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Microsoft and ServiceNow at Knowledge 2024: Introducing generative AI innovation

We are in the midst of a major platform shift where AI has emerged as a transformative force that’s redefining productivity in the workplace. This evolution compels organizations to embrace new technologies that not only enhance efficiency but also foster innovation and champion responsible design. That’s why Microsoft is proud to partner with ServiceNow, a leader in digital workflows and generative AI, to create seamless and powerful experiences that empower every organization on the planet to achieve more.  

Are you ready to put AI to work?

Innovation Unleashed: ServiceNow and the Microsoft Cloud

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Collaboration and integration with ServiceNow at Knowledge 2024

I had the opportunity to celebrate the results of this partnership at Knowledge 2024, ServiceNow’s flagship event that brought together 20,000 global business leaders, IT professionals, partners, and developers. During this time, industry professionals from both Microsoft and ServiceNow discussed how we’re joining efforts to boost collaboration, increase efficiency, and streamline business processes by integrating generative AI solutions. It was an honor to also have Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella join the keynote, where he expressed gratitude for the progress we’ve made in this partnership and enthusiasm for future innovation.

Since 2019, as partners, Microsoft and ServiceNow have been jointly innovating to bring the best of the Microsoft Cloud and the ServiceNow platform to improve customer and employee experiences. We have delivered over 100 pre-built integrations that provide our mutual customers with the ability to confidently plan, scale, and manage cloud adoption and their digital transformation initiatives.

As an example of this commitment, we recently migrated our internal ServiceNow instances to Azure, introducing greater interoperability between our platforms. Our mutual customers can also procure ServiceNow on Azure through the Azure Marketplace, and streamline procurement against their existing Azure commitment. This strategic collaboration, which combines the power of ServiceNow’s business transformation capabilities with Azure’s cloud infrastructure, has ushered in a host of new and exciting solutions to accelerate cloud value, enhance employee experiences, and invent new AI use cases. It was a privilege to witness the unveiling of one of those solutions at Knowledge 2024—a new connection between the ServiceNow platform and Microsoft Copilot. With this integration, organizations can now access top-tier generative AI models within the natural flow of their work.

Why have one when you could have two powerful generative AI assistants?

Think about how helpful it would be if employees had access to round-the-clock support to fix problems and maximize productivity. This is the vision we’re realizing by combining ServiceNow and Microsoft AI assistants to enhance employee choice and flexibility. The resulting ServiceNow Now Assist and Microsoft Copilot integration allows generative AI experiences to coexist within the same ecosystem. The Now Platform is widely used for IT management, security operations, field service management, compliance, HR, and workflow automation. Now, both ServiceNow and Microsoft customers can benefit from intelligent support using natural language—inside the Now Platform or Microsoft 365.

This new integration lets users benefit from digital assistants on both platforms without leaving their workflows. For example, when a buyer initiates a purchase order for office supplies, Copilot generates the purchase order using simple prompts. It then hands it off to Now Assist to finalize within ServiceNow. The buyer can move quickly through the ordering process without switching platforms or programs. Whichever AI assistant knows the answer will respond, unlocking a newfound level of efficiency and eliminating context switching.

To explore other AI-based enhancements to the Now Platform, watch the demo below:  

Generative AI is a personal initiative that’s driving internal value

How are ServiceNow and Microsoft seeing value with generative AI? I had the opportunity to explore this question and more with Nalina Athyantha, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Field Marketing at ServiceNow. Responding to the recent announcement of the ServiceNow platform and Microsoft Copilot integration, Nalina and I were able to provide context for these new developments in the partnership and share more about where this alliance is headed. During our conversation, we discussed the importance of upleveling employee experiences by streamlining workflows and eliminating redundancies with AI. I was impressed to hear how ServiceNow itself is reaping the benefits of AI by embedding these capabilities into the systems their employees use daily. The organization has already observed a $10 million dollar reduction in costs with a notable increase in productivity. By enabling seamless AI-assisted experiences with Now Assist and Microsoft 365 applications, both ServiceNow and Microsoft are seeing the impact firsthand through the lens of our respective organizations. And we’re excited to extend that value to our shared customers, too.

