The Biggest News In AI, Copilots, Agents

Microsoft Copilot Actions, AI agents inside SharePoint and a new Azure AI Foundry experience are among the big reveals.

Microsoft Copilot Actions prompt templates. Artificial intelligence agents inside SharePoint. And a new Azure AI Foundry experience for designing and managing AI apps and agents.
These are some of the biggest new products and updates the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant is revealing this week during its Ignite 2024 event.
Ignite runs through Friday, with programming in person in Chicago and online. Microsoft had 200,000-plus people register for the event and expected 14,000-plus in-person attendees.
[RELATED: Microsoft CEO: AI Provides ‘On-Ramp’ To Azure Data Services, Copilot Continues To Surge]

Microsoft Ignite 2024

In total, Microsoft revealed 80 new products and features across its product portfolio, a number of those focused on the emerging AI era.
About 70 percent of the Fortune 500 use Microsoft’s Copilot AI tool, according to the vendor. For every $1 invested, companies see a return of $3.70, with some of the highest returns reaching $10.
Microsoft also said that about 600,000 organizations have used Copilot in Power Platform and other AI-powered capabilities, up fourfold year over year.
Accenture, No. 1 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500, is in the process of rolling out Microsoft copilots and agents to 100,000 employees, according to Microsoft. It has a commitment to deploy 200,000 more.
AI looks to feature prominently for the vendor’s 400,000-member partner ecosystem in 2025. In Microsoft’s latest quarterly earnings call, Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said that the company’s AI businesses should “surpass an annual revenue run rate of $10 billion next quarter, which will make it the fastest business in our history to reach this milestone.”
“When I talk about Copilot, Copilot Studio, agents, it’s really as much about a new way to work,” Nadella said on the call. “I describe it as what happened throughout the ’90s with PC penetration. After all, if you take a business process like forecasting, what was it like pre-email and Excel and post-email and Excel. That’s the type of change that you see with Copilot.”
Here are the biggest news items coming out of Ignite 2024 in AI and with Microsoft Copilot.

Copilot Actions, Copilot In Teams

Microsoft moved its Copilot Actions customizable prompt templates into private preview, the vendor announced during Ignite.
Users can leverage Actions to receive status updates and agenda items from colleagues and employees, compile weekly reports, schedule daily emails summarizing other emails and Microsoft Teams chats and more.
Actions users can automate templates on demand or with an event trigger. Actions can deliver information in an email, Word document and other specified formats, according to the vendor.
Microsoft will push new Copilot in Teams abilities into preview in early 2025, including a way for users to analyze screen-shared content in the collaboration platform and summarize file content in mobile and on desktop.
Screen-shared content will be available for Copilot summarizations, insight and for use when drafting new content, according to the vendor.
The new file summaries ability will apply to one-to-one and group chats in Teams. This feature will also follow file security policies so that users with unauthorized access don’t receive summaries.

New Microsoft 365 Agents

Microsoft introduced a host of AI agents during Ignite, with one such offering, Agents in SharePoint, entering general availability.
These agents are grounded on users’ SharePoint sites, files and folders to improve finding answers from that content, according to Microsoft. Every SharePoint site will include an agent tailored to its content. Users can also make their own agents scoped to select SharePoint folders, sites and files.
Users can give agents a name and behaviors and answer questions in real time, according to Microsoft. The SharePoint agents will follow existing user permissions and sensitivity labels.
Employee self-service agents have entered private preview. These agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat (BizChat) can answer common policy-related questions and do some human resources tasks such as understanding a particular employee benefit, retrieving payroll information and starting a leave of absence.
These agents can also handle some IT tasks, including a request for a new laptop and assisting with a Microsoft 365 product. Users can customize these agents in Copilot Studio.
In preview are facilitator agents and project manager agents. Facilitator agents take notes in Teams meetings in real time and summarize information from Teams chats as conversations happen, according to Microsoft.
Project manager agents in Planner can create new plans and use preconfigured templates. The agent will oversee entire projects, assigning tasks, tracking progress and sending reminders and notifications. It can even complete tasks and create content.
Interpreter agents are expected to enter preview early next year. These AI agents can interpret up to nine languages in real time in Teams meetings. Meeting members can have the agent simulate their personal voice.

Azure AI Foundry

Microsoft introduced Ignite watchers to its Azure AI Foundry experience for designing, customizing and managing AI apps and agents.
Now available in preview are the Azure AI Foundry portal—the former Azure AI Studio—and the Foundry SDK.
The portal is the visual user interface for finding AI models, services and tools. Users can see subscription information in a single dashboard. IT administrators, operations personnel and those focused on compliance can manage AI apps at scale in the portal.
The SDK has a unified toolchain, 25 prebuilt templates and a coding experience users can access from GitHub, Visual Studio, Copilot Studio and other tools, according to Microsoft. Users can leverage the SDK for integrating Azure AI into their applications.
Coming soon to preview is the Azure AI Foundry Agent Service. This feature should allow developers to orchestrate, deploy and scale agents for automating business processes, according to Microsoft. Agent Service will allow for bring-your-own-storage and private networking for data privacy and compliance.
Foundry portal and SDK will gain a preview in December for Azure AI risk and safety evaluations for image content. These capabilities should help users assess the frequency and severity of harmful content in AI-generated outputs.
These evaluations will allow Azure AI to go beyond text-based evaluations and assess text inputs yielding image outputs, image inputs yielding text outputs and images with text—such as a meme—as inputs yielding text or images.
Users can leverage these evaluations for modifying multimodal content filters with Azure AI Content Safety and adjusting data sources for grounding. Users can also update system messages before deploying apps to production.

