hello and welcome to this week's episode of uh Microsoft ignite followup uh here with us in the felline studio in Copenhagen with me I have Henrik Kim uh returned from the US but actually in the still in the US we have Rick who is with us today also on a teams meeting uh again he got really early out of bed to to join us today so we're following up on the last two days of ignite that you had once I left you uh last week you were going out uh to experience more of ight and you had two whole days actually yeah so some pretty good morning yeah good morning so I'm pretty excited to hear what did you experience in the last two days and yeah how are how are things yeah well to no surprise I think uh the rest of ignite was very much about AI uh and co-pilot of of course and yeah I would say we we will'll get back to that uh I guess also being after ignite it's uh difficult to not not talk about Ai and open AI without mentioning by the way open AI that was uh quite a story during this weekend but uh I believe we all as Microsoft customers and Microsoft Partners came out on the good side because if nothing then this really also showed that in the middle of this tumble Microsoft was on the steady road so to speak and and showed that no matter what happens we we have the they are in in it for the long term and they they are yeah building a company on on based on on this now so I don't know Rick if you have something to add to that yeah say I followed the the story over the weekend as well uh and also had some uh conversations with insiders here at Microsoft uh and you can you can see that they're uh um uh working uh very closely with uh uh the open AI team uh in in every respect uh but Microsoft is trying to stabilize the situation for them uh and for the the Microsoft company at at large um and I think that uh that even the the relationship has grown closer than it already was um so the outcome is in the end I think a good one for for both companies yeah I agree but but then also us being fellow mind being a partner of Microsoft we are not going into any speculations from from this point on I think that the key misses for us here is well I think even Microsoft came out stronger and and we have something to build on so back in the saddle and let's let's go ahead that's really all how our message for sure so so you had the like two exciting days where none of this actually happened it on fold it afterwards but uh but you never know what's going to hit you right so so these two days that you actually experienced with all of these people together in in Seattle so what happened take us through like where did you go after I sent you off in to the warning last Thursday I actually managed to see a session that didn't mention AI at all yeah great something about yeah it was almost something they advertised we're not going to talk about what everyone else is talking about and then they they went on so now I I would say a lot of sessions was of course about Ai and how to position Ai and on different technical levels it was a very really also repeating the story about co-pilot as you also heard us say last week that Microsoft is now saying we are the co-pilot company so that came out from SATA during the keynote so it kind of made sense that everyone else was then building on that uh sentence afterwards what what does it mean when we say that we're now the the co-pilot company so I to to picture it I would say for for me Thursday and Friday was really peeling peeling the onine uh seeing what what's under the hood trying to understand more Deep dive on what is it really that Microsoft is uh building here and um yeah we we also being the two one the only two at at adct knight from pomine we also strive to go to different sessions actually so yeah I don't know about you Rick no I I had the same feeling and and as your experience Henrik I had the same thing also uh uh at least one session where uh AI was not uh well only once mentioned as we're we're not talking about it because this is about different subject um and that uh that also meant that for me it felt like a very consistent thing in in the development of uh what Microsoft is doing say in in total say it's it's yes it's a lot about AI but it's not AI for the sake of AI it's h as a thing which naturally comes as a next step in the technology developments in the world uh uh to all what Microsoft is doing um so it it naturally flows in it will be everywhere uh you cannot deny that um but in the at the same time Microsoft is moving say in the same direction with the same consistency across the platform uh with whatever they did and and the last couple of days I have had a lot of conversations uh also with people uh about subjects which are had nothing to do with AI but with say technology under the hood uh uh functionality which uh which we still need which has nothing to do with AI um so it's a natural development um but it's not the only thing that Microsoft is doing no actually yeah touching that point I would say one thing is that you go to ignite and you try to fill your calendar with the breakout sessions and so on because you want to yeah learn from the best learn from the the ones that owns the products and so on but ignite is very much also a networking event if you like uh so so it's very much also about meeting people and that the obvious one is of course that you approach uh the send us after a breakout session having follow-up questions and and I would say Microsoft really invites you to do that and that's also part of the the the great experience with Ignite it's also you know Walking the Floor of the expo hall uh that was one of my complaints about the last year it didn't really feel like the Expo hold but it really did this year they were present massively with all different Microsoft teams there and you could they were kind of almost advertising comeing out ask us the the tough questions um so so that's always nice and um and and I I totally can subscribe to that uh because I also had conversations uh there which were clarifying things which would I never find out uh um if I just had been looking at the online versions but maybe that would be a clue to on the online version I I also got the feedback from many of my my peers that it was actually working working quite nicely this year that you could still join uh ignite from abroad uh listening in on the on on the the breakout sessions and as they were uh live so to speak I know sitting in Europe for instance can be a bit uh combersome with a 9h hour difference but but then at least some of the key uh breakouts and and for instance the key notes I guess it was possible to follow but again there also if nothing else coming back home I might