microsoft office 365 case study

• IT Management
• Communications

Moving to the Cloud: A Microsoft Office 365 Case Study

Levick , a leading strategic communications firm, employs about sixty people in its offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

The entire staff used versions of Microsoft’s Office suite ranging from Office 2003 to Office 2010. The company stored documents on a central file server with no versioning capability, and when employees needed to collaborate on a document, they emailed it back and forth. The process was cumbersome and inefficient; something had to change.

The Small Business IT Challenge: Introduce efficient document sharing and manage Office more easily.

When a new IT director, Kate Tikoian, arrived at the company, she recognized the need for a more effective method for document collaboration. Employees also used a combination of Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 beta software, and these licenses needed rationalizing to make training and support more straightforward.

The Small Business IT Solution: Move to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 suite.

“I believe in forward thinking, so I made the decision to move to Microsoft Office 365 ,” said Tikoian. “We also started testing Microsoft’s SharePoint online to provide a better way of sharing documents.”

Before moving to Office 365, Tikoian considered Google Apps, but decided to stick with the Microsoft Office product that her colleagues were familiar with. “If we had moved to Google Apps, then our staff, who are used to the look and functionality of Microsoft products, would have faced a significant learning curve, and the feature set would have been less robust,” she said.

She added that Office 365’s administration capabilities are far better than those available for Google Docs. “You still have fully featured management consoles and can customize just about everything in the 365 cloud that you could if you deployed the software on-premises,” she said. “Most other services offer dumbed-down admin features,” she added.

Implementing Office 365

Before starting to switch employees from the traditional desktop Office suite to Office 365, Tikoian spent several weeks talking to staff members to understand how they worked and to allay any misgivings they had about moving to the new system. Microsoft IT solutions partner New Signature assisted in the planning, implementation, and migration.

The change happened gradually, with most employees migrated to Office 365, and the commonly used templates and documents moved from Levick’s file server to SharePoint online. “SharePoint replaced the old file server and added document management—as well as collaboration capabilities, an intranet and client portals. Those were the things that people were slower to adopt,” remarked Tikoian.

After a few weeks, everyone had moved over to Office 365’s office productivity applications, SharePoint Online was up and running, and the employees who needed it also had access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. A few staff members were also using Microsoft’s Lync instant messaging, voice over IP, and video conferencing client, which, along with Lync Online, is also included as part of Office 365 Enterprise E3.

Initially, the company did not opt for Office 365’s Exchange Online capabilities, but Tikoian said plans to move over to that at some point in the future. “My senior executives were skeptical about migrating email to the cloud, because they had so many issues with email migrations under my predecessors,” she explained. “I migrate to Office 365 slowly so that I had time to show them how seamlessly we could migrate and how reliably and easily we could access our information stored there.”

Benefits of Migrating to Microsoft Office 365

One of the main benefits to using Office 365 is the ability to access Office 365 applications and documents from anywhere, Tikoian said. “We don’t have an official BYOD program, but employees want to use any device they choose. And nearly 10 percent of our staff use Macs as well,” she added. Since the interface is relatively consistent regardless of the device used to access Office 365 applications, Levick employees didn’t need additional training for different devices or operating systems.

As another benefit, SharePoint provides a central repository for documents and a way of sharing them with version and access controls. The previous method of emailing documents to colleagues made it very hard to keep track of which document was the most up-to-date, and resulted in a very large amount of data being stored on the company’s email server, Tikoian said.

Moving to Office 365 has resulted in considerable financial savings, Tikoian said. Purchasing conventional Office licenses for Levick’s staff would have cost the equivalent of six years’ subscription to Office 365. “That would have been an up-front cost, rather than a cost spread over time. And with Office 365, we always have the most up-to-date software.”

The company has also saved more than $30,000 by using SharePoint as a document repository instead of paying for a new file server (as the old one needed replacing), operating system and client access license fees, and the cost of running a backup system, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions.

 “All in all, we were paying something like $1.75 per GB per month for our offsite backup file storage before,” said Tikoian. “Now that we store our documents in the 365 cloud, we don’t paying for backups or anything else. It costs about one eighth as much as before to keep our data in the cloud.”