Copilot Control System

A Copilot Control System from Microsoft aims to help IT manage copilots and agents with data access, governance, security controls, measurement reports, business value tracking tools and adoption tracking tools.
One of the features of the Control System is Copilot in Microsoft 365 Administration Centers (MAC), now in private preview and set for general availability early next year, according to the tech giant.
Copilot in MAC leverages AI to do routine tasks by IT administrators and suggest ways to get more value out of M365 subscriptions. It will be available in the admin centers for M365, Teams and SharePoint and provide summaries of trends across an administrator’s assigned areas. The copilot can also summarize message center posts across all apps and services and meeting reports. It can troubleshoot call quality and other user issues with natural language.
Another feature in the Control System is Copilot Analytics. General availability capabilities within Copilot Analytics include a dashboard that covers Copilot readiness, adoption and learning and M365 admin center reporting to surface adoption and usage trends.
In early 2025, Copilot Analytics will include Viva Insights for no additional charge. Insights is a measurement toolset for productivity and business outcomes.

Copilot Studio Updates

Copilot Studio gained a multitude of previews, including ones for autonomous agentic capabilities, an agent library and an agent SDK.
The autonomous agents can take actions on a user’s behalf without prompting each time. These agents act in the background when recording an uploaded file, receiving an email and responding to events, according to Microsoft.
The autonomous agents plan, learn from processes, adapt to new conditions and make decisions.
The library has templates for leave management, sales order, deal acceleration and other common agent scenarios.
The SDK will allow developers to build multi-channel agents that leverage Azure AI, Semantic Kernel and Copilot Studio services and are deployable across Teams, Copilot, web and third-party messaging platforms.
More previews include image uploads for agents to analyze and advanced knowledge tuning to match specific instructions to unanswered questions,
Copilot Studio integrations with Azure AI Foundry will give Studio access to 1,800-plus models in the Azure catalog. A bring-your-own model capability is in private preview, as is the ability to embed voice-enabled agents in Studio and voice experiences in applications and websites.
A new pay-as-you-go consumptive billing option for Copilot Studio messages through existing Azure subscriptions will become available for users on Dec. 1.

Copilot Pages Upgrades

Microsoft has plans to make new features in its Copilot Pages content creation canvas generally available in early 2025, including rich artifacts and multi-page support.
The rich artifacts support means Pages will gain the ability to support code, interactive charts, tables, diagrams and math from enterprise data and web data, according to Microsoft.
Multi-page support will give users ways to add content from multiple chat sessions and from Pages made in previous Copilot conversations.
Other features entering general availability include grounding Copilot chat prompts on Page content as the page is updated for better answer relevancy and Pages viewing, editing and sharing on mobile.

Copilot in PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel

Copilot in PowerPoint should have some new features in 2025, including a narrative builder based on a file and organization image support.
Narrative builder based on referenced file will enter general availability in January, allowing for better first drafts of slides, according to Microsoft. Copilot will add branded designs, speaker notes, transitions and animations to the presentation.
In the first quarter, a capability for bringing images from SharePoint Organization Asset Library, Templafy and other asset libraries into Copilot in PowerPoint will enter general availability.
Microsoft will also increase access to presentation translations, with all Copilot in PowerPoint web users getting the ability to translate presentations into one of 40 languages in December. Desktop and Mac users will gain the capability in January.
By the end of the month, Copilot in Outlook will gain the ability to schedule focus time and one-on-one meetings based on a user prompt. Copilot will find the best times for everyone and draft an agenda based on the prompt’s details of the meeting
Before year’s end, Copilot in Excel will add a new start experience wherein Copilot suggests the type of spreadsheets users should make based on what they want. Copilot can also refine the template with headers, formulas and visuals.

Microsoft Places Enters General Availability

Microsoft revealed that its Places AI-powered workplace application has entered general availability, bringing location data to Teams and Outlook to help with in-office day planning.
Copilot can recommend when users should go into the office based on in-person meetings, guidance and when common collaborators will be in, according to Microsoft. It can manage room bookings for one-time or recurring meetings and help book rooms and desks based on images of the office and floor plans.
Administrators can leverage Places for an analysis of intended and actual occupancy for spaces.

Azure AI Content Understanding

Now in preview is the service Azure AI Content Understanding, which aims to assist developers in building and deploying multimodal applications.
The service uses GenAI to get information from documents, images, videos, audio and other unstructured data and put that information into customizable structured outputs, according to the tech giant.
Content Understanding has prebuilt templates and ways to customize outputs for call center analytics, marketing automation, content search and other use cases. The service also has prebuilt schemas for users to say what they want extracted from data, such as captions, transcripts, summaries, thumbnails and highlights.

Microsoft Fabric News

Microsoft’s Fabric data integration platform gained a host of new previews, including ones for Fabric Databases, SQL database in Fabric and open mirroring.
Fabric Databases aims to unite transactional and analytical workloads to improve app development optimized for AI databases, according to Microsoft. SQL database in Fabric is the first database engine in Fabric, with plans for Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Database for PostgreSQL to join.
SQL database in Fabric will allow for faster app building with data automatically replicated in Fabric’s multi-cloud data lake OneLake and native vector search capabilities allowing for retrieval augmented generation (RAG).
This capability will also allow for auto-optimizing databases, auto-scaling them and translating natural language queries into SQL with inline code compilation next to code fixes and explanations.
The goal of open mirroring, meanwhile, is to allow any app or data provider to bring the data estate into OneLake within Fabric so they can write change data into a mirrored database in Fabric.
A new OneLake catalog is also now generally available for exploring, managing and governing the Fabric data estate across notebooks, lakehouses, warehouses, machine learning models and more.

The biggest news in devices, security

Windows 365 Link, security exposure management and a new post-CrowdStrike faulty update initiative are among the big announcements.

