Technology Reseller - v13 2018

01732 759725 SOFTWARE 38 More than just Surface appeal One year after the launch of Microsoft 365, James Goulding met up with Angela Evans, head of the Microsoft 365 business group in the UK, and Alex Roth, CIO of Land Securities, to discuss how the platform can help organisations create a more creative, innovative workplace 1 The diversity of teams – “There are now five generations working together in teams, and each comes with a different attitude towards technology and different preferences around collaboration, so how do you help them come together and perform as a team?”: 2 The location of teams – “Teams don’t always sit next to each other; they might not be in the same town or even in the same time-zone and that, too, brings challenges in how you make connections”; and 3 Flatter organisations – “Because of the need for faster decision-making, structures are getting much flatter and, with that, come more teams.” Evans added: “Not only do you have to work with a different set of people located in a number of places, you’ve also got to work with more teams than you did before. Today, people work with twice as many teams as they did five years ago. How do you break down the boundaries in teamwork and do it in such a way that you engage employees too?” The answer, suggests Evans, is to migrate to Microsoft 365, which Microsoft introduced 12 months ago. “In July 2017, we launched Microsoft 365, which is our intelligent integrated solution to empower employees to be creative in the business. With that, we have taken the productivity and collaboration tools of Office 365, the security and device management of Windows 10, the mobility aspects of our enterprise mobility According to The Modern Workplace , a new report by Ingram Micro and Microsoft, more than one third (38%) of workers in small and medium-sized businesses think their employer isn’t investing enough in technology that could make their business more efficient. As a result, employees are taking things into their own hands and inadvertently putting network and data security at risk; 85% of under 35s admit to using cloud and workplace collaboration tools that aren’t supported by the IT department, including file shares, file hosting, video-conferencing, IM and ‘to do’ boards. It is not just in their choice of technology that businesses are failing to meet the expectations of employees. Ingram Micro’s report shows that employers are not keeping up with demand for flexible working practices either, with 76% of SME workers expressing a desire for flexible working hours and 52% wanting the option to work from home. None of this will come as much of a surprise to Angela Evans, who, as head of the Microsoft 365 business group in the UK, thinks deeply about the modern workplace and how Microsoft software, cloud solutions and Surface devices can help organisations work more effectively, collaboratively and creatively. She told Technology Reseller that there are three main trends that are shaping collaboration in the modern workplace: and security solutions and put them all together on one platform that enables people to work together,” she said. “We think Microsoft 365 serves four key areas: creativity – how we remove some of the mundane tasks from people and allow them to get their employees to work creatively for the business. When I think of creativity, it’s not just drawing great stuff and artistry; it’s about innovation – How do you innovate quickly?; How do you stay ahead of the competition?; How do you turn the bright ideas that come from your employees into business reality that benefits your customers?. “We do that in a number of ways, in our devices and with artificial intelligence. The Microsoft 365 platform has AI and machine learning that all the time is learning the things that you do and the things that the people you work with do. It surfaces up recommendations on files you may need to look at; it helps you distinguish focused emails you need to review in your Outlook from ones that can wait; and, on the creative side, it offers suggestions to turn an OK PowerPoint presentation into an amazing one. Put in some simple pictures, some bullet points, press a button and it comes back with some creative ideas to produce an engaging presentation. The other aspect of creativity is inking in the Surface device for those who prefer to write with a pen. “And we do all of that in a mobile world. It doesn’t matter which device you Alex Roth Continued...