Microsoft delivers platform for the era of ambient intelligence

These new data platform solutions enable Microsoft to deliver the most comprehensive data platform to organisations looking to harness greater business value from their information today.

Microsoft also shared the results of new IDC research, showing that companies that take a comprehensive approach to data stand to realise an additional 60 per cent return on their data assets — an Asia Pacific opportunity of $278 billion.

Built for the era of ambient intelligence, Microsoft’s comprehensive data platform includes new Internet of Things capabilities and provides customers the building blocks they need to combine all of their data, analyse it for insights and quickly deliver those insights to people who can take action.

“Data is the currency of business, and Microsoft is helping companies increase the return on that currency by connecting data across their company, connecting it to the world’s data, enriching it through analysis and delivering insights to as many people as possible – as quickly as possible,” Hoang Song Nga, Microsoft Vietnam’s Server and Tools lead said. “At Microsoft, our goal is to bring Big Data insights to a billion people through secure, scalable and easy- to-use enterprise-class tools.”

Today, Microsoft expanded its data platform with new products and services, including the following:

• Launch of SQL Server 2014. The latest version of the world’s most widely deployed database is the foundation of Microsoft’s comprehensive data platform, delivers breakthrough performance for mission-critical applications. Using in-memory technologies, SQL Server 2014 drives faster insights from any data for any user with familiar tools like Excel, and is a resilient platform for building, deploying, and managing solutions that span on-premises infrastructure and cloud.

• Limited public preview of the Microsoft Azure Intelligent Systems Service. This new Azure service helps customers embrace the Internet of Things and securely connect to, manage and capture machine-generated data from sensors and devices, regardless of operating system.

• General availability of the Analytics Platform System (APS). APS combines the best of Microsoft’s SQL Server database and Hadoop technology in one low-cost offering that delivers “big data in a box.”

These new solutions build upon 12 months of innovation — including Power BI for Office 365, a cloud-based, self-service business intelligence solution with groundbreaking natural language capability; Azure HDInsight for elastic Hadoop in the cloud; PolyBase to bring structured and unstructured data together in a data warehouse appliance; and Power Query for Excel, which makes it easier for people to discover data — to deliver the most comprehensive data platform with real-time performance built into everything.