For other companies considering a move to Office 365, Tikoian recommends working with a Microsoft solutions partner to ensure that the migration goes smoothly. But in her experience, the change can be made fairly easily and without disruption.

Problems Moving to Microsoft Office 365

Her only reservation is with the quality of the free support that Microsoft provides for Office 365, specifically for Dynamics CRM Online. “It’s improving, but it can be a little frustrating. It takes them a pretty long chunk of time to resolve an issue, and I am not inclined to solely rely on it. That could potentially be a drawback for a smaller company that doesn’t have its own IT staff.”

 Important Takeaways

• Take the time to understand how your employees work, both individually and collaboratively, before you make the move
• For small and mid-sized companies, work with a Microsoft solutions partner, if possible, to get assistance with the design, implementation, and migration
• Be aware of potential support issues when moving to the cloud

Office 365 Pricing Details

• Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus and Office 365 Enterprise E3: $12 and $20 per user, per month (plus $.20/GB for SharePoint Storage)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online: $44 per user per month

Paul Rubens is a technology journalist and contributor to Enterprise Networking Planet, ServerWatch and Enterprise Mobile Today. He has also covered technology for international newspapers and magazines, including The Economist and the Financial Times, since 1991.

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Accenture’s journey to Microsoft 365

• Call for Change
• When Tech Meets Human Ingenuity
• A Valuable Difference
• Meet the Team
• Related Capabilities

Call for change

Enabling our global workforce of hundreds of thousands of employees around the world to be fully empowered to work seamlessly is crucial to the services we at Accenture deliver. Our people need leading capabilities to unleash their ingenuity to help clients harness change with technology. And, we need to be conscious of our impact on the environment as we do it.

To address this need, our global IT organization has been implementing a program of enabling employees with cloud-based capabilities, leading applications and tools, collaboration capabilities and mobile apps that provide expanded options to work from anywhere on any device with consistent functionality and experiences.

At the core of our program is Microsoft 365 including Office applications, Teams , OneDrive for Business, Exchange and SharePoint, supported by several security products. These products and services keep our organization productive anywhere, whether working remotely at home or at client sites. Getting to this point involved migrating from legacy on-premise environments, moving to the cloud and building new capabilities on our foundation.

When tech meets human ingenuity

Enabling Microsoft 365 for any company is a unique process. For Accenture, typically an early adopter, our journey was based on embracing leading technology to transform how we work. We moved to the cloud at a time when cloud-based offerings were just emerging, optimized for scale and speed, and focused on employee productivity.

Once in the cloud, we put the fundamental capabilities in place. As Microsoft services matured, we implemented a series of subsequent transformations that supported our  digital worker vision  and  elastic workplace strategy . These included projects that achieved Accenture-wide scale and speed as well as the adoption of new security features.

A key enabler of our digital worker vision is OneDrive for Business. Cloud storage lets employees access files regardless of the device they are using. Access is available through company-provided PCs and personal devices, including tablets and mobile phones using Microsoft’s  Intune  mobile application management (MAM) solution. OneDrive also played a role in our innovative In-Place Upgrade tool that accelerated Accenture’s deployment of Windows 10 at scale.

Accenture employees now take advantage of capabilities that include Teams, OneDrive for Business,  Power BI , Planner, Power Apps, Power Automate and others as they are released. These capabilities support Accenture’s digital worker vision of providing capabilities that are integrated and seamless, increase productivity and enable employees to work from anywhere, anytime, and do it sustainably.

“As companies, including Accenture, face change in our world, it creates an opportunity to reimagine their organizations with Microsoft technologies to transform how people work.” — KAREN ODEGAARD , Managing Director – Global IT, Digital Worker Technology, Accenture

Forging future value

Today, we are building on the foundational Microsoft 365 capabilities we have put in place and driving further value from our investments by adding new capabilities and enhancing the digital experience. We have pivoted to performing ongoing releases versus implementing major upgrades.

Initiatives we are undertaking include:

Expanding Teams as a platform.  We are  expanding Teams  from a chat and conferencing tool to a digital cockpit where work gets done by bringing more custom and third-party application integrations directly into Teams. For example, our people can embed Power BI reports and Planner to-do’s in Teams. They can use custom apps, such as CALM (CAL + Machine) that delivers in-context insights, such as financial filings or Twitter news, to our Client Account Leads (CALS). Another app is Accenture Pilot for quickly looking up Accenture people. We have rolled out 30 apps to date, with more planned.