Microsoft’s Windows 365 links devices. Security exposure management is becoming generally available. And a new initiative to make improvements after a faulty CrowdStrike update in July.
These are some of the biggest device and security news coming from Microsoft’s Ignite 2024 event.
Ignite runs through Friday, with in-person and online programming in Chicago. Microsoft had registered more than 200,000 people for the event and was expecting more than 14,000 to attend in person.
[RELATED: Microsoft CEO: AI Provides ‘On-Ramp’ To Azure Data Services, Copilot Continues To Surge]

Microsoft Ignite 2024

Redmond, Wash. The based tech giant unveiled 80 new products and features in its product portfolio.
According to Microsoft, Windows 11 has seen a three-fold reduction in firmware attacks and almost three times fewer credential theft incidents compared to Windows 10.
During Ignite, Microsoft said that the controversial recall feature would be disabled by default for Copilot+ PCs. IT will enable this feature through new policies before employees opt in.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella shared his enthusiasm for the vendor’s devices and security portfolio during the vendor’s recent quarterly earnings call.
“It’s about hybrid AI where the rebirth of the PC as the edge of AI is going to be one of the most exciting things for developers,” Nadella said on Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC.
Nadella said customers have used Defender to find and secure more than 750,000 GenAI app instances. They have used Parview to audit over 1 billion Copilot interactions to ensure they meet compliance obligations.
Here’s everything you need to know in security and device news from Ignite 2024.

In device news, Microsoft has previewed Windows 365 Link devices built for its Windows 365 cloud-based virtual machine service, with Link becoming generally available in April with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $349.
According to Microsoft, interested organizations in the US, UK, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Canada, and Australia can apply for the preview program.
According to Microsoft, users can place Link on their desk, boot it up in seconds and perform local processing for Teams meetings, Webex by Cisco, and other high-fidelity experiences.
The Link supports dual 4K monitors, four USB ports, an audio port, an Ethernet port, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3.
The device has no local data, apps, or non-administrator users. Corporate data is safe in the Microsoft cloud. Security default policies are on by default. Users cannot turn off security features.
Users can leverage Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Authenticator app, or USB security key for passwordless login.
Microsoft Intune users can manage devices linked with other PCs. Links are configured in minutes and updated automatically when turned on for the first time. They are factory-reset in minutes for reusability.

Starting next year, Windows Insider Program members with Snapdragon-powered CoPilot+ PCs will have the ability to take advantage of their Neural Processing Units (NPUs) for better search with File Explorer, Windows Search, and Settings.
Users can find documents, photos, and other files without having to search for file names or exact file contents. They can describe content with synonyms, even text that may appear in an image. This feature will work even without internet connection.
Enhanced search will be coming to Windows 365 cloud PCs in the spring.

Microsoft Security Exposure Management goes to general availability

Microsoft has made its security exposure management experience generally available to practitioners assessing cyber threats.
Exposure management integrates disparate data silos for better attack surface visibility, assessing attack paths to assets and across devices, identities, apps, data, on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures. Provides context-based recommendations to improve security posture.
According to Microsoft, the tool has attack path analysis capabilities with modeling and blast radius estimation, as well as integrated insights that bring in currency data from other vendors.

Microsoft Purview Update

Microsoft updated its Purview data governance and compliance platform to include the general availability of Customer Lockbox, which provides data protection for Windows 365 with users in the approval workflow process, and Data Security Posture Management, as well as AI Provides DSPM for.
According to Microsoft, DSPM for AI should help IT administrators and data stewards find risks and prevent data oversharing, data leakage, and other incidents. The tool works on Copilot, custom apps built on Copilot Studio, and third-party apps like ChatGPT Enterprise by Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
The new Purview preview includes data loss prevention (DLP) for Microsoft 365 Copilot – aimed at ensuring that the content of sensitive documents is not abstracted by AI – and Azure Microsoft Rights Management-defined sensitivity labels for administrators Ability to extend Office files and PDFs to SharePoint document libraries comfortably.
By the end of the year, Purview will have a preview of embedded Security CoPilot capabilities, including DSPMs with AI-powered data estate risk insights in natural language and suggested prompts to guide users through investigations.
Other Security CoPilot capabilities entering preview are DLP policy understanding, eDiscovery case summaries, and a CoPilot-powered knowledge center.

Features after the CrowdStrike incident

During Ignite 2024, Microsoft introduced its Windows Resiliency Initiative, which is based on learnings from the global outage caused by CrowdStrike. faulty update In July.
According to Microsoft, the initiative also focuses on allowing more apps and users to run without administrator privileges, stronger controls for which apps and drivers can run, and better identity protection.
Quick Machine Recovery is a feature that will come to the Windows Insider Program in early 2025 thanks to this initiative. With this feature, IT administrators can target Windows Update fixes to PCs, even when the machines cannot boot and do not have physical access to the PC.
There are ways to build security products outside of kernel mode, coming as a private preview to the security product ecosystem in July. According to Microsoft, antivirus and other security products will have the ability to run in user mode, just like apps. This will provide better resiliency to Windows in the event of a crash or error.

windows security updates

Microsoft said it is addressing long-standing complaints about Windows security — over-privileged users and applications, unverified apps and drivers, and insecure credentials and authentication.
The preview has Administrator Security, a tool that has standard user permissions security by default. If a system change requires administrator rights, users are asked to authorize the change using Windows Hello. Windows creates a temporary separate administrator token that is destroyed after the task is completed.
According to Microsoft, the new AI capabilities for Smart App Control and App Control for Business attempt to make the tool easier to deploy. A signed and reputable policy template should allow millions of verified apps to run, regardless of deployment location.
And the Personal Data Encryption (PDE) layer now generally available for Windows Enterprise should add more security to personal user files on laptops that are now readable only with Windows Hello sign in. PDE also integrates with OneDrive and SharePoint and is manageable with Intune.

Windows CoPilot Runtime, Windows Subsystem for Linux

Microsoft has added new AI APIs and improved frameworks and tools to the Windows Copilot Runtime to help developers scale AI across devices.
APIs for image description, image super resolution, object erasure, and optical character recognition are coming in January.
According to Microsoft, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has added integration with Intune, which is now generally available, and Entra ID, which is now in private preview.
In the coming months, Microsoft will preview a new distribution architecture for WSL to better manage and optimize it with enterprise security policies.
A new preview of Hotpack for Windows gives users a way to download updates in the background and have the installation take effect without restarting the device.
The preview coming before 2026 for Windows Autopatch AI integration with Copilot in Intune means IT administrators can only access data within their permissions and Windows users can prepare for feature updates, ready devices, and other uses. Can get payload details between cases.
A now generally available configuration refresh feature is available to enforce mobile device management (MDM) security policies by returning a PC to a preferred configuration, avoiding configuration drift when users change the system registry. Refresh also works offline with device self-management locally.

