Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi launches Alliance Intelligent Cloud on Microsoft Azure

Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s leading automotive alliance, today announced the production release of the Alliance Intelligent Cloud, a new platform that is enabling Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi Motors to deliver connected services in vehicles sold in nearly all 200 markets served by the Alliance member companies. Culminating joint development efforts between the Alliance and Microsoft, the auto industry’s first global and most ambitious connected vehicle program will be deployed utilizing cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), and IoT technologies provided by Microsoft Azure. Azure provides the Alliance with a global data platform to securely capture, manage and analyze vehicle data to deliver intelligent services based on the vast volume of data created by connected vehicles.

Kal Mos, Global Vice President of Alliance Connected Vehicles at Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, said: “Today we are deploying a vehicle connectivity platform that will transform the digital experience for customers of Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi. Through our collaboration with Microsoft, we are introducing the most powerful and far-reaching connected vehicle platform. Leveraging the size and scale of the Alliance, we have built an intelligent cloud platform that sets the pace for our industry.”

“Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi is a longstanding partner and our first strategic partner for the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform,” said Jean-Philippe Courtois, EVP and president, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing and Operations at Microsoft Corp. “Today’s production release of the Alliance Intelligent Cloud enables a new generation of connected services powered by Microsoft Azure to come to market.”

The first vehicles produced with Alliance Intelligent Cloud technology will be the all-new Renault Clio and selected Nissan Leaf models sold in Japan and Europe. These are also the first vehicles powered by the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform available to consumers at scale.

Vehicles utilizing the Alliance Intelligent Cloud will benefit from seamless access to the internet, providing enhanced remote diagnostics, continuous software deployment, firmware updates and access to infotainment services.

The Alliance Intelligent Cloud is a highly-scalable platform and will consolidate multiple legacy connected vehicle solutions with current and future connected car features and business operations that will support mobility services. The data-driven platform will enable advanced AI and analytics scenarios and accelerate time to market for new innovations and business initiatives.

Optimized for speed and efficiency, the Alliance Intelligent Cloud will connect to vehicles and share digital features and future innovations across multiple models and brands for consumers in different regions around the world. Features consolidated onto the connected platform include remote services, proactive monitoring, connected navigation, connected assistance, over-the-air software updates, and other customer-tailored services.

The Alliance is taking a unique approach to addressing the business opportunity provided by connected vehicles by owning, operating, and designing its own intelligent cloud platform on Microsoft Azure.

The Alliance Intelligent Cloud is capable of connecting Alliance vehicles with future smart cities infrastructure as it develops and with potential future partners. With this new initiative, any third-party seeking to connect with all legacy and future connected Alliance vehicles will have a single point of contact to partner with.

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI:

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry. Together, the partners sold more than 10.6 million vehicles in nearly 200 countries in 2017. The member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. They have strategic collaborations with other automotive groups, including Germany’s Daimler and China’s Dongfeng. This strategic alliance is the industry leader in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.

Technology powers industry innovation - From finance firms to factories

Recently, I joined a ribbon-cutting at the new Bank of America location on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. The financial center is a great example of co-innovation with our customers. It features some test technology only available at this location, like a holographic greeter, with capabilities in English, Spanish and American Sign Language. The bank’s associates are equipped with Surface Pros to help stay connected and deliver customer service.

Like Bank of America’s example, businesses around the world are transforming. Our customers across finance, health and manufacturing are partnering with Microsoft to power solutions across cloud, AI and IoT, including companies like Neiman Marcus, Albertsons Companies, TomTom, Goodyear, ExxonMobil, Schneider Electric, Telefónica, AT&T, Razer, Emirates, Daimler AG, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, Electrolux, Airbus Defense and Space and Siemens Gamesa. We also announced new details about the Open Data Initiative, our partnership with Adobe and SAP that will enable mutual customers like Unilever, among others, to unify their business data across lines of business applications and unlock new AI-driven insights.

