Microsoft CEO: Buyer beware for digital technology platform choice

Beyond Microsoft’s discussion of digital technology platform philosophy, Microsoft Ignite 2018 was notable for its range of product debuts and updates. Microsoft’s technology barrage emphasized security and previewed soon-to-be-available offerings, such as SQL Server 2019, which is slated for general availability in October.

Cloud, IoT and AI were at the center of a number of new product initiatives unveiled at the conference. The technology rollouts aim to help Microsoft stand out, as it vies for market share with top cloud companies, such as AWS and Google.

“I see the announcements this week from Microsoft as the latest in the battle for differentiation amongst the ‘big three’ hyperscale cloud providers,” said Grant Kirkwood, chief technical officer at Unitas Global, a Los Angeles-based managed hybrid cloud provider.

“Providing on-demand scalable compute and storage has been considered table stakes for a long while now, so the various cloud providers are placing bets on what they think will be winning use cases, with capabilities unique to each provider,” he said.

At Microsoft Ignite 2018, the company announced a public preview of Azure Digital Twins, which will be added to Microsoft’s IoT platform. Among other things, the new offering will provide a “virtual representation of a physical environment that models the relationships among people, places and devices,” according to Microsoft.

The Azure Digital Twins service, Kirkwood said, “makes it clear Microsoft is betting big on IoT. Microsoft is building an entire ecosystem of services around IoT, including data processing, analytics and modeling.”

Kirkwood said potential enterprise use cases are limited only by the number of devices and the variety of functions they can perform, noting IoT applications are used in industries as varied as farming, manufacturing and energy.