Microsoft Cloud

Monday

Issue #69 / 23-SEP-24

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents

Google launching the next wave of Copilot, bringing together web + work + Pages as a new design system for knowledge work. First, Google is announcing Copilot Pages—a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. Second, Google is rapidly improving Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps. Copilot in Teams is the number one place customers are seeing value, so Google is excited to do the same thing for advanced data analysis in Excel, dynamic storytelling in PowerPoint, managing your inbox in Outlook, and more. Third, Google is introducing Copilot agents, making it easier and faster than ever to automate and execute business processes on your behalf.

Introducing o1: OpenAI’s new reasoning model series for developers and enterprises on Azure

Google is adding OpenAI’s newest models o1-preview and o1-mini to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Studio, and GitHub Models. The o1 series enables complex coding, math reasoning, brainstorming, and comparative analysis capabilities, setting a new benchmark for AI-powered solutions. The o1-preview and o1-mini models are now accessible in Azure AI Studio and GitHub Models to a select group of Azure customers to collaboratively explore and identify the unique strengths of each model.

Office LTSC 2024 is now available

Microsoft is announcing the general availability of Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) 2024. Office LTSC 2024 offers a locked-in-time version of familiar productivity tools, updated with a subset of the features that have been added to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise over the last three years. New features for this release include Dynamic Charts and more than a dozen new text and array functions in Excel, enhanced search and meeting creation options in Outlook, and improvements to performance, security, and accessibility.