There are innovation stories behind each of the diverse brands with which we have partnered over the last quarter. What I find most inspiring are examples of how customers are using our IP to innovate faster than ever. Here are just a few examples:

A year ago, we announced a $5 billion investment in IoT. Fast forward to today, where customers like Starbucks, Chevron, Walmart, Walgreens, BMW, Volkswagen and Toyota Material Handling Group are leveraging Azure as their cloud platform with IoT and AI services to accelerate their digital transformation. In fact, IoT is creating a big impact in industries you encounter daily. For example, Ohio-based GOJO Industries, the inventor of PURELL Hand Sanitizer, is a growing digital innovator in public health. The company is using Azure IoT to power its PURELL SMARTLINK Technology solutions. It has about 25,000 connected dispensers that help more than a hundred healthcare facilities streamline hand hygiene compliance through motion sensors, Internet-connected dispensers and a cloud platform that collects and analyzes data.

In the manufacturing sector, digital transformation from the top floor to the shop floor continues to reshape how customers and partners run their businesses. At Hannover Messe 2019, for instance, we partnered with BMW Group to launch the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP) built on the Azure Industrial IoT cloud platform and designed to break down productivity-slowing data silos by creating an open technology framework and cross-industry community. The OMP’s goal is to significantly accelerate future industrial IoT developments, shorten time to value and drive production efficiencies while addressing common industrial challenges.

A long-standing challenge for manufacturers is how best to boost productivity while simplifying employee training and development. Commercial truck designer and manufacturer PACCAR shows digital solutions can be applied to manufacturing and across other industries as well. Thanks to its adoption of Dynamics 365 Guides and HoloLens 2 — our next generation  wearable holographic computer that enables businesses to take advantage of out-of-the-box applications — PACCAR employees can access step-by-step holographic instructions to guide them through unfamiliar tasks like assembling a truck door or follow lighted arrows from each instruction card to the precise hole where a wire needs to be threaded or to the location of the correct tool on the factory floor. Holographic drawings superimposed on the actual door demonstrate how to perform that task and brighten structures behind the steel panel that normally cannot be seen.

Toyota Material Handling Group offers an additional manufacturing example. The company is the largest forklift maker in the world, but its customers require much more than warehouse trucks and equipment. By providing solutions with artificial intelligence, mixed reality and the IoT, Toyota Material Handling Group is helping customers meet the global rise in ecommerce, and move goods quickly, frequently, accurately and safely. With Microsoft technologies, the solutions range from connected forklift and field service systems available today to AI-powered concepts that pave the way for intelligent automation and logistics simulation – all designed with Toyota’s standards for optimizing efficiency, operation assistance and kaizen, or continuous improvement.

Building for the future: Helping students become global innovators

Every year, professionals from around the globe join us at Build, our premier developer conference, to learn about new technologies, gain hands-on experience, and level-up their development skills. It’s one of my favorite events, and this year, it’s getting even better as we extend these opportunities to students.

For the first time, Build attendees are invited to bring up to two family members aged 14-21 to participate with them—for free. We’ll also bring in local Seattle-area high school students to participate in some of these learning opportunities. The newly created Student Zone at Build is designed to provide an immersive educational experience for the students and attendees, with access to a Surface-equipped lab, on-site experts, a career center, workshops, tech talks and live co-coding opportunities. Naturally, there will be Minecraft—and so much more. Students can talk to cloud engineers, explore data with Azure Cognitive Services, learn about how to code on GitHub and use Visual Studio Code. There will be opportunities to learn more about AI and explore the most important technologies and skills developers of tomorrow will need.

Microsoft is committed to empowering the next generation of creators to pursue their dreams through access to technology, resources and learning opportunities. One way we encourage students to break boundaries and address real problems is through the Imagine Cup, which has seen students from around the world continually raise the innovation bar through teamwork. Now in its 17th year, the competition empowers tomorrow’s talent to use their creativity, passion and diverse perspectives to solve the world’s most pressing issues.

Momentum for the Imagine Cup continues to grow—more than 2 million students from 190 countries have competed in Imagine Cup since it started—and this year, I’m excited the World Championship will be held during Build. In fact, the Imagine Cup champion will be announced to kick off Day One of the event and will be immediately followed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote.