We are also planning to launch a full AI-driven support experience that handles all employee support requests via our  ServiceNow  integration. We’re also integrating Salesforce into Teams to enable stronger collaboration with clients and provide customer insights. And, we have published apps and starter kits for our new Human Capital Management platform, Workday. In short, our aim with Teams is to create a single, consolidated place to work.

Developing a bots ecosystem.  We are empowering Accenture teams to develop custom bots to provide relevant information at the time of need without leaving Teams while at the same time establishing the necessary governance to protect and improve the end-user experience. Our Ask @Accenture bot, for example, is an Accenture universal bot pinned of all employees’ left navigation bar in Teams. This bot launched with a rich Q&A experience, but quickly evolved to be an employee’s digital twin that can start to assist them with rich context on topics at point of need.

Our COVID-19 Response Bot was used to automatically check in daily with more than 90,000 employees who had quickly pivoted to working from home. It checked on their technology enablement status and initiated assistance for laptop, internet connection or other technology issues.

Enabling citizen app development.  To help meet the growing demand for app-based solutions, we are putting more power in the hands of users by deploying low/no-code platforms such as Power Apps and Power Automate and establishing the required governance. This option is intended to reduce shadow IT, accelerate time to market and increase the productivity of individuals and teams. Non-IT Accenture “citizen developers” will have the freedom to develop their own applications with no or minimal writing of code while remaining in compliance with legal and security requirements.

Analytics.  As these tools become a greater part of how employees get work done, analytics hold the potential to provide insights to the individual (e.g., “MyAnalytics”). Analytics can help shed light in knowing what ways of working are most effective, where to focus change and adoption efforts, and how to identify and address potential burnout through wellness initiatives.

Artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML).  We are taking advantage of the power of Microsoft Graph combined with AI and ML to make employees more productive through capabilities like surfacing key documents at time of need, automating workflows through intelligent content processing, and enhancing search capabilities by using tools like Delve and SharePoint Syntex.

Security.  Microsoft 365 provides a single, integrated platform to enable a more holistic approach to security. We are using multiple security products including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender for O365, Data Loss Protection (DLP), and Advanced Threat Analytics, among others. These tools help protect Accenture from malicious attacks, provide advanced monitoring and analytics to identify and investigate potential threats, and provide end-to-end visibility and controls across the full suite of Microsoft 365 products. They minimize the need for individual third-party security tools that are typically limited to individual products (e.g., email).

Environmental Sustainability.  A key benefit of working with the Microsoft 365 product suite is the opportunity it presents to run our business sustainably. Through central policies and product features, we are able to limit data growth and in turn minimize energy consumption from the hardware storing our data. Furthermore, as this data is stored in the cloud, we can rely on Microsoft’s commitment to using renewable energy and increased efficiency in its data centers to support our commitments to reduce our environmental footprint.

Lessons learned

Through our experiences in deploying Microsoft, we have captured a few critical components an organization should have in place to manage the Microsoft 365 service effectively. These include:

• Plan with an eye toward the future to support what is now a quickly evolving platform.
• Have a team and processes in place to manage the ongoing rollout of updates and new features instead of planning large updates every few years.
• Have a focused change management approach to support employees along this journey. Technologies that introduce capabilities that foundationally change the way people work require company-wide change and adoption programs to ensure that new deployments are embraced. Through the various stages of Accenture’s Microsoft 365 journey, our global IT organization has applied  leading and innovative approaches  to engage our global workforce to adopt technology change.
• As the data privacy landscape evolves, seek guidance early and often for new products and features particularly for companies with a footprint in Europe.

A valuable difference

Accenture is experiencing the value of Microsoft 365 in many ways. Most notably, Microsoft 365 offers leading ways of working, enabling Accenture people to do their jobs efficiently and effectively—all at massive enterprise scale. In addition, a cloud-based approach enables easy activation of new capabilities and internet-based Office connectivity. OneDrive for Business gives our people new productivity features they want, improves our security posture, reduces our environmental footprint and enables cost savings.