Mixed Reality, Windows in the Modern Environment

Microsoft has a preview coming in December for Windows 11 in Meta Quest headsets, which allows users to take advantage of Windows for virtual meetings and high-resolution monitors.
Windows 11 Mixed Reality Access will debut with the Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets.
The preview available now allows a shared mode for provisioning Windows 365 Frontline. This mode is for users who need brief access to ad-hoc tasks in a non-personalized Windows desktop environment. User data is deleted upon signoff.
Another preview is for Windows Apps Mobile Application Management (MAM) support for iOS and Android to define device security criteria and customized access.

Azure Chips, Infrastructure

At Ignite, Microsoft introduced its Azure Integrated Hardware Security Module (HSM) in-house cloud security chip.
Next year, Microsoft will begin installing HSM in every new server in its data centers for confidential and general-purpose workloads.
The vendor also showcased its first in-house data processing unit silicon, the Azure Boost DPU. According to Microsoft, the purpose of a DPU is to work on storage, networking, acceleration, and more. Future DPU-equipped servers should run cloud storage workloads at three times less power and four times the performance of existing servers.
A liquid cooling heat exchanger unit rack by Microsoft should support large-scale AI systems on Azure, including Microsoft’s Azure Maia. Microsoft can reinstall the unit in Azure data centers.
Microsoft and Meta have collaborated on a differentiated power rack design with 400-volt DC power for 35 percent more AI accelerators per server rack. The vendors are open-sourcing the specifications through the Open Compute Project.
Microsoft launches preview of Nvidia Blackwell GB200-powered Azure AI system. Azure ND GB200 V6 is the new AI-optimized virtual machine series powered by Nvidia GB200 superchips.

More infrastructure news

Microsoft has made Azure Local cloud-controlled, hybrid infrastructure platform and Windows Server 2025 generally available.
Local extends Azure services across distributed locations for mission-critical workloads and cloud-native applications and AI. Runs containers, servers, and Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) on Microsoft-accredited hardware from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, Dell Technologies, and others for local custom latency, near-real-time data processing, and compliance.
Windows Server 2025 has a preview of hot-patching subscriptions for easier upgrades, improved security, and update installation with fewer restarts.
Microsoft also moved SQL Server 2025 to private preview. According to Microsoft, this database platform should simplify AI app development and RAG patterns.

Windows will enable security devices to run ‘outside kernel mode’

After a massive Windows outage in July caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update, Microsoft is working on a way to allow security products to “run in user mode like apps,” says Microsoft’s David Weston.

After the massive CrowdStrike-generated Windows outage In July, Microsoft is now working on a way to allow security products to avoid affecting the Windows kernel, a Microsoft executive revealed on Tuesday.
CrowdStrike’s access to the kernel – which is the main control center of Windows – has been pointed to as a major factor that allowed the July 19 faulty CrowdStrike Falcon update to send 8.5 million Windows devices into a “blue screen of death” state. Enabled, causing massive damage. Social disruption.
[Related: CrowdStrike Sues Delta: 5 Key Takeaways]
in response to Call As Microsoft introduces the option of kernel access to security tool vendors, the tech giant announced that additional options are officially on the way.
“We are developing new Windows capabilities that will allow security product developers to build their products outside of kernel mode,” David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, wrote in an article. Post Tuesday
As a result, security products “will be able to run in user mode, just like apps”, Weston said.
It would also mean “easier recovery” and “less impact on Windows in the event of a crash or mistake,” he said.
However, the new capabilities won’t be available for some time. Weston’s blog states that a private preview will be offered to security product vendors in July 2025.
Notably, there was no mention that Microsoft plans to make the alternative method mandatory and restrict Windows kernel access to endpoint security vendors.
The move follows an Endpoint Security Summit hosted by Microsoft in September that included executives from top vendors in the field, including CrowdStrike.
Sophos CEO Joe Levy, who was among the attendees, told CRN Microsoft expressed interest in finding different ways for the kernel to respond to errors caused by security tool updates.
“I hope this will trigger the evolution of security protocols that the endpoint security ecosystem itself is deploying,” Levy said at the time.

Easy solution for Windows

Meanwhile, Microsoft also unveiled additional capabilities on Tuesday that “arise from lessons learned from the July incident,” Weston wrote.
The upcoming Quick Machine Recovery capability will allow IT administrators to “perform targeted fixes from Windows Update on PCs, even when machines are unable to boot, without requiring physical access to the PC,” he wrote.
Weston said the Quick Machine Recovery capability will be made available as part of the Windows Insider program starting in early 2025.

DOJ is pursuing ‘a radical agenda’ by forcibly shutting down Chrome sales

The US Justice Department is reportedly looking for a judge to force Google to sell Google Chrome, the world’s most popular internet browser.

In a move that could hit $88 billion Google and its cloud business, Google Cloud, The US Justice Department is reportedly seeking to ask a judge to force Google to sell the world’s most popular internet browser: chrome,
“The DOJ is pursuing a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement to CRN.
“The government putting its thumb on the scale in this way will hurt consumers, developers, and American tech leadership exactly when it’s needed most,” Mulholland said.
Officials from the US Justice Department’s Antitrust Division will ask US District Judge Amit Mehta – who has Judgment given against Google In relation to monopoly in the past – to coerce Google will sell its Chrome browseraccording to a report By Bloomberg News.
[Related: The 10 Coolest GenAI Products And AI Tools Of 2024]

What is the DOJ looking for?

DOJ is reportedly seeking to break up Google Android From Search and Google Play, but without obligating Google to sell Android.
Bloomberg said another requirement would force the Mountain View, California-based tech giant to share more information with advertisers.
The DOJ will also reportedly ask Judge Mehta to impose data licensing requirements.
Another recommendation from the DOJ is that Google provide more options to prevent websites from using their content. Google’s artificial intelligence The product, according to a Bloomberg report.
The government will also insist on banning exclusive Contracts with iPhone providers like Apple The report states that Chrome will have to be made its default web browser.