Returning host, Corey Sanders, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Solutions, is especially fitting for the Imagine Cup—he holds four patents and was the creator of the Infrastructure-as-a-service offering for Azure, so he’s deeply familiar with the innovation cycle on many dimensions. Last year’s MC, Kate Yeager, is also making a return appearance to call the action.

To get to the World Championship, teams must win their highly competitive regional competitions, which are wrapping up soon. These finalists have developed truly life- and world-changing ideas, like last year’s winning concept, smartARM, a robotic hand that uses a camera embedded in the palm to recognize objects and calculate the most appropriate grip for the object.

This year’s champion will take home $100,000 USD, $50,000 USD in Azure credits, mentorship from the team at M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures) and a mentoring session with Satya Nadella. A team of business and technology professionals will collectively decide the 2019 winning team, and you can watch the championship via live stream on the Build site on Monday, May 6 at 8 a.m. Pacific Time.

Microsoft acquires Express Logic, accelerating IoT development for billions of devices

IoT sensors are being infused into just about everything, from industrial equipment to consumer devices, and increasingly these devices are connecting to the cloud. By 2020, Gartner predicts there will be more than 20 billion connected devices*. In April 2018, we announced we’re investing $5 billion in IoT and the intelligent edge over the next four years. Since then, we’ve been making a number of investments from product innovation – including Azure Sphere, Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Edge, Azure Maps and Azure IoT Central – new partnerships with DJI, SAP, PTC, Qualcomm and Carnegie Mellon University for IoT and edge app development, and programs to help drive the next wave of innovation for our customers.

Today, I am incredibly excited to share we have acquired Express Logic, a leader in real time operating systems (RTOS) for IoT and edge devices powered by microcontroller units (MCUs). Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS has over 6.2 billion deployments, making it one of the most deployed RTOS in the world per VDC Research. This widespread popularity is driven by demand for technology to support resource constrained environments, especially those that require safety and security. Manufacturers building products across a range of categories – from low capacity sensors like lightbulbs and temperature gauges to air conditioners, medical devices, and network appliances – leverage the size, safety and security benefits of Express Logic solutions to achieve faster time to market. Even highly constrained devices (battery powered and having less than 64KB of flash memory) can use Express Logic solutions. Over 9 billion of these MCU-powered devices are built and deployed globally every year, many of which can benefit from Express Logic solutions.

With this acquisition, we will unlock access to billions of new connected endpoints, grow the number of devices that can seamlessly connect to Azure and enable new intelligent capabilities. Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS joins Microsoft’s growing support for IoT devices and is complementary with Azure Sphere, our premier security offering in the microcontroller space. Our goal is to make Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS available as an option for real time processing requirements on an Azure Sphere device and also enable ThreadX-powered devices to connect to Azure IoT Edge devices when the IoT solution calls for edge computing capabilities. While we recommend Azure Sphere for customers’ most secured connections to the cloud, where Azure Sphere isn’t possible in highly constrained devices, we recommend Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS over other RTOS options in the industry because of its additional certifications and out-of-the-box connectivity to Azure IoT Hub.

As we’ve stated consistently in the past, our primary goal is to simplify IoT – from the cloud all the way down to the smallest MCU based devices. We do this by meeting our customers where they are with the right developer tools, software and intelligent cloud services to manage their solutions at scale. Express Logic’s technology and team will be an incredible addition to Microsoft in our quest to give every customer the ability to transform their businesses, and the world at large, with connected solutions.

How our $5B investment in IoT and intelligent edge is accelerating solution innovation

Accelerating customer innovation in IoT from cloud to edge across industries

What’s truly exciting is seeing our customers achieve real business outcomes with Azure IoT and intelligent edge-based solutions. Our IoT platform is powering customer solutions with thousands of devices, at scale, and the number of devices supported has grown nearly 150 percent year-over-year. This year, many customers such a Starbucks, Chevron, Walmart, Walgreens, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota Material Handling Group and more are leveraging Azure as their cloud platform with IoT and AI services to accelerate their digital transformation.