By positioning Accenture in the cloud, we have been able to seamlessly scale and be secure at the same time—with no concerns about infrastructure capacity. This was the case as Accenture doubled in headcount with the addition of 250,000 employees over several years and did not experience any scale issues. This transformation has allowed us to grow our business, be more productive and confirm that we can still meet our ambitious environmental commitments.

It was also the case when the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. We were able to swiftly respond and transition our business to one where our people work from home. Already among the world’s largest users of Teams, Accenture’s Teams volume grew four-fold. And, it happened for the most part seamlessly without disruption.

As with most IT initiatives today, our efforts are ongoing. We continue to enhance services that add value and further enable Accenture’s digital worker vision that Microsoft 365 enables.

Microsoft 365 outcomes as of December 2020:

Savings on Exchange and SharePoint costs, a combination of infrastructure and operations savings

Savings per user moving to lower-cost software profiles with browser-based versions of Office

Workstations deployed

Files stored in OneDrive for Business

Of data in OneDrive for Business

Teams video minutes/month

SharePoint sites

Meet the team

Karen Odegaard

Tony Leraris

Grant Gengelbach

Chad Sylwester

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Pickit Case Study

Visual media company pickit adds thousands to its customer base through the global reach of microsoft appsource, early integration.

Pickit built its business around helping people create impactful presentations and stunning slides. Early on, it decided to integrate its technology with Office 365 applications in order to reach a broader cross section of workers.

Expansion plans

Seeking to expand its audience and push its business to new heights, Pickit turned to Microsoft AppSource, where partners all over the world list their apps and reach potential customers.

Impressive success

Through AppSource and the Microsoft Office Store, Pickit swelled its following to more than 47,000 customers across more than 180 countries. Moreover, the success was simple: Pickit achieved this feat without salespeople.

Pickit improves presentations and works with image bank assets

Pickit, a visual media company based in Visby, Sweden, offers free images, icons, and illustrations through its Office 365 add-in, enabling users to build impactful presentations. People using Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Teams can quickly enhance their documents with legally cleared visual elements via the add-in instead of scouring websites and search engines for royalty-free images.

When Pickit began, it acquired its images through crowdsourcing. “As we learned more about Microsoft Office users and their needs, we started to contract niche stock image providers to aggregate content that fits perfectly with the usage in PowerPoint and Word,” said Rob Dysell, Chief Marketing Officer for Pickit.

Pickit now offers access to more than 10 million photos in its library, but companies also can use Pickit with their own image banks. Thus, employees can share approved company assets in addition to slide designs and photos from the Pickit library.

Microsoft AppSource provides a pipeline to customers

Eager to build momentum, Pickit worked with Microsoft to make its add-in available through Microsoft AppSource. After deep linking was employed and Pickit synchronized its Azure Table data with HubSpot, traffic and customers rolled in.

“Today we have over 47,000 companies and customers using our add-in in over 180 countries,” Dysell said. “They are all managed through automated marketing and product, so no salespeople are involved. They are all from Microsoft AppSource and the Office Store.”

Through its services and association with Microsoft, Pickit has gained not just legions of customers, but fans, winning the People's Choice Award at Microsoft’s 2018 Office App Awards. It also was recognized in the Best User Experience category, placing third. Microsoft judges based that award on the ease of Office 365 integration and how well each app enhanced business productivity and user experience. The People‘s Choice category was determined by user votes.

“Our business was tailored and built for the Microsoft ecosystem,” Dysell said. “Microsoft gives us two things of major importance: distribution and trust.”

“Today we have over 47,000 companies and customers using our add-in in over 180 countries. They are all managed through automated marketing and product, so no salespeople are involved. They are all from Microsoft AppSource and the Office Store.”

-rob dysell, chief marketing officer, pickit, learn about microsoft go-to-market services.

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Office 365 Education

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Eligible institutions can sign up for Office 365 Education for the classroom at no cost, including online Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Copilot, plus additional classroom tools.

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We then saw a major increase in student attendance once we had trained the parents on how to use Microsoft Teams. This helped them better support their children in their learning activities, and keep track of their engagement, progress, grades, and homework. – Omer Faheem: Head of Education Technology, The City School Network

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Includes the web-based version of these apps.