Watch the video below to hear my entire conversation with Nalina:

We’re proud to be innovating alongside pioneers like ServiceNow

I want to extend a sincere thanks to ServiceNow on behalf of Microsoft for recognizing us as their 2024 Innovation Partner of the Year as well as the 2024 Build Partner of the Year. The latter award was particularly meaningful as it commends our joint effort in creating and delivering seamless user experiences on the Now Platform and Azure.

We believe that we can achieve more by collaborating with ServiceNow. That’s why we appreciated the chance to embrace the learning aspect of Knowledge 2024 and show others how they can benefit from integrating ServiceNow into their Microsoft ecosystem. Our team at Microsoft led two sessions during the event that helped attendees delve deeper into ServiceNow on Azure. Reenu Saluja, a Global Partner Technology Strategist within Microsoft’s Industry Partner Solution Organization, and Stephen Bidgood, an Advisory Solution Consultant at ServiceNow, walked participants through a live Q&A that provided a technical overview of AI, security, and modern work. This interactive format allowed for an engaging learning experience that was equally enriching on both sides. While I discussed the value of ServiceNow and the Microsoft Cloud, innovating together and exploring the integration opportunities.

Microsoft team accepts the award as ServiceNow’s 2024 Innovation Partner of the Year and 2024 Build Partner of the Year.

The digital transformation journey continues

The ServiceNow Knowledge 2024 event highlighted how Microsoft and ServiceNow can help organizations of all sizes accelerate their cloud transformation with generative AI. We’re excited about the future of AI innovation that Microsoft and ServiceNow can enable together.

For a more in-depth look at the newly announced integration and to learn more about Microsoft and ServiceNow’s partnership, read our blog “Innovation Unleashed: ServiceNow and the Microsoft Cloud.”
The post Microsoft and ServiceNow at Knowledge 2024: Introducing generative AI innovation appeared first on Azure Blog.
Quelle: Azure

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Improve cloud performance and reliability with a guided learning plan

Businesses have committed to the cloud for its scalability, agility, and security. As customers continue to deepen their investments in cloud and AI services and environments become more complex, the need for proper cloud management increases. Continuous improvement and careful management through all phases of your cloud journey helps avoid unexpected costs and inefficient resource allocation while improving security and reliability. Strategic optimization delivers the resiliency to efficiently and securely handle fluctuating workloads with ease, ensuring you manage your environment for optimal performance.  

Plans on Microsoft Learn

Increase your skills and optimize your performance

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For cloud professionals looking to systematically upskill and validate their expertise, we’ve created a powerful learning resource called Plans on Microsoft Learn. These customized learning journeys provide a guided, structured approach to mastering specific technical domains and roles with specific learning objectives and milestones. Our official plan, “Improve Reliability, Security and Performance on Azure”, provides learning modules and resources on tools and best practices from Microsoft that can help your business elevate reliability, security, and performance of your cloud and AI investments.

What are Plans on Microsoft Learn?

Plans on Microsoft Learn are hand-crafted curricula that bundle together related Learn modules, learning paths, and certifications into milestones with a logical, end-to-end educational experience. Track progress and percent-completion of each milestone as you work through the plan. Each plan is meticulously designed by Microsoft technical and learning experts to build comprehensive skills for a particular job role or competency area.

Plans offer an efficient, curated approach for learners to navigate Microsoft’s extensive training library. Rather than having to sift through the catalog of individual resources, plans lay out an optimal sequence tailored to each topic and learning objective. They start with fundamentals and progressively advance to more specialized subjects through thoughtful progression.

Beyond just compiling content, plans incorporate hands-on activities, knowledge checks, certifications, and other engagement tools to reinforce practical skills. Up-to-date Microsoft Azure technical content is seamlessly woven in, allowing learners to receive the latest cloud best practices.