Starbucks is using Azure Sphere to connect select equipment, enabling its partners (employees) more opportunity to engage with customers. This includes everything from beverage consistency, waste reduction, the management of energy consumption and predictive maintenance.

With Azure and our IoT services, Chevron is connecting a critical piece of equipment – heat exchangers, which manage the heat from fluids flowing through it as part of the plant’s fuel processing – to do predictive maintenance and ultimately prevent unscheduled outages.

In Walmart’s technology center in Austin, Texas, which is designed accelerate digital innovation, the retail leader is embracing IoT as a way to save energy and prevent product loss. Walmart is using thousands of IoT sensors on HVAC and refrigeration systems that process a billion daily data messages from stores worldwide.

As part of Microsoft’s partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) to make health care delivery more personal, affordable and accessible for people around the world, WBA will use a portfolio of connected IoT devices for nonacute chronic care management, delivered by Microsoft’s cloud, AI and IoT technologies.

This week with BMW Group, we announced the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP), a new technology framework and open community to share smart factory solutions across the automotive and manufacturing sectors to significantly accelerate future industrial IoT developments.

This year Volkswagen announced a partnership with Microsoft to create the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud with Azure and Azure IoT Edge to create a seamless experience for drivers from the moment they enter, use and leave their vehicles. From 2020 onwards, more than 5 million new Volkswagen brand vehicles per year will be fully connected and will be part of the IoT cloud.

By infusing solutions with artificial intelligence, mixed reality and the IoT, Toyota Material Handling Group is providing solutions to customers meet the global rise in ecommerce, and move goods quickly, frequently, accurately and safely. With Microsoft technologies, the solutions range from connected forklift and field service systems available today to AI-powered concepts that pave the way for intelligent automation and logistics simulations – all designed with Toyota’s standards for optimizing efficiency, operation assisting and continuous improvement.

The stories continue to roll in.

New innovations in our IoT platform

In the last year, we launched more than 100 new services and features in our IoT platform, designed to make IoT solutions more secure and scalable, reduce complexity, make our platform more open and create opportunities in new market areas. Our core focus has been to address the industry challenge of securing connected devices at every layer, as well as advancing IoT to create a more seamless experience between the physical and digital worlds.

Simplifying IoT and securing IoT endpoints at scale

IoT is complex, requiring deep knowledge of cloud, security and devices, but the business benefits are significant. With Azure IoT Central, which became generally available this year, we have created a way for businesses to get started in IoT by quickly provisioning a solution in just a matter of hours and with built-in security features. With valuable data moving closer to the edge, IoT security demands a holistic approach. This year we introduced Azure Sphere, a world-class security solution for connected microcontroller devices (MCUs), which go in everything from smart-home and medical devices to equipment on the factory floor. Windows 10 IoT Core Services includes security and reliability updates for the operating system to keep device security up to date. Azure Security Center for IoT now includes support for Azure IoT services to proactively monitor IoT devices, enabling businesses to implement security best practices for detecting and mitigating threats.

Delivering spatial intelligence at scale

IoT is no longer just about connected endpoints. It’s the sum of the endpoints – the digital objects – that create a holistic solution. We see significant opportunity for our customers to use spatial intelligence to manage physical assets and spaces with digital models and mapping across smart spaces, cities and buildings. This fall, we introduced Azure Digital Twins to enable customers and partners to query data in the context of a space – rather than from disparate sensors – empowering them to build repeatable, scalable experiences that correlate data from digital sources and the physical world. Azure Maps provides developers from all industries powerful geospatial capabilities, and new MR services including Azure Spatial Anchors and Azure Remote Rendering enable customers to create precise points of interest in with mixed reality in physical space as well as enable interactive, high-quality 3D models.