even have have been to a breakout session but realized okay I need to see this again I need to Deep dive on some of the the details that put forward there some of the links with the additional resources I actually used that to to find a presentation that I thought that summed it up quite nicely about the Microsoft 365 co-pilot I don't P if we can bring it now yeah yeah um because I I think we on on a basic level we understand now that okay we had chat gbt we understand the chat gbt builds and these gbts and the the large language models but one of the things is then okay when what is then the Microsoft co-pilot and uh I think which we skip forward a bit I'll get the technical stuff to work here uh the co-pilot 365 um is really where Microsoft say okay we have the large language model we have the computer's ability to understand our us speaking both orally but also in in writing on across different languages now it should should not only produce content to us it should actually produce content based on stuff it finds on the internet it needs to understand the application where this content needs to be produced authored in and it should if if not the most important part it should bring your own data into this game and that's what yeah Microsoft co-pilot 365 is all about then came a drawing that actually showed how this all comes together it's it's somewhat complex and and I won't go into details on on on this session but we would love to to have a conversation also with with you out there uh as customers of of fellow mind because it it um it is it's so important to understand because it speaks to both why it is that Microsoft co-pilot is different from just using a chat gbt it speaks to some of the complexities languages for instance the copil is still is only supporting some of the the major languages one of them not being Danish or Dutch or uh so so they are coming of course but but but I had some good conversation about why is it really that it's complicated because llms they do understand danous we we had good experience with that right um but what is then even more important I think uh going going forward is that Microsoft 365 is maybe very approachable it's easy to integrate into your company but you can also extend it yeah um and we saw some some pretty good um sessions on that and um the key message here is that you should think of it as you can extend the co-pilot in two ways uh they have what they say that they res skill it or add skills to the co-pilot or they add knowledge to the co-pilot I think there's also a slide actually on that H the idea idea being that uh the reskilling or adding skills is where you in able it through a plugin to talk to a say backend system for instance uh a lot of uh software vendors of Microsoft partners are today developing these plugins so you will see uh service now for instance J cloud and so on providing plugins that will enable the co-pilot to speak to those backend systems could it also be other backend systems like are you exactly can you choose whatever imagine I I see a huge potential in that for for our customers and that you can really go out and and maybe even with the Legacy systems see how um say I think the the classic samp we have is that you have a a say a UI maybe ux that is not that approachable you only use it once uh every month to do reimbursements just think about how that could improve that experience if you could bring that into teams your everyday tool that you can talk to this system get information out and maybe even also uh push information back into that system so yeah adding that skill to to Microsoft 365 is one dimension and then the other dimension being the knowledge part that you can actually bring content into it and and that comes back to the the prior slide about how everything works you can bring content into uh the Microsoft graph uh and and that could of course also be yeah some really interesting things and it's still that within a secure environment like are we talking about the the same security that we experienced with a a non-extended Microsoft 365 Co yeah then that the whole infrastructure is there uh so so you you heard us also maybe I've said it before in some of the other session we repeated the last week that the message here also really that Microsoft and and many people within AI now sees this as the next UI so so we came from a mouse and keyboard we we at some point understood using touch on the phones now we need to bring it to the next level where we have a conversation I think some even call it the conversational UI and and that's what we're building for here yeah I also heard like we come from clicking on icons to actually having this conversation with with the the tools that we use it's a funny story is I saw several of the presenters at ignite uh reverting to just speaking to the computer that was uh okay yeah we all tried it I've been sitting there yelling at my car try to get it to understand the address but okay I got it I see it what we're heading for now yeah I don't know Rick if you would like to add something to this uh yeah it's uh um say what a very simple example I saw was uh adding in into the co-pilot for example the uh um ability to use your own product data um from a Content management system or a product catalog um because you need that say whether you're in sales or customer service you might need that um that information and then say the the complicated picture that uh um Henrik showed becomes really important because say you need to make sure that in every stage of your conversation with the systems because you're getting into a conversation say the prompt engineering gets really important um so thus thus the co-pilot still knows what you're talking about because it can lose at a certain moment context and then we're getting into what is called H hallucinations so prompt engineering prompt flow and uh uh what you saw there in that picture was a grounding say making sure that the co-pilot really knows what we're talking about uh and has the right information and gives back that right information to you becomes a really important uh kill uh so I think that was one of the takeaways that say um it is there is a world of possibilities uh but you also have to keep looking at what you're doing and testing so the prompt flow The Prompt engineering and and the skills to actually do that is something that uh uh customers uh uh really have to look for we we have this discussion with our customers currently especially the ones also looking into having the Microsoft 365 co- it but they they are not eligible to buy it right now due to all these different requirements that we have currently the minimum of 300 licenses and so on