What are the benefits of Plans on Microsoft Learn?

While the self-guided flexibility of Microsoft Learn is incredibly empowering, following an official plan yields some distinct benefits:

Comprehensiveness. Plans provide complete coverage of all the concepts and skills required to truly master a domain, leaving no gaps.

Efficiency. The resources within plans are carefully curated, allowing learners to laser-focus their efforts on just what’s needed.

Structure. Clear start-to-finish learning paths prevent knowledge fragmentation and facilitate efficiently building specialized skillsets.

Hands-on. Built-in coding, labs, and other interactive components solidify skills through applied practice.

Validated expertise. Plans can incorporate certifications to formally validate and prove proficiency.

Latest skills. Leveraging Microsoft’s deep technical expertise, plans rapidly integrate the latest cloud service updates and best practices.

What will I learn in the “Improve Reliability, Security and Performance on Azure” Plan?

With cloud spend efficiency becoming an ever-growing priority, these optimization skills are invaluable to organizations seeking to maximize their ROI from Azure. Among our official Learn Plans, the “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure” Plan stands out for its immense business value and career impact potential. This comprehensive curriculum is designed to equip learners with deep skills for confidently designing, implementing, and managing cost-optimized Azure architectures at scale.

The Plan kicks off with fundamental cloud concepts like subscription management and organizational structure. It covers core Azure services like virtual machines, storage, databases, and networking through an optimization lens.

Learners then progress to more advanced cost optimization strategies such as reservation model pricing, Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit, and the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment. Monitoring, analytics, and automation techniques are explored for proactively identifying inefficiencies and waste.

Throughout, learners get hands-on practice with cost management and optimization tools like Azure Advisor, Azure Pricing Calculator, and Cost Management + Billing. Real-world design scenarios challenge them to apply optimization best practices end-to-end.

For those seeking validation, this Skilling Plan aligns perfectly with the AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions expert-level certification exam.

Upon completing the Plan, learners will have cultivated a comprehensive, job-ready skillset for designing and implementing cost-optimized, high-scale Azure architectures. This turbo-charges their impact across roles like cloud architects, solution engineers, cloud administrators and more.

Who should engage with this Plan?

This Azure Skilling Plan is designed for a broad audience, including:

Cloud architects and engineers. Gain the skills to design and implement optimized Azure solutions from the ground up.

Developers. Learn how to build applications that are inherently cost-efficient and performant.

IT pros. Understand how to manage and optimize your existing Azure resources.

Anyone with a passion for the cloud. Whether you’re new to Azure or an experienced pro, this plan offers valuable insights and practical skills to level up your cloud game.

What can I learn next?

After completing the official plan to “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure,” you’ll find there’s lots more to discover on Microsoft Learn.

Our Learn Live sessions deliver technical readiness and skilling programming in a television format, typically broadcasted live with Q&A and available on-demand. 

Azure Optimization Virtual Training Days aim to funnel Microsoft’s know-how into helping you optimize and manage your cloud investment. Guided by a Microsoft Technical Trainer, you’ll discover how Azure guidance, resources, and practices can streamline your cloud spend, enable modernization, and fuel innovation in the cloud.  

How do I get started?

Whether you’re a cloud pro looking to formalize your optimization chops, or just starting to navigate Microsoft’s vast cloud learning ecosystem, the Microsoft official Plan “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure” offers a powerful way to accelerate your skilling. By engaging with its learn modules, you’ll be equipped to confidently design, deploy and manage cost-efficient, high-performance Azure architectures that deliver maximum business value.

Getting started is simple. Head over to Microsoft Learn and enroll in the “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure” Plan. The content is organized into logical milestones, so you can easily track your progress and pick up where you left off. Take advantage of the hands-on labs and community forums to solidify your understanding and connect with fellow learners.
The post Improve cloud performance and reliability with a guided learning plan appeared first on Azure Blog.
Quelle: Azure