Bringing AI to the edge

The proliferation of IoT devices and resulting massive amount of data requiring real-time intelligence are fueling the need to move compute and analytics closer to where the data resides. This year, we open sourced the Azure IoT Edge runtime, providing developers have even greater flexibility and control of their edge solutions, enabling them to modify the runtime and debug issues for applications at the edge. Over the past year, we added five new Azure Cognitive Services that can run locally on an edge device, and we’ve made it easier to deploy your own Azure Machine Learning models on Azure IoT Edge. We’ve also enabled high-speed inferencing at the edge with Azure Data Box Edge.

 Growing the Microsoft IoT partner ecosystem

We’re proud to have one of the largest and fastest-growing partner ecosystems with more than ten thousand IoT partners from intelligent edge to intelligent cloud. Partners are critical to our customers’ success in IoT, bringing rich domain expertise across industries so customers can see clear value to their business, as well as integration for critical apps and infrastructure to increase time to value.

Introducing the winners of our data journalism grant program

The dissemination of news and information has always been the machinery that powers our democracy. Our society relies on stalwart reporters and news organizations to pursue the truth and hold the powerful accountable, even as the industry faces daunting challenges from political retaliation to economic viability.

In support of these efforts, we are proud to announce the two recipients of the first phase of our grant program, in partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ): Josh Landis of Nexus Media News (Washington, D.C.) and Verah Okeyo of The Nation (Kenya).

An award-winning journalist, Landis is the founder and director of Nexus Media News, a nonprofit science, tech and environmental news service that has partnered with outlets such as Popular Science, Fast Company, Quartz, Huffington Post, PBS and National Geographic Voices to report on stories about our environment. The news service is part of Climate Nexus, which has been changing the conversation on climate change and clean energy “from an argument to a constructive search for solutions” since 2011. With the grant, Landis plans to use data visualization to show how climate is transforming residential and commercial real estate markets, and the possible impact that “climate gentrification” might have on communities in the coming years.

More than 7,000 miles away, Verah Okeyo works as a global health reporter at The Nation, the largest daily independent newspaper in Kenya and part of the Nation Media Group, which also operates in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. A 2012 graduate of Maseno University, Okeyo proposes to use demographic health surveys, studies and research to track Kenya’s child mortality since 1965. Rather than selecting a county or a set of circumstances from the outset, the investigation will follow a meaningful analysis of the available data and plans to showcase the findings across multiple mediums, including print, online and television.

Each candidate will receive $7,500 and hands-on data visualization training using Microsoft Power BI. To supplement their analytics and help ground their stories in fact, Landis and Okeyo will also conduct field investigations, going where the stories – and the numbers – take them.

Today we’re also kickstarting the second phase of the grant program, which focuses on immersive storytelling projects. Whether it is in-the-trenches livestreams with multi-language captions, augmented reality that allows real-life exploration or interactive visuals powered by numbers, immersive storytelling can communicate human experiences with great intimacy.

We’re honored to work side by side with newsrooms and journalists to help deliver impactful stories. We’re keenly aware that not every journalist has the same resources, which is why we work both on the individual and industry level. Our collaborations have run the gamut from our local KING5 broadcast station’s investigation into state vaccination rates to POLITICO Europe’s ambitious undertaking to educate the European electorate on how country-level politics shapes continental governance.

Supporting the goals of people like Landis and Okeyo to convey complicated stories in a way that speaks to audiences, reinforces our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We look forward to introducing you to more journalists who are doing the hard work of telling the story of their communities to the world.

Microsoft announces intelligent industry innovations

It’s a time of great disruption but great opportunity in the manufacturing industry, as businesses seek to find novel ways to create new business value, empower and upskill their workforce, optimize their operations and innovate for a sustainable future. Advanced technologies like AI, mixed reality and automation are helping drive Industry 4.0, creating a future where “intelligent manufacturing” is a reality. Today, we are introducing updates that help bring this reality even closer for our customers and partners, to deliver increased security, productivity and efficiency, which will help them achieve new business outcomes.