Chrome has more than 65 percent share of the global browser market

According to IT market research firm Statista, Google Chrome’s share of the global market for internet browsers by August 2024 was more than 65 percent, or nearly two-thirds.
Apple’s Safari browser ranks second among Internet browsers with about 18 percent share. Statista said no other browser controlled more than 5 percent of the overall market share worldwide.
Google Cloud has several key technologies inside Chrome, including its zero-trust security offering Chrome Enterprise Premium, as well as Chrome Enterprise Core, which allows businesses to configure and manage the Chrome browser across their organization.
Additionally, Google Cloud’s flagship AI offering, Gemini, It is becoming more important for Google Chrome’s search engine, while many users have access to it workplace Applications like Gmail and Google Docs through Chrome.

Google partner: ‘Government may be exaggerating’

One Google partner, who makes millions of dollars each year from Google sales, said he believed “the government is probably overstepping here.”
“Chrome is loved by our customers. It’s effective for a number of reasons, like its security features, which we believe have nothing to do with monopoly and more to do with their technology,” said a top Google partner executive. Said on condition of anonymity.
The executive said that if Google Chrome is sold from parent company Google, it would fundamentally change the operational structure of both Google and Google Cloud.
“So Google Chrome is directly tied to its advertising business, and obviously that’s important to the company. That money drives innovation and R&D across Google,” he said. “You remove Chrome from Google, it may start to break a little. …This will certainly have a broad impact on Google Cloud.”
The DOJ will ask District Judge Mehta to force the breakup because it represents the access point through which people use its search engine, Bloomberg News reports.
Bloomberg said the government has the option to decide whether Chrome sales are necessary at a later date if some other aspects of the measure create a more competitive market.
DOJ representatives did not respond for comment by press time.

Accenture launches new suite of GenAI-focused security services

Paolo Dal Sin of Accenture Security told CRN that services are ready to use the technologies to secure GenAI use, as well as protect against AI-powered attacks and security capabilities.

A newly announced set of Accenture cybersecurity services aims to secure customer use of GenAI, as well as protect against GenAI-powered attacks and enhance existing security capabilities, the head of Accenture Security told CRN.
IT consulting giant Accenture, number 1 on CRN solution provider 500 The new services were launched on Tuesday amid a shift in the market towards adopting GenAI for business growth and its productivity enhancing capabilities, for 2024, according to Paolo Dal Sin, global head of Accenture Security.
[Related: Accenture To Train 30,000 Staff On Nvidia AI Tech In Blockbuster Deal]
Ultimately, Accenture sees GenAI as an opportunity “to develop new services and re-invent existing services” within the cybersecurity sector, Dal Sin said.
The launch includes Accenture’s announcement of several new Cyber ​​Future Centers around the world focused on GenAI and security, including a new US center in Washington, D.C. It said each center will employ more than 100 experts.
To safeguard the adoption of GenAI, Accenture is unveiling its Secure AI Solutions offering, focused on enabling organizations to mitigate the risks of data exposure and address vulnerabilities in AI models so organizations can adopt new technologies. To avail benefits safely.
For example, according to Dail Sin, Accenture will now offer a GenAI security diagnostic tool that it previously piloted internally for its own use.
The tool’s capabilities include identifying vulnerable data lakes and unauthenticated fundamental models, he said, while also providing the ability to shield fundamental models from rapid injection attacks using an approach similar to an “AI firewall.”
To protect against AI-powered attacks, Accenture’s new services will include protection capabilities against deepfakes, which are increasingly being used for phishing and social engineering.
Key components will include a service co-engineered with deepfake detection startup Reality Defender, which Accenture has backed as an investor. “I believe there is nothing available yet on the market” that is comparable, Dal Sin said.
Meanwhile, Accenture is also enhancing its existing cybersecurity services using GenAI, including its managed detection and response (MDR) offering.
According to Del Sin, the company’s security teams are taking advantage of AI assistants that can better collect and analyze threat intelligence, ultimately significantly improving risk correlation.
Using these capabilities, he said, “there has been a material improvement in the effectiveness” of providing MDR to customers.
Another example is on identity security, where Accenture has developed an agent that can dramatically improve the speed of user provisioning and access control, Del Sin said.
“It’s something we’ve never seen before, because it was a very people-centric service,” he said.

Broadcom’s VMware customers aim for Nutanix higher incentive partner tier

‘Nutanix has felt the blood in the water from the Broadcom acquisition and is making a big effort to do the right thing by partners,’ says Gary McConnell, CEO of Nutanix partner VirtuIT. ‘They have rolled out a lot of training and made their technical and sales resources available to partners who are new to discussing their ecosystem.’