uh but but we talked to them about the whole getting ready with the prompt engineering so so you can already start with kind of educating yourself and your organization to to to do prompt engineering prompt chaining know these this terminology that comes with AI also so then you're at least a step ahead once you have the licenses and once you're ready to implement these uh these tools then you know what you supposed to do and how to interact with them so so yeah that could be I would certainly certainly invest as a customer already in the knowledge of uh what is prompt engineering what is groundedness what is coherence what is relevance because these are different uh um uh different angles to the answers that the prompt is going to give back to you um and and and say you need to uh um to really pay attention to get the right answers otherwise say the answers will be generic or even hallucinations um and that's something uh say we're here to help with obviously I I could add to that yeah that was maybe one of my aha moments that um with this deep dive on how the co-pilots really work and what is complicated about it is to what you or they they call the the inations that we we kind of got used to that with chat gbt and and and with B chat Enterprise now co-pilot let's remember that uh that that it sometimes you know just produces stuff it it you it um and that's kind of okay maybe because we got used to it but that won't fly if you are in Excel and trying to have it do something for you add a column uh new rows uh doing some pivoting and then it comes up with a recipe for bolog and what whatnot so so it it really needs to be strict on on the point here and I think that is also a lot to do with how the this structure is set up and also on that was that why is so complicated with the language stuff because Microsoft is now again Hallucination is one thing but also that they I think they call it toxic things so it things it shouldn't say things it shouldn't state that I try to remove REM that and they can now optimize that for yeah for instance English but if then we then apply Danish to that so should that happen through some translations at some point so going to from Danish to English and then do the checks and then back to Danish and he'll then look to and say that won't work well and I was like no we all tried these translators and and especially this one way is okay but going back and forth can be really really complicated so yeah I guess uh that that's why they they haven't lost launched that part yet interesting and maybe now we're say at because this is all about extending say uh the system with co-pilot Studio maybe it's also good to touch a little bit on that say last time we mentioned that co-pilot studio is included uh when you buy the licenses for uh Microsoft 365 co-pilot um I learned a little bit more about that um because yes it's included and you can use it to extend Microsoft 365 co-pilot however when you are using the technical capabilities of the extension tool of the co-pilot studio um to build really new co-pilots which is also a possibility then you are getting into uh licensing wise in a different situation because then you're basically building uh uh different co-pilots which are not covered under your licensing so maybe it's good for customers to understand the difference like you can use co-pilot Studio to extend co-pilot 365 in your own environment with all of the data you have um so that's that's perfectly okay if you use it for example to B to to build a chatbot uh on your website then you're in a different situation and different licensing applies yes yeah good that's good point yeah so there were were there any other like major announcements there was the the co-pilot Studio we also had the fabric General availability I think that was also quite a large one and then the whole renaming of the Bing chat Enterprise also into becoming one of these co-pilots did you did you notice something else yeah if if nothing else uh then it will add to the confusion right that b ched Enterprise is now co-pilot so already already spending time explaining that and and I I saw an internal conversation just to today that we for so many have this year this notion of which tool when right with yma and teams and and and whatnot now we get it with the co-pilots because we there are co-pilot for almost everything you're doing going forward and and which one uh are you going to use when and then one suggested ask the co-pilot so so we did but that that aside no other announcements you could sum it up saying I think Microsoft set themselves that they had more than 100 different announcements that falls into many different categories of new products uh new uh features rolling out in private preview public preview opt in features and so on so yeah a lot of different things across the whole Board of course um I think we also mentioned last Thursday that they were investing really in this the hardware side on it so maybe we don't think so much about this but but that uh driving the h whole AI story and and and the compute power needed to to do this also thinking about what's next so to speak U so not talking about om open Ai and what happened during this weekend what open AI is doing is is of course also working on on the Next Generation and they're doing that in a very close cooperation with Microsoft and maybe I would say almost a bit funny and and and speaking to the technical audience of ignite ignite this year actually ended with a very technical session uh that was one hour onean show by the aser CTO Mark renovich and I would just say to anyone that loves technology and likes Microsoft spend an hour seeing that keynote if if possible but now that I say it I'm kind of like was it even recorded I don't know sorry um but but well he Deep dive on uh what what they're doing in terms of creating also the next Generations of data centers and and so on and yeah it was really interesting at least for me as a nerd a geek I like it but but I also think it it it drives a more important message about that Microsoft in in so many ways are really pushing the limits uh to what what is possible and and and and and maybe driving the industry to yeah improving on so many different levels also here yeah I think I think that that say uh a lot of us think that the the cloud is uh is simply there uh and it's a big computer somewhere um to to cater for all this but there are so many uh um Hardware uh changes going on to actually make this possible because the compute power you need to make all of this happen is huge um and Microsoft is is uh uh developing that by themselves um doing that with Partners like Nvidia uh but they're also uh um not blind for