As we head to Hanover, Germany, next week to join global leaders at the world’s biggest trade show for industrial technology, we are announcing several improvements to our trusted, innovative manufacturing solutions, including:

• Azure is now the first major public cloud with end-to-end security for IoT for your devices, hubs and cloud resources. We are adding advanced threat protection for IoT to three key services: Azure Security Center for IoT can now be used to implement security best practices and mitigate threats across entire IoT projects including hubs, compute and data. Azure Sentinel, the first cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) offering, can now protect the entire enterprise from threats including those affecting IoT devices. Azure IOT Hub now integrates with Azure Security Center for IoT to provide IoT security information directly inside the hub portal experience.
• The introduction of OPC Twin and OPC Vault in our Azure Industrial IoT Cloud Platform solution, which respectively provide manufacturers a digital twin of their OPC UA-enabled machines and significantly enhance security and certification management. We’re also announcing important enhancements to the Connected Factory solution accelerator, which now integrates with OPC Twin to greatly simplify the process of installing IoT Edge.
• An expansion of Azure IP Advantage to IoT, which extends Azure IP Advantage benefits to Azure customers with IoT devices connected to Azure, and devices that are powered by Azure Sphere and Windows IoT. Additionally, qualified startups who join the LOT Network have the ability to acquire Microsoft patents through LOT for free.

You’ll find more details on the Azure IoT Platform updates in this blog from Sam George, and more information on Azure IP Advantage below. We will also share additional business updates including:

• Intelligent innovations for industry: Onsite at Hannover Messe we will showcase our wide range of offerings for manufacturers including breakthroughs in AI experiences, mixed reality with HoloLens 2, business-ready solutions with Dynamics 365 and tools to close the skills gap with Microsoft 365.
• Customers achieving business outcomes: We’re supporting leading manufacturers including Bühler, Electrolux, Siemens Gamesa and ZEISS as they accelerate their own innovations, as outlined below.
• New partner solutions: We continue to grow the ecosystem of partners collaborating with Microsoft to help manufacturers succeed, with several announcing news this week.
• The latest in our Future Computed book series: The Future Computed: AI and Manufacturing explores the way manufacturers from across the world are embracing AI. It shares insights from our customers on the importance of creating the right company culture and talent pipeline to realize AI’s potential, and explores the role of public policy in addressing labor market disruption and fostering the ethical use of AI. We’ll preview the book’s key themes at Hannover Messe ahead of its release in May.
• More than 25 innovative companies will join us in our Hannover Messe booth to showcase how we are working together to harness IoT, mixed reality, AI and other key technologies that revolutionize manufacturing.

Meeting entrepreneurs on their terms: Why we don't require any - M12

Last week in Seattle, leading innovators, entrepreneurs and business minds came together to discuss best practices for startup funding and operations at M12’s inaugural summit. It was humbling to see almost 80 companies in our portfolio gathered from around the world, and to reflect on the progress we’ve made since we started the fund nearly three years ago. Our team has grown to more than 20 people supporting portfolio companies across 11 countries and 38 cities, seen four exits, and created new channels to ensure capital is reaching startups, such as our competitions to find female founded and led businesses and entrepreneurs innovating with AI.

In the days and weeks leading up to the summit, one thing I am particularly proud of is our pulse on the startup community, the relationships we’ve built there and our unwavering focus on doing what’s right for the entrepreneur. We’ve learned some important lessons, including one of the most egregious contributors to the poor reputation of corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) – terms and conditions like “Rights-of-first” (ROF), which we believe favor the corporation and restrict the startup.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. ROF terms restrict that for entrepreneurs. Simply put, ROF terms limit an entrepreneur’s ability to maximize their exit valuation. Stifling those options can be detrimental to a startup’s growth and consequential to the return profile of founders and all the investors. That’s why at M12, we believe ROF and similar terms are neither necessary nor valuable.

While we’ve always believed this, we weren’t following through in practice when other CVCs utilized these rights in companies we invested in, leading us to ask for the same during the first year our fund operated. And while we’ve never asked for these terms if the other investors didn’t have the same, in retrospect, we should have never asked at all. Since then, we’ve stopped asking for any special rights regardless of what other strategic investors held in the company and we’ve started actively educating entrepreneurs to resist these terms and try to remove them if they already exist.