Office apps

• Microsoft Outlook
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Services and Values

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Value for students

• Work together with real-time coauthoring, autosaving, and easy sharing in your favorite web apps, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
• Stay on top of your email with Outlook for the web and a 50 GB mailbox. 1
• Leverage Microsoft Teams, your digital hub that integrates the conversations, calls, content, and apps your school needs to be more collaborative and engaged.
• Improve learning outcomes with built-in accessibility features and Learning Tools that support reading, writing, math, and communication.
• Keep organized with OneNote, your digital notebook.
• Stay connected with Class Teams and OneNote Notebooks.
• Take authentic assessments with Forms.
• Enable digital storytelling with Sway.
• Never run out of space with unlimited personal cloud storage. 2
• Create professional-looking, educational diagrams with Visio for the web.

All the features in A1 plus full access to the Office desktop apps and additional management and security tools.

• Microsoft Publisher (PC only)
• Microsoft Access (PC only)
• Microsoft Bookings

Includes all the value for students in A1, plus

• Install Office apps on up to five tablets and five phones per user. 3
• Install Office apps on up to five tablets and five phones per user. 4

All the features in A3 plus Microsoft’s best-in-class intelligent security management, advanced compliance, and analytics systems.

• Microsoft Power BI

Includes all the value for students in A3, plus:

• Microsoft's best-in-class security management.
• Advanced compliance systems.
• Advanced analytics systems.

Values for teachers

• Stay connected with your colleagues with Class, Staff, and PLC Teams and OneNote Notebooks.
• Conduct and take authentic assessments with Forms.

Value for faculty and staff:

• Inform and engage with communication sites and team sites throughout your intranet using SharePoint.
• Support compliance with solutions from the unified eDiscovery center.
• Stay protected with rights management, data loss prevention, and encryption.
• Create, manage, and share videos securely across your school with enterprise video service.
• Develop apps without writing code to extend business data quickly with custom web and mobile apps.
• Utilize workflow automation across apps and services to automate business processes without writing code.
• Communicate easily with HD video conferencing.
• Unlimited email storage with in-place archiving.
• Get advanced email with archiving and legal hold.
• Maximum number of users: unlimited. 
• Create, edit, and collaborate on business processes and communicate them visually to students and teachers.   

Includes all the value for teachers in A1, plus:

• Install the Office desktop apps on up to five PCs or Macs per user. 3

Includes all the value for faculty and staff in A1, plus

• Host meetings for up to 10,000 people with Microsoft Teams live events.
• Help assess risk and gain insight into potential threats with Office 365 Cloud App Security.
• Let parents or guardians and students schedule appointments with faculty online using Microsoft Bookings.
• Gain insight into advanced personal analytics with Microsoft Viva Insights (personal insights).

Includes all the value for teachers in A3, plus:

Includes all the value for faculty and staff in A3, plus:

• Control how support accesses your mailbox with Customer Lockbox.
• Protect against sophisticated threats like phishing and zero-day malware with the ability to investigate and remediate attacks post breach.
• See advanced personal and organizational analytics with Microsoft Viva Insights personal analytics and Power BI Pro.
• Get enhanced visibility and control of your Office 365 environment.
• Create meetings with a dial-in number that attendees can join by telephone with Audio Conferencing.
• Make, receive, and transfer calls across a wide range of devices with an option to add Calling Plan. Learn more .
• Plan schedules and daily tasks with Microsoft Teams.
• Get email with 100 GB mailbox. 1
• Take advantage of unlimited personal cloud storage. 2

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Frequently asked questions

You can use the plan as long as you are working at a qualified school. Your eligibility may be re-verified at any time. When your Office 365 Education plan expires:

• The Office applications enter a reduced-functionality mode, which means that you can view documents, but you cannot edit or create new documents.
• Online services associated with the school email address—for example, Office Online and OneDrive—will no longer work.
• If your plan expires, you can extend your plan by re-verifying your status as an educator, or by moving to an Office 365 personal plan.

In many cases, the response time is instantaneous through an automated verification process. In other cases where an institution needs to be verified, it may take up to a month to confirm eligibility. If you are nearing the end of your 30-day trial and have not received approval of eligibility, please contact customer support .