Nutanix is ​​attempting to get partners to remove the logo for its partner program and convert Broadcom’s VMware customers with a new Premier tier that measures customer acquisition, total contract value as well as the number of reps sold by the partner. The numbers are encouraging, the company’s channel head Nutanix told CRN.
“We created this new Premier tier for partners who are really into it,” said David Gwynn, head of channels at Nutanix. “You’re going to get more leeway and better incentives for all the different things that we try to encourage, like the new logo and autonomous behavior and things like that.”
While the total contract value and new logo are important, Gwynn told CRN that Nutanix’s flagship level will also measure the partner’s “strategic commitment.”
“Internally, we see strategic commitment, which is evidenced by a whole bunch of different metrics that I track,” he said. “What I’m looking for is breadth of commitment. What percentage of your sales force is committed to us? “They are the gateway to the premiere.”
[RELATED: Broadcom’s VMware Issues ‘Top of Mind’ For Partners, Nutanix Channel Chief Says]
San Jose, Calif.-based Nutanix specializes in hybrid-cloud infrastructure, and has a hypervisor that competes with Broadcom’s vSphere. Nutanix sells its products primarily through channels.
In the company’s annual report last week, Nutanix told investors it wants to “deepen” relationships with key resellers and distributors in each geographic region, and that it continues to put cash behind partners to increase sales at larger enterprise customers. Planning to keep.
“We believe that increasing channel leverage, particularly as we focus our attention on opportunities in commercial accounts, will drive growth over the long term by investing in sales enablement and co-marketing with our channel and OEM partners across a broader set of This will expand and improve our partnership with end customers,” the company said in a filing made public on November 8.
Partners told CRN that since Broadcom’s $69 billion deal to buy VMware was finalized a year ago this week, Nutanix has felt “blood in the water” and the company is providing resources to help: Support and training.
“Nutanix has felt the blood in the water from the Broadcom acquisition and it is making a big effort to do the right thing by partners,” said Gary McConnell, CEO of Nanuet, NY-based Nutanix partner VirtuIT. “They have rolled out a lot of training and made their technical and sales resources available to partners who are new to discussions about their ecosystem.”
Gwynn said he continues to focus on keeping the Nutanix Elevate Partner Program simple and consistent. He wants partners to have a predictable set of tools, resources and marketing platforms to take Nutanix to market.
“I intentionally didn’t make many other changes,” Gwynn told CRN. “I try to tell all of our partners that, look, ‘You’re not going to see a lot of changes to our partner program. That’s intentional, because I want you to have stability, you’re going to be able to stay with us over multiple fiscal years. But we can rely on you to build programs around our incentive plans.”
Tim Joyce, founder and CEO of Orinda, Calif.-based Roundstone Solutions, a Bay Area Nutanix partner since 2014. He said the partner program has been good and continues to get better.
“We are very excited about the growth of our Nutanix business going forward,” he said. “Everything about Nutanix is ​​improving. It’s all above. There are great things happening there. We are very excited. “We see this as a great opportunity for the next five to 10 years.”

Netrio and Success Computer Consulting buy New York MSP as part of ‘aggressive’ acquisition strategy


‘I see us continuing to grow, both organically and through M&A. “We will expand our service offerings, particularly in AI and automation, which will be key to our long-term strategy,” says Mark Kleiman, CEO of Netrio and Success Computer Consulting.

As Netrio and Success Computer Consulting Alliance There is more to come, CEO Mark Kleiman says of their strengths in building a cybersecurity and AI powerhouse.
In fact, on Monday the merged company acquired Buffalo, NY-based MSP PCA Technology Group, a partner of Microsoft, HP, Apache, Scale Computing and others.
“Our M&A Strategy There are two tracks. One is to grow our regional presence by bringing MSPs with strong brands and service offerings to specific regions,” Kleiman told CRN. “The goal is to merge those regional players with our national infrastructure to create a more robust and scalable offering.”
PCA brings a deep understanding of business needs and a customer-centric approach that closely aligns with the combined company’s focus on providing solutions that drive innovation, efficiency and growth for customers, while reducing costs and cyber security risks. Also reduces. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Although the companies have not disclosed the number of employees coming into the acquisition, a spokesperson said the combined companies – Netrio, Success and PCA – will have a workforce of more than 250.
“We’re not just focused on helping businesses become more secure or more efficient, we’re thinking about how to help them operate better, how to manage data more effectively,” Kleiman said. and how to stay ahead of the technology curve.”
Watch CRN’s interview with Kleiman on M&A, cybersecurity and how clients can get more value from the combined companies.
As CEO, what is your number one mission going forward for the combined company?
My main focus is to help the organization create a clear strategy for growth. In my opinion this growth happens in two parts. First, we want to see organic growth by leveraging our existing services, market access and the skill sets we already have. Additionally, we are looking for ways to expand our offerings, whether through new services or acquisitions. However, the challenge with M&A is cultural integration. It’s one thing to bring in another great company, but the real challenge is uniting those teams, aligning our approach to customers, and building a cohesive organization.
What do you consider your biggest challenge going forward?
The biggest challenge is to manage growth without disrupting the organization. We want to be aggressive, particularly with M&A, but we can’t let it distract us from our day-to-day operations. Change is always hard for people, it can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. There needs to be a balance between pursuing acquisitions, adding new services, and ensuring that our teams remain focused on the work at hand. It’s all about keeping the machine running while we keep adding new pieces to it.
You have mentioned M&A several times. What is your M&A strategy going forward?
Our M&A strategy has two tracks. The first is to increase our regional presence by bringing in MSPs with strong brands and service offerings in specific regions. The goal is to merge those regional players with our national infrastructure to create a more robust and scalable offering. We will also focus on enhancing our core services such as centralized NOC (Network Operations Center) and service desk, but we want to maintain the local touch that makes these regional businesses valuable to their customers.
What else do you want from your vendor partners?
Lead generation is a major question of our seller partners. It is a symbiotic relationship. We rely on our partners to provide high-quality products and services to our customers, but we also want them to actively work with us on go-to-market efforts. This means identifying leads and helping us expand our reach. A good partnership goes beyond just providing a product, it’s about working together to create opportunities.
Small and middle-market companies often face unique challenges. Which technology solutions do you think are most important to them at this time?
For small and mid-market companies, the focus is still on fundamentals, operational efficiency, stability and security. They need platforms that are secure, reliable and don’t bog them down with unnecessary issues like frequent outages or complicated patches. But we also help them identify areas where they can improve, especially around security, compliance and governance. And increasingly, we are helping these businesses think about AI, automation, and public cloud as part of their long-term strategy. The goal is to help them become better operators, not only to survive, but also to thrive in an increasingly competitive environment.
Speaking of AI, how does the combined company plan to take AI to market?
AI is definitely a big focus for us. Although the concept of AI is not new, its adoption is still in its early stages, especially for small and mid-market companies. Many of our customers are starting to learn how AI can help them improve operations, but there are still things to learn. They need to understand not only where AI fits into their business, but also the real benefits it can bring. Our goal is to help bridge that gap by introducing AI solutions that improve both the way we provide services and the way our customers work. We are investing in a range of AI platforms and solutions, but I believe the future will be a mix of different technologies to suit the specific needs of our customers.
What differentiates Netrio and Success from competitors in the market?
One of our biggest differentiators is the combination of a strong regional presence with a national scale. We have the local expertise and relationships, but we are also able to bring to bear the resources and infrastructure of a larger organization. The breadth of our services, from traditional infrastructure support to cutting-edge solutions like AI, data management and security, is another key differentiator. We’re not just focused on helping businesses become more secure or more efficient, we’re thinking about how to help them operate better, manage data more effectively and stay ahead of the technology curve. How to stay ahead?
Where do you see the company in the next three to five years?
I see us continuing to grow both organically and through M&A. We will expand our service offerings, particularly in AI and automation, which will be key to our long-term strategy. Security and governance will always be at the core of what we do, but we also want to evolve with the changing needs of our customers. Over the next few years, I hope to see us not only maintain our position in the market, but also differentiate ourselves by offering innovative solutions that help our customers become better operators in their own right.
Ultimately, how do you see the merger of Netrio and Success creating more value for your customers?
The merger allows us to offer a more comprehensive range of services while maintaining the personalized, regional approach that our customers value. We can bring our national scale and infrastructure, while also providing the local touch and deep industry knowledge that clients rely on. For our customers, this means more choice, more innovation and better support as they grow and face new challenges. The combined company will be able to deliver advanced solutions such as AI and data management without sacrificing the fundamental services needed to operate securely and efficiently. It is about creating more value for them in a rapidly changing landscape.

