, as well as cloud security to safeguard cloud workloads regardless of platform or cloud provider.
Microsoft Entra is the new product family name for Microsoft’s identity and access management technologies. Our expansion strategy for identity and access extends beyond traditional identity management to provide our clients with a comprehensive set of solutions for securing access for everyone to everything in multi-cloud, multi-platform environments.
Our Microsoft Purview solutions help customers govern, protect, and manage data across both Microsoft and non-Microsoft assets.
Finally, regulations and customer expectations have made privacy management a priority for our customers. Microsoft Priva is a new feature we announced in November 2021 to help manage privacy and develop a privacy-resilient workspace. There is a lot to look forward to in the cybersecurity space in FY23.