Office provides a range of options for students, so it’s easy to find one to fit your budget. Learn about ways you can get Office.

Microsoft 365 builds on top of Office 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook and provides enhanced management, security, and compliance tools. Learn more about Microsoft 365

The OneDrive account is assigned to you but associated with the school and should be used for school-appropriate content. Permissions and access can be changed by the school’s IT administrator at any time.

Office 365 Education is individually licensed for use only by the eligible teacher. If you have colleagues who want to use Office 365 Education, they can get their own license on the Office 365 Education webpage .

To install Office 365 Education, your PC or Mac must meet the minimum system requirements. View the system requirements .

View the migration guide for: Windows 10 | Windows 8.1 | Windows 7 | Mac

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Designed for sellers, Copilot for Sales brings sales data and insights in the flow of work to help sellers save time, focus on customers, and close more deals. Copilot for Sales is experienced within Microsoft 365 and connects directly to Dynamics and Salesforce CRMs for real-time data and updates.

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Adoption Manager

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is a seller experience application that uses Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams to automatically capture, access, and register data into any customer relationship management (CRM) system. By enriching the data set with customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 and the power of AI, Copilot for Sales empowers sellers with sales intelligence that helps them deeply understand their customers for faster deal closure.

To  understand the vision for Microsoft Copilot business, we recommend starting  with  Satya Nadella’s announcement and  the resources below, then click through to see tailored resources for specific roles.

In addition, we have curated a selection of training resources to assist users in boosting their sales performance with Copilot for Sales.

Driving adoption is a human centric action, an ongoing user and stakeholder engagement process. Use the resources below as a starting point and check back as we are constantly creating new assets to help you drive healthy usage in your organization.

We are entering a new era of AI, one that is fundamentally changing how we relate to and benefit from technology. IT Professionals and admins play a critical role in an organization’s ability to prepare for and leverage the power of AI.   ​

Check out our technical documentation to  find the most up-to-date information on technical requirements, policies, enabling users, and reporting.

In addition, here are several other resources that have been specifically selected to help IT Pros and admins start this exciting journey.

What’s new in Copilot for Sales

Catch up on what’s new on our blog, read our microsoft ignite 2023 announcements, watch our microsoft inspire 2023 announcements, other copilot experiences, microsoft copilot.

Gain the advantage of being able to answer questions based on today’s information.

Copilot for Microsoft 365

Find news and resources to drive healthy Copilot usage across Microsoft 365.

Copilot Studio

Customize Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 or build your own copilot experiences.

GitHub Copilot

Bring AI coding assistance into every step of the developer workflow.

Join the community

Explore adoption resources for other products.

Microsoft Teams

Become a Champion

Join our Microsoft 365 Champion Program.

Provide on-demand training for employees.

Validate your skills

Become a Service Adoption Specialist.

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Semantic Kernel

The latest news from the Semantic Kernel team for developers

New LinkedIn Learning Course on Semantic Kernel Fundamentals

Build 2024 Recap: Bridging the chasm between your ML and app devs

Announcing the Release of Semantic Kernel Python 1.0.0

Announcing the General Availability of Semantic Kernel for Java

Semantic Kernel Time Plugin with Python

Use semantic kernel to create a restaurant bookings sample with python, connect logic apps’ 1,400 connectors to semantic kernel.

Meet the Semantic Kernel Team at Microsoft BUILD

Customer Case Study: Fujitsu Composite AI and Semantic Kernel

Use semantic kernel to create a restaurant bookings sample with .net.

Special Features

Vendor voice.

More layoffs at Microsoft: What's really going on here?

We had a record quarter, so sorry to see you go.

Analysis Microsoft plans to lay off about 1,000 people across the tech giant, despite what CEO Satya Nadella described during the corporation's April earnings call as "a record third quarter."

While reports have suggested Microsoft would cut as many 1,500 people just from its Azure for Operators group, The Register has been told that number is not accurate and is inflated.

We understand that the layoffs are spread out across more business units, including the company's Mixed Reality group, which we understand was restructured on Monday. We're told the business intends to continue working on the Defense Department's IVAS program , its Mixed Reality hardware, and HoloLens 2 kit.

"Organizational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Register in an email. "We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners."