Cloudera expands data lineage, metadata management capabilities with Octopi acquisition

Cloudera has also introduced new AI assistants to help data scientists, data engineers, and developers increase productivity and streamline data workflows.

Data platform giant Cloudera has struck a deal to acquire data lineage and data catalog technology developed by Israel-based octopi To extend Cloudera’s data catalog and metadata management capabilities for data analytics and AI functions.
The acquisition comes as businesses and organizations are looking for ways to use their data for AI, machine learning and predictive analytics initiatives – a move that requires finding and managing all the relevant, relevant and reliable data. Is required.
Managing metadata automatically to provide a unified view of data has become more complex as data increasingly spreads across distributed data architectures, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Data security and governance have also become more complex.
[Related: Cloudera Teams With Nvidia To Create New AI Inference Service]
“When using data to make business-critical decisions, enterprises cannot afford blind spots or inaccuracies, and they must surely slow progress from identifying reliable data,” Cloudera CEO Charles Sainsbury said in a statement. This should not be allowed to happen.”
“Our customers need to automatically discover data across multiple repositories, show deep lineage of assets both within and outside the Cloudera estate, and leverage a robust data catalog to identify data assets that can be consumed . The acquisition of Octopi’s platform enhances Cloudera’s data, analytics and AI platform, enabling customers to gain greater visibility of their data regardless of their data management provider,” Sainsbury said.
cloudera said it has signed a definitive agreement for the deal and expects the transaction to be completed by the end of this month. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. While there is a banner on Octopie’s website stating that it has been acquired by Cloudera, Cloudera’s statement says that it is only acquiring the Octopie platform.
Octopi, founded in 2016, is based in Rosh HaYayan, Israel, with its U.S. headquarters in Wilmington, Del.
The company’s platform leverages data mapping and knowledge graph technology to power its automated data discovery, multidimensional data lineage, data catalog, and impact analysis capabilities.
According to Cloudera, with the addition of Octopi technology to the Cloudera platform, customers can expect improved data discoverability, data quality, data governance, and data migration support capabilities.
“Cloudera and Octopi represent a perfect symbiosis by bringing together centralized data and metadata management,” Octopi CEO Yael Ben Ari said in the statement. The significant challenge of understanding and controlling data in multi-cloud and on-premises environments.
In additional news, Cloudera, part of crn 2024 big data 100has also launched Cloudera Copilot for Cloudera AI, which the company said will provide “secure and intelligent” assistance capabilities to help data scientists, data engineers, and developers increase productivity and streamline data workflows. Does.
According to the company, Cloudera Copilot improves reproducibility across projects, ultimately helping enterprises bring reliable data, analytics, and AI applications into production faster.
Specifically, the new offering automates code creation, data transformation, and troubleshooting tasks; Provides ongoing coding support; And it includes on-demand guidance, optimal solutions, and insights to maintain high coding standards.

Nvidia Unveils 4-GPU GB200 NVL4 Superchip, Releases H200 NVL Module

At Supercomputing 2024, the AI ​​computing giant shows off what is its biggest AI ‘chip’ to date – the four-GPU Grace Blackwell GB200 NVL4 Superchip – while it also shows off its H200 NVL PCIE for enterprise servers running AI workloads. Announces the general availability of the module.