say the way they can can uh improve the the environment um and and keep it keep it sustainable uh by uh consuming less energy uh where they can yeah that's uh really cool so you stayed in the US Rick and you moved a little closer to Redmond so uh so you're also working to to get a little more insight from Microsoft or having a good meeting strengthening our relationship with Microsoft currently or or like what's happening well I'll say Obviously for for us as a Microsoft partner it is uh uh extremely important to have great relationships so we can service our customers um and uh uh one of our customers say uh uh was working on something and and being here I could immediately step in with the the responsible uh uh person here uh in in Redmond to to make that happen so those are the good things that say being close to Microsoft and having those relationships uh you also hear some things through the grap Vine uh which are say last last week we already shared that uh um say the licensing in CSP might might be that far away uh those those are the kind of things you really hear uh um on the floor um and strengthening that relationship is is the most important part uh of of what we're doing here uh but also understanding how the stack is is working um is something which which uh which is something you you easily understand when you're face Toof face with people um so uh it it would be too long to go into it right here right now but if you see the I I made already the the difference between say uh extending co-pilot for Microsoft 365 and building your own co-pilots but then again say that is just just I would say in just between uh quotes uh between in co-pilot Studio but then if you peel it off like Henrik already said peeling off the onion to the the lower levels like with Azure AI Studio you can do so much more so it's all layered so basically co-pilot studio is laying on top of that um and and those are the conversations you're having here like uh if you scroll through all the announcements you see how closely uh uh uh knit tight these these developments are say every development is not a thing in itself every announcement is not a a feature in itself but it is linked to hey we now integrate this to that we now can work as your studio with uh uh Microsoft fabric Microsoft fabric now works with these external systems so it's all connected to a larger uh um larger platform um so from that that respect say my my respect for the the vision that Microsoft has put on the floor uh and is executing on is is say growing say I already was a fan of the Microsoft Technology that's that's one of the reasons that yeah it's a surprise but uh um say that's the reason why why we started at with fellow mind and that we we all say created uh uh um helping our customers with uh this technology we because we believe in it um but actually say from from day one 17 years ago to now I couldn't have imagined that my belief in that that Vision has been growing even stronger because it it it is all connected and then sometimes I see other venders who are doing great things as well but it's not as connected it's not as consistent uh uh and it's it's not say a total solution so that's uh so much for the the Microsoft advertising today yeah um but not toow advertisement yeah actually P to to your question also it's almost unfair and I just check the the website and maybe that's what I would like to end on here is also saying the conference is not over uh in the sense that it's so much alive still I really like the way Microsoft has set it up with the ignit microsoft.com you can go there just log in register with almost your any any account your corporate account personal Microsoft account and Linkedin Google uh count I think um and then you can see all the recorded sessions you can get to all the presentations and so and then and and there are it read 617 sessions in there and even though I had uh fulltime atct night I think I counted 25 sessions that I covered through the time in in person or because I saw some Rec recorded sessions in um in um on the plane back home and and uh in in my hotel room so go go and use that and and then leaving only with one other announcement I thought was really interesting I saw a session on is that the co-pilot coming for aser it it it makes so much sense that you will have a co-pilot in your aser portal and and people working with aser I think when they see it they will see this is a this is a game changer it's out in in a preview now as that you need to sign up for it on a tenant level but uh I I'm looking forward to to getting access to that and and playing with it I think actually just some of our colleagues just had a broadcast in Danish though earlier today actually touching upon this topic a little bit also if you're into different kinds of the Microsoft stack it might be uh the Asher it might be the Viva for example using this website is really good because you can filter on what exactly interest you uh in in the Microsoft universe so you don't have to plow through 615 presentations yes you can go directly to what's of your interest yeah that's uh we're about to close down but we we would like to leave you with something uh so we've uh we've put together a little uh slide so I'm trying to to uh share my screen again staying on for a little moment I could maybe mention mention for instance the presentation I I did just before uh is BRK 253 H um so that's an example of you can go to ignit microsoft.com and and search for that specific and you will uh you will then see it yeah so uh the time is now go build but what if you don't know what to build or where to start or how to even uh open the hood on on some of these things then of course we there to to help you and uh and guide you through uh some of the tools and some of the services that are available in the Microsoft cloud and and to you out there with no matter what license no matter what uh technology you're into it might be Dynamics might be Microsoft 365 we are uh covering it all so so what we have brought today is like the accelerator program which is actually not focusing on the specific technology but more focusing on your business and finding the use cases the AI use cases that you definitely for sure have in your business so so that's uh that's what we have uh for the audience today and uh I would just like to thank you Rick again to get up very very early for us all and also thank you Henrik yeah it's been been a pleasure and we're really looking forward to Contin continuing the conversations out there and reach out to us by all means LinkedIn mail directly we would love to to meet with you sure absolutely yeah thank much thank you very much bye bye bye Rick night