The job cuts are about half the number Microsoft made in January, three months after completing its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In December, Microsoft's LinkedIn cut about 400 jobs, per a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) in California. A WARN issued in Washington State in September 2023 tells of 276 people laid off from Microsoft. And at the start of 2023, the Windows biz let go of about 10,000 people.

During Microsoft's FY24 Q3 earnings call, Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss asked Microsoft executives to discuss the mega-corp's AI spending. He said there's "a lot of excitement in the marketplace around generative AI and the potential of these technologies, but there’s also a lot of investment going on behind them. It looks like Microsoft is on track to ramp Capex over 50 percent year-on-year this year to over $50 billion."

Nadella responded that the spending will continue, explaining: "We have been doing what is essentially capital allocation to be a leader in AI for multiple years now. And we plan to sort of essentially keep taking that forward."

According to CFO Amy Hood, "Capital expenditures including finance leases were $14 billion to support our cloud demand inclusive of the need to scale our AI infrastructure." A decade ago, Microsoft's quarterly capex was more like $1.2 billion. And such spending has soared in the past few years.

Faced with greater expenses, Microsoft is cutting costs, which in this case means getting rid of employees. While there's an ongoing debate about the extent to which AI will eliminate jobs and create new ones, the expense of developing AI products already appears to have employment consequences.

• Meta algorithms push Black people more toward expensive universities, study finds
• Cisco wields axe again as results season swings around
• Google to relocate some US jobs to India and Mexico
• Microsoft partners with labor unions to shape and regulate AI

Last month, global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that the tech industry in April continued to lead other industries in job cuts, though these were down 58 percent from the same period a year earlier. The firm said "cost cutting" is the leading reason given for layoffs this year, followed by "restructuring."

"Artificial Intelligence was cited for 800 job cuts in April, the highest total since Challenger first tracked job cuts for this reason in May of 2023, when 3,900 cuts were cut due to this reason," the firm said. "Since then, companies cut 5,430 job cuts due to AI, either because the companies were pivoting to developing it or because it replaced tasks and roles."

Microsoft accused of tracking kids with education software

The website Layoffs.fyi reports that in 2024 so far, tech firms have laid off almost 90,000 people, at a time when the US economy is adding jobs. Last month, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said that in April, the US added 175,000 nonfarm jobs, down from about 303,000 jobs added in March.

According to an analysis by the Associated Press, the pay of CEOs running companies in the S&P 500 rose 13 percent last year and the median pay of a CEO was $16.3 million.

Workers in the private sector saw a more modest wage increase of 4.1 percent. Half of the CEOs surveyed made at least 196 times the wages of their median employee, the AP report said, up from 185 times median employee wages in last year's survey.

Nadella was paid about $48.5 million in 2023 and the median employee compensation was $193,770 per year.

Measured in executives, Microsoft is laying off about four Nadellas. ®

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June 2024 Newsletter

Congratulations to the Class of 2024!

Congratulations to all our graduates! Nearly four hundred graduates were recognized on Friday, May 17 to join nearly one thousand Master's and doctoral students who earned their degrees in August 2023, January 2024, and May 2024! May your next journeys continue to be amazing!

Coverage of Commencement

Later this summer, videos of both our diploma ceremony and Convocation (held on Wednesday, May 15) will be posted to the University's YouTube channel. If you got your picture taken by the professional photographers during Commencement,  GradImages  will be reaching out to you in the coming weeks.

Register for Summer and Fall Classes!

If you haven't yet, register now for Summer and Fall through  SIS ! Be sure to talk with your advisor and check SIS for any holds that may prevent registration.

Summer 2024 Graduation

Are you almost ready to graduate? The deadline to apply to graduate this summer is Friday, June 7. You can find graduation information with  detailed requirements here .  All final materials  are due July 19 and degrees will be awarded on August 16. Students who graduate in August will be invited to return for Commencement in May 2025.

Please note : If you applied to graduate in spring 2024 but did not complete all requirements you  must  apply again this semester.

Summer Waiver of Registration

Missed last semester's deadline to apply to graduate? If you've completed all graduation requirements, but did not meet the spring graduation deadline, you may be eligible to waive class registration for summer. Here's how: 

• Submit all final materials for your degree as  listed here , including the Waiver of Registration form (included in the downloadable file).
• International students must have the waiver of registration electronically signed by  International Student Services  (ISS).