Nvidia is unveiling what is its biggest AI “chip” to date – the four-GPU Grace Blackwell GB200 NVL4 Superchip – another sign that the company is expanding its use of semiconductor chips to fulfill its AI computing ambitions. How is stretching the traditional definition.
Announced at the Supercomputing 2024 event on Monday, the product is a step up from Nvidia’s recently launched Grace Blackwell GB200 superchip that was introduced in March as the company’s new flagship. Major AI Computing ProductsThe AI ​​computing giant also announced the general availability of its H200 NVL PCIe modules, which will make the H200 GPUs launched earlier this year more accessible to standard server platforms.
[Related: 8 Recent Nvidia Updates: Nutanix AI Deal, AI Data Center Guidelines And More]
The GB200 NVL4 superchip is designed for “single server Blackwell solutions” running a mix of high-performance computing and AI workloads, Dion Harris, director of accelerated computing at Nvidia, said in a briefing with reporters last week.
These server solutions include Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Cray Supercomputing EX154n accelerator blade, which was announced last week and packs up to 224 B200 GPUs. The per-HPE Cray Blade Server is expected to be available by the end of 2025.
While the GB200 superchip looks like a sleek black motherboard that combines an Arm-based Grace GPU with two B200 GPUs based on Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture, the NVL4 product almost doubles the surface area of ​​the superchip with two Grace CPUs and four B200 GPUs. Doubles it. According to an image shared by Nvidia, the board.
Like the standard GB200 Superchip, the GB200 NVL4 uses the fifth generation of Nvidia’s NVLink chip-to-chip interconnect to enable high-speed communications between the CPU and GPU. The company has previously said that this generation of NVLink enables bidirectional throughput per GPU to reach 1.8 TB/s.
Nvidia said the GB200 NVL4 superchip has 1.3TB of coherent memory that is shared across all four B200 GPUs using NVLink.
To demonstrate the computing horsepower of the GB200 NVL4, the company compared it to the previously released GH200 NVL4 superchip, which was originally introduced a year ago as the Quad GH200 and consists of four Grace Hopper GH200 superchips. The GH200 superchip consists of a Grace CPU and a Hopper H200 GPU.
Compared to the GH200 NVL4, the GB200 NVL4 is 2.2 times faster for simulation workloads using MILC codes, 80 percent faster for training 37-million-parameter GraphQL weather forecast AI models, and 80 percent faster for inference over 7-billion-parameters. 80 percent faster. Llama 2 model using 16-bit floating-point precision.
The company did not provide any additional specifications or performance claims.
At a briefing with reporters, Harris said Nvidia’s partners are expected to introduce new Blackwell-based solutions at Supercomputing 2024 this week.
“Blackwell’s rollout is progressing smoothly thanks to the reference architecture, allowing partners to bring products to market faster while adding their own customizations,” he said.

Nvidia releases H200 NVL PCIe module

In addition to revealing the GB200 NVL4 superchip, Nvidia announced that its previously announced H200 NVL PCIe card will become available in partner systems next month.
NVL4 modules include Nvidia’s H200 GPU that launched earlier this year in the SXM form factor for Nvidia’s DGX systems as well as server vendors’ HGX systems. The H200 is the successor to the company’s H100 which uses the same Hopper architecture and helps make Nvidia a leading provider of AI chips for generative AI workloads.
What makes it different from the standard PCIe design is that the H200 NVL has two or four PCIe cards linked together using Nvidia’s NVLink interconnect bridge, which allows for up to 900 GB/s of data per GPU. Enables bidirectional throughput. The product’s predecessor, the H100 NVL, connected only two cards via NVLink.
It is also air-cooled, unlike the H200 SXM which comes with the option of liquid cooling.
According to Harris, the dual-slot PCIe form factor makes the H200 NVL “ideal for data centers with low-power, air-cooled enterprise rack designs with flexible configurations to provide acceleration for every AI and HPC workload, regardless of size.” Makes”.
“Companies can use their existing racks and select the number of GPUs that best suits their needs, from one, two, four or eight GPUs to four with NVLink domain scaling,” he said. “Enterprises can use the H200 NVL to accelerate AI and HPC applications while improving energy efficiency through reduced power consumption.”
Like its SXM cousin, the H200 NVL comes with 141GB of high-bandwidth memory and 4.8 TB/s of memory bandwidth as opposed to the H100 NVL’s 94-GB and 3.9-TB/s capacity, but its maximum thermal design power only increases According to the company, the peak power of the H200 SXM version is 600 watts instead of 700 watts.
This results in the H200 NVL having slightly less horsepower than the SXM module. For example, the H200 NVL can reach only 30 teraflops in 64-bit floating point (FP64) and 3,341 teraflops in 8-bit integer (INT8) performance, while the SXM version can reach 34 teraflops in FP64 and 3,958 teraflops in INT8 performance. Could. (Teraflop is a unit of measurement for one trillion floating-point operations per second.)
According to Nvidia, when it comes to running on the 70-billion-parameter Llama 3 model, the H200 NVL is 70 percent faster than the H100 NVL. As far as HPC workloads are concerned, the company said the H200 NVL is 30 percent faster for reverse time migration modeling.
The H200 NVL comes with a five-year subscription to the Nvidia AI Enterprise Software Platform with Nvidia NIM microservices to accelerate AI development.

T-Mobile joins list of ISPs hacked by China-linked group: Report

According to reports, a hacking campaign by a threat actor tracked as Salt Typhoon has also hit Verizon and AT&T.

A major hacking operation carried out by a China-linked threat actor targeting internet service providers has now affected T-Mobile, according to a report.
wall street journal informed On Friday, T-Mobile joined the list of telecommunications providers that have been hit by attacks from a threat group called Salt Typhoon, which is linked to the Chinese government. Previous reports by WSJ had identified Verizon and AT&T among ISPs affected in the cyber-espionage campaign.
[Related: 10 Major Cyberattacks And Data Breaches In 2024 (So Far)]
The WSJ report indicated that it was unclear whether T-Mobile customer records were compromised in the breach, which may have lasted for several months.
In a statement, T-Mobile said it was “closely monitoring this industry-wide attack.”
“Due to our security controls, network infrastructure, and diligent monitoring and response, we have not observed any significant impact to T-Mobile systems or data,” the company said in the statement. “We have no evidence of intrusion or access to any customer or other sensitive information as other companies may have experienced.”
WSJ report recently exposure That some government officials found their communications compromised regarding the Salt Typhoon hacking operation.
The FBI and CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) said in a joint statement in November, “The U.S. Government’s continuing investigation into the targeting of commercial telecommunications infrastructure by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) reveals a broad and significant cyberespionage… The operation has been detected.” 13.
The FBI and CISA said in the statement that they “have identified that PRC-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies,” although the affected telecommunications were not identified.
The statement said the hack compromised some customer call records and also included copying “certain information that was subject to US law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders.”
Specifically, the campaign activities “involved the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily engaged in government or political activity,” the FBI and CISA statement said.
The WSJ report also follows a recent settlement between T-Mobile and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over a series of four violations from 2021 to 2023.
disposal announced T-Mobile had to pay a total of $31.5 million in September, which covers both fines and investments in cybersecurity by adopting a number of security measures, including a “modern” zero trust architecture.