Jennifer Sokolowsky

SHRAPNEL is the world’s first blockchain-enabled first-person shooter game, developed by a BAFTA and Emmy award–winning team of game industry veterans at NEON.

When Matt De Vincentis was growing up in rural Australia, he developed a passion for computers. He dreamed about Silicon Valley the way some Americans might place his country of kangaroos and koalas on their bucket list. Fast forward a couple of decades, and De Vincentis has made those dreams come true in a personal journey from misfit Aussie kid to Silicon Valley vice president.

Microsoft’s 2021 Diversity and Inclusion report is the company's third annual report and its eighth year of releasing global workforce demographic data publicly.

Infosys created a transformative solution to help a leading global food and beverage company determine competitor product recipes, a key part of competitive intelligence. Traditionally, the customer relied on food labs to determine the makeup of competitor products, an expensive and time-consuming process. Using Azure ML, Infosys developed ML models that automatically reverse-engineer product formulations using publicly available information, such as nutrition data and labels.

Lumen is having a big year. The company was born in September 2020, when telecommunications company CenturyLink announced a rebrand to Lumen Technologies and brought to the forefront a focus on furthering human progress through technology. Transform spoke with Paul Savill, senior vice president of Product Portfolio Strategy and Alliances for Lumen Technologies, about the alliance between Lumen and Microsoft, and what it means for the enterprise world.

Diversity & Inclusion, or D&I, has received a lot of attention of late and is quickly becoming a high priority for corporations. But many organizations tend to neglect the “I” part—inclusion—according to GeriAnn Baptista, Microsoft Strategic D&I Brand and Communications Counsel.

Demand disruption has been a huge challenge for consumer packaged goods (CPG) supply chain management in 2020, and it will continue to be a big issue going forward. As we discussed in an earlier blog post, one part of solving supply-chain demand disruption is to improve planning. Sophisticated forecasts and demand sensing, powered by machine learning (ML), are key for making planning more accurate and efficient. Order allocation, which is critical for optimizing operations and maximizing revenue, is even more important for responding to demand volatility.

Last year, Microsoft enabled customers to simplify hybrid management with Azure Arc, a bridge to help companies run Azure services across environments and clouds, while maintaining consistent management and security. Businesses that have adopted Azure Arc have realized real-life advantages in development, deployment and ongoing management that are helping organizations focus on their core missions.

Even in normal times, demand volatility is a constant challenge for consumer packaged goods (CPG) supply chain management. But these are not normal times. The COVID-19 pandemic has upped the ante, completely disrupting supply chain planning. Supply chain teams that are struggling to keep up can attest to the fact that sophisticated tools are needed to get supply chains back on track in the new normal. Advanced machine learning (ML) tools can work alongside existing systems to help ease the burden of creating operational forecasts in a volatile business environment.

Microsoft is moving into the final frontier with Azure Space, a new initiative that will deliver innovation to serve the mission needs of the space industry.

Now is the time to take an empathetic approach for your customers. Think not only about how you are communicating but also about the virtual conditions in which people will receive the information—and find ways to be truly caring and supportive.

Bruce Davie, VP and CTO for VMware, Asia Pacific and Japan, knows how to stay ahead of the pack. A technology early adopter since his teenage years, Davie is also an avid runner. For Davie, setting goals is central to his approach to both running and life. And throughout his career journey, Davie’s overarching goal has been to make a positive impact through technology.

Sometimes it takes a superhero to get the job done. Glenton Davis, senior product marketing manager for Microsoft Security, didn’t have a superhero handy to help salespeople understand their products better, so he led the creation of a whole league of crime-fighting heroes.