The waiver of registration deadline is Friday, June 7. Once completed and signed please email the form along with all your other final graduation materials to your program coordinator in SGS directly or to  [email protected] .

Summer Course Withdrawal

If you are enrolled in a course this summer and need to withdraw, review the  Summer 2024 Enrollment Dates + Deadlines page  (scroll down to the Grad section) to confirm the last possible day to do so. For most classes, a withdrawal is to be done in  SIS . See the University Registrar's page on  class registration  ( start at #20 ) for instructions.

When you drop the individual course, you will receive a grade of  W  on your transcript and you will receive a 0% tuition refund. If you have more questions or are unsure whether you should drop the individual course, speak to your professor and/or advisor before making the decision to withdraw.

Changes to Tech Access After Graduating

Make sure to review  changes to your access of University technologies  after graduation so you can make plans now to ensure your work will be still available. For 180 days after the date of degree conferral, graduating students will retain access to Google Workspace (Gmail, drives, etc), Microsoft 365, Qualtrics, and GitHub. Access to Adobe products will expire on July 1. Access to CWRU's Zoom (including recordings and whiteboards) ended immediately upon graduation.

Summer English Skills Tutoring

Are you looking to improve your fluency in English? Spoken English Language Programs tutoring sessions are available this summer. Graduate students can make appointments online through  TutorTrac . You can also contact  Eric Moore  with questions.

University Holidays: Juneteenth & July 4 th

Our office and CWRU will be closed in observance of  Juneteenth  on Wednesday, June 19 and for United States Independence Day on both Thursday, July 4 and Friday, July 5. Campus closure will impact access to certain buildings, libraries, dining, and possibly shuttle schedules.

Summer Take Two Fridays

As in past years as part of  CWRU Take Two , every Friday in June and July the University will close at 3:00pm EDT including our office in Tomlinson Hall and any staff working remotely. Please plan accordingly.

Campus Community

Grad life assistant needed.

Want to work in our office suite? The Office of Graduate Student Life and our Grad Studies Professional Development Center are looking for a graduate assistant to partner in the development of the graduate student community and development of programs to enhance the student experience.

Spoken English Test Administrator

The Spoken English Language Programs (SELP) in Grad Studies is looking to hire doctoral students to be test administrators beginning in July 2024 and continuing into the fall semester. Training will be given to selected student assistants. Contact SELP director Eric Moore with any questions.

Considering a Career in Teaching?

Grad students and postdocs can sign up for the non-credit  UNIV 401 Advanced Professional Development for University Teaching Seminar  this summer to provide an introduction to pedagogical skills for future faculty. The seminar meets on Tuesdays in June and July; enrollment is limited to 15 students. Register for UNIV 401 in SIS and email  [email protected]  with any questions.

Broaden Your Horizons with Fellowship Courses

Right now is a great time to consider trying something new by taking an additional course for  FREE . Fellowship Courses are a great way to expand your academic portfolio and/or something to study outside your degree program that you really enjoy.

If you are a Graduate Studies degree-seeking student in good standing, you can apply to take a Fellowship Course for no tuition cost. Check out our  Fellowship Tuition Policy and the form to submit here . ( Please note: Courses in the College of Arts & Sciences are not eligible to be taken as Fellowship Courses in the summer. )

Celebrating Vice Provost Rozek!

After more than 40 years of leadership and service at Case Western Reserve University, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Charles Rozek is taking a much earned retirement beginning at the end of June leaving a lasting impact on the CWRU community. For two decades Chuck lead Grad Studies including founding our our annual student award ceremony, leading our Commencement diploma ceremonies, facilitating the creation of a professional development center, expanding opportunities for students, and much more. We wish Dean Rozek the best on his next chapter!

For new content almost ever day of interest to grad students - including other news on campus, important resources, upcoming events, and random fun stuff - please follow us on our social media platforms. Search for  @cwrusgs  on both  Facebook  and  Twitter  or click these links!

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Cisco Catalyst IR8300 Rugged Series Routers

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Cisco Network Convergence System 5700 Series Routers

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Cisco Meraki vMX appliances

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