Microsoft wrapped up its second Ignite conference of the year with announcements of a plethora of new updates, products, and services at the big virtual event last week. Microsoft holds three different types of tech conferences/events every year: one focused on developers (Build), one for channel partners (Inspire), and another for end customers (Ignite). While there weren't a lot of consumer-centric announcements made at this event, the tech giant did pack in a bunch of major announcements on its cloud platform, tools, and services, along with the focus levied on collaboration, artificial intelligence, security, Metaverse, and more. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed Microsoft's take on the Metaverse, which is shaping up as one of the biggest buzzwords of 2022. "As the'digital and physical worlds come together, we are creating an entirely new platform layer, which is the'Metaverse,'" Nadella said.

Project Cortex uses AI to organise content, delivering topic cards, topic pages and knowledge centres in Office, Outlook and Teams. Microsoft's history with knowledge management goes back a long way, from pre-SharePoint tooling with Site Server, through its abortive Knowledge Network platform, to today's mix of Bing and the Microsoft Graph for Microsoft 365 subscribers. Now the company is trying again, adding machine learning to the mix to help organisations understand what they know, and more importantly, who knows it. This time there's a lot more training data, a deeper understanding of the knowledge graph that underpins most businesses, and above all, the hyperscale compute of the modern cloud. Microsoft's Project Cortex is an ambitious set of tools built around Microsoft 365, intended to automate the complex process of building and deploying knowledge management systems.

Microsoft made bold moves this year to position its voice assistant Cortana for enterprise customers, analyst Raul Castanon-Martinez said, and is uniquely poised to overtake competitors Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in the workplace. Castanon-Martinez's firm 451 Research estimates voice user interfaces and digital assistants are among the top technologies organizations will adopt in the next two years – and Microsoft is in the best position to gain their business, he said. "Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant dominate the market on the consumer side, but Microsoft has a leg up in the enterprise, given its dominant position with its productivity and collaboration product portfolios," Castanon-Martinez said. Competition in the workplace is the latest development in the relationship between Alexa and Cortana. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year said the company no longer sees Cortana as a competitor to Amazon's Alexa.

Microsoft intends to significantly simplify how people find organizational information through internal knowledge networks. It's via new technology set to appear next year, revealed as Project Cortex. If Project Cortex works as Microsoft envisions, it will streamline, or in many cases eliminate, the need for individuals to interrupt their work to search for internal information. Project Cortex, introduced at this month's Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, was a stealth effort in the works for more than two years. Project Cortex also promises to give Microsoft's vast partner ecosystem much to digest going into 2020, particularly as customers look to utilize it to enhance their collaboration and employee productivity efforts and Microsoft begins offering training and enablement for partners.

Microsoft's Ignite event traditionally attracts more from the developer ranks, but the technologies on display are increasingly of relevance to CIOs developing cloud strategies today. At Ignite 2019 in Orlando last week, Microsoft unveiled a new approach to analytics and data warehousing, Azure Synapse Analytics, and a new way to run Azure data services in anyone's cloud, Azure Arc. Get the latest cloud computing insights by signing up for our newsletter. With Azure Synapse Analytics Microsoft takes its Azure SQL Data Warehouse and turns up the volume to handle petabytes of data in its cloud. Some of the features -- such as dynamic data masking and column- and row-level security to provide granular access control -- are already generally available, while others -- notably integrations with Apache Spark, Power BI and Azure Machine Learning -- are still in preview.

For tech enthusiasts who are interested in solving fundamental science, puzzles are provided with a globally distributed platform – Microsoft Research. The programs undertaken for the organization often focus on disruptive technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence. With its mission to underpin AI smarts in all of its products, the company is also seeking ways to merge innovations by Microsoft Research in the rest of the company. In every certain way, the company is trying to become more and more innovative especially around its work concerning AI. Microsoft is also putting processes into place to attain such innovation. The company is usually open about its processes and this year at Ignite, its focus was on such innovations only.

For tech enthusiasts who are interested in solving fundamental science, puzzles are provided with a globally distributed platform – Microsoft Research. The programs undertaken for the organization often focus on disruptive technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence. With its mission to underpin AI smarts in all of its products, the company is also seeking ways to merge innovations by Microsoft Research in the rest of the company. In every certain way, the company is trying to become more and more innovative especially around its work concerning AI. Microsoft is also putting processes into place to attain such innovation. The company is usually open about its processes and this year at Ignite, its focus was on such innovations only.

Developing a master plan to transform John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Keeping beachgoers safe from polluted waters in New Zealand with advanced analytics. Those are just a few of the thousands of complex projects delivered each year by Mott MacDonald, a global engineering, management and development consulting firm headquartered in London. With 180 principal offices in 50 countries, the company helps solve some of the world's most urgent social, environmental and economic challenges. Because Mott MacDonald doesn't create physical products, its success relies on the knowledge and expertise of its 16,000 employees.

As the United Kingdom's largest automobile manufacturer and investor in research and development in the UK manufacturing sector, Jaguar Land Rover is the combination of two iconic British car brands--Jaguar that features luxury sports cars and sedans and Land Rover, maker of premium all-wheel-drive vehicles. These brands began in the middle of the 20th century and gained a reputation for innovation. The company plans to continue the tradition of innovation as they pave the way to the future through AI and machine learning investments and applications. The inaugural Jaguar Land Rover Tech Fest was held in 2017. Along with discussions on how to live in a more connected world, exhibits and electric vehicles that allow you to maintain the pleasure of driving even in an autonomous future, Jaguar Land Rover unveiled Sayer--the company's voice-activated intelligent steering wheel.