Opening the Microsoft Ignite and Envision conferences in Orlando this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella focused on the need for greater "tech intensity," while pushing new AI and data, security, and IoT solutions. Most important are a new Open Data Initiative with Adobe and SAP for sharing data across what were once silos, and a new "AI for Humanitarian Action" initiative.

As Microsoft has been wont to do at its shows lately, Nadella began by talking about how we are now in the era of the "intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge." Computing is now being embedded in the real world, he said, and every place, every industry, and every thing is being transformed by digital technology. To make this work, we need what he called "tech intensity," meaning enterprises both adopting the latest technology and building their own technical capacity.

Nadella identified two big strategic mistakes companies make in deploying new technology: creating services that are commodities rather than specific to their own businesses, or picking a partner who offers commodity services and then turns around and becomes a competitor. (That last part seemed like a knock on Amazon Web Services, but he didn't mention the competitor by name.)

"We want to empower you with that tech intensity," he said, adding that "our success is fundamentally dependent on your success."

Nadella walked through seven examples of companies that are undergoing "digital transformation" and using various Microsoft services. These included Royal Dutch Shell, which is using AI for guiding drilling and preventive maintenance, and computer vision for safety; CBRE, which is creating a digital twin and an app for tenants and facility managers to better manage their facilities; Buhler, which is using computer vision to look for toxins in the food supply and partnering with a big miller to use blockchain to track grain; and BMW, which is using Azure AI capabilities to build its own assistant so its brand doesn't get disintermediated.

Open Data Initiative

Nadella said that for most businesses, the most important thing is to continually improve your engagement with customers. To that end, he brought up SAP CEO Bill McDermott and Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen to discuss their new Open Data Initiative.

McDermott said he called the other two CEOs to suggest the program, and said we are "in the midst of a customer driven growth revolution." He said every company is going through a digital transformation, or should be, because customers are mobile and social, and expect the companies they deal with to be mobile and social. As a result, data can't be trapped in a silo, and "we now have to connect the end-to-end consumer experience from the demand chain to the supply chain in real-time." Instead, what we need is a single view of data.

The key tenets of this initiative, which both Nadella and McDermott emphasized, are that the customer has ownership and control of his or her data, that it enables AI-driven business outcomes, and that it is open and extensible.

Narayen talked about the need "to reimage customer experiences," and said that by freeing all of the data which was previously trapped in silos, companies could create "compelling, personalized, [and] relevant experiences across all channels."

Nadella said this initiative followed a pretty straightforward architecture, with the goal being to view data as a renewable resource, and "truly putting customers in control of their own customer data." The hope is to expand the program to include other companies, he said.

Security and Trust

The next part of the keynote dealt with security and trust, with Nadella talking about how it's the combination of technology, operations, and partnerships which is critical for security. Microsoft currently has 3,500 security professionals handling 6.5 trillion events a day, and Nadella said this translates into products such as Advance Threat Protection and Secure Score, a new service that includes recommendations for controls in a variety of Microsoft products including EMS (enterprise, mobility and security), Microsoft Cloud App Security, Azure Security Center, and Azure Active Directory.

Nadella also talked about the need to work in partnerships and pointed to the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, which now counts 61 organizations as members. In particular, he pointed to a new Defending Democracy Program, including a new feature called AccountGuard designed to provide an extra level of protection for candidates and parties in US elections. This, he said, started when the company detected a group attacking senators and organizations affiliated with political parties. This group captured a few domains and used them to send phishing attacks.

Nadella said Microsoft worked with law enforcement to create a process for quickly recapturing the domains. As with much of this, he said it requires a combination of products, an operational security posture, and partnerships with other organizations.

Nadella also focused on small businesses, and noted that these organizations generally don't have internal security operations departments. As an example, he talked about 58 small businesses in Johnson City, Tennessee (population 60,000), which were attacked by malware from a trusted local business, which sought to steal banking information. Microsoft used the machine learning system behind Windows Defender and Advanced Threat Protection to help find the attack, and noted that this system must run very quickly because it has to return results in sub-milliseconds. This in turn requires sophisticated but fast inference algorithms and a fast core infrastructure that uses FPGAs.

IoT and Edge Computing

Nadella then turned to edge computing, and said that there are 9 billion microcontrollers which control such things as factory floors and HVAC systems.

Microsoft had earlier announced a system called Azure Sphere, now in public preview, that combines a hardware root of trust, a secure OS, and a cloud service. These work together "to provide end-to-end security," Nadella said, and added that the system is now ready for adoption.

He also talked about Microsoft's vision of a "no password future," and said that Coca-Cola has worked with the Microsoft Authenticator app and ATP to look at threats targeting products from Azure to Microsoft 365.

Nadella closed with tech intensity. Tech intensity isn't just about consumer engagement, digital transformation, and ensuring security and trust, but also about making the most of the opportunity "to make sure access is equitably distributed across our society." To that end, Microsoft has an AI for Good program, which began with previously announced AI for Earth and AI for Accessibility programs. Today, Nadella announced AI for Humanitarian Action, which is designed to help organizations that work in disaster response, or address the needs of refugees, displaced persons, and the fight for human rights.