We firmly believe that being fully aligned with founders is the only way to drive value to all stakeholders, including M12 and Microsoft. So, we want to go one step further. Instead of simply thinking, “What’s best for us,” we want to encourage the CVC community to start thinking “What’s best for all,” starting with adopting similar rules of engagement M12 currently employs to benefit the entire startup ecosystem:

• M12 will not require any ROF term as part of its investment. Ever. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s good for business.
• As part of our due diligence, M12 will evaluate the business upside not only for our fund, but also whether we can meaningfully help you.
• If M12 chooses to invest, we’re with you for the long term, for your company’s lifecycle. That may mean different things at different times, but we won’t be driven by artificial milestones or deadlines.
• If M12 chooses not to invest, we will explain why. We will also try our best to suggest other ways you can gain funding or other resources to grow your business.

It’s time to reinvent what it means to be a CVC and live up to what makes us an attractive investment partner to begin with – empowering entrepreneurs through investments, insight, and unparalleled access to Microsoft. The next time a founder asks me if we are a strategic investor, I want to be able to say, “It shouldn’t matter because we’re all aligned in fostering your success.”

New Microsoft 365 and business applications technologies enable government to modernize for the mission

Our government agencies have a unique opportunity to deliver massive impact on the lives of U.S. citizens – an impact that can be accelerated and emboldened by technology innovation. However, these same agencies are challenged to modernize and keep pace with the changing technology landscape, while simultaneously reducing costs, protecting data and meeting stringent compliance regulations. To ensure the government can achieve its critical, mission-driven work, and improve citizen services, hundreds of CIOs and top decision-makers from federal, state and local government agencies are turning to secure cloud infrastructure, which can seamlessly enable operations efficiencies, and provide services that are faster, more reliable and more secure.

Government is taking a Cloud Smart approach

Right now, we’re seeing the evolution across U.S. government from a Cloud First approach – with an emphasis on just getting everything in the cloud – to a Cloud Smart approach – with a focus on embracing modern capabilities and equipping agencies with the technology tools needed in accordance with their mission needs. The recently revised Federal Cloud Computing Strategy is the first cloud policy update in seven years. We believe it constitutes more than labelling and is the right way forward to make the most of the incredible possibilities of cloud in advancing agencies’ missions. In recent years, commercial technology has increasingly found a foothold in the government market and Cloud Smart embraces best practices from both the federal government and the private sector. Cloud Smart is about equipping agencies with the tools, knowledge and flexibilities they need to not only move to cloud, but to fully embrace the potential of its many value-added capabilities such as Platform-as-a Service (PaaS) and Artificial Intelligence.

Securely enabling the mission end to end

All government cloud offerings are not the same, and Microsoft is committed to supporting the needs of government across all branches and levels enabling them with capabilities that support the advancement of their mission from end to end. We’ve built the most trusted, comprehensive cloud for government which includes Azure Government, Microsoft 365 Government, and Dynamics 365 Government.

Government organizations across the United States increasingly are turning to our powerful cloud offerings to modernize – becoming more productive, collaborative and efficient all while protecting sensitive data and privacy. Microsoft is delivering them the right capabilities where they are needed, when they are needed as the sole provider with offerings that span infrastructure, platform and software capabilities and services (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) designed to meet government’s unique compliance needs.

To make it easier for agencies to efficiently modernize quickly and accelerate the speed in which they achieve a return on their cloud investments, Microsoft has worked with our government customers to achieve the most certifications of any cloud provider with more than 91 compliance certifications supported at every level of government to help them achieve their necessary requirements. We also invest $1 billion dollars per year on security and much of that goes to ensuring we deliver our customers the most trusted cloud platform.

Today, we’re announcing several advances across our landscape of comprehensive government cloud solutions, demonstrating our commitment to the unique needs of our customers and further differentiating our offerings:

Microsoft Teams is now available across all government cloud environments

Since launching Microsoft 365 Government last year, we’ve continually made investments to empower government with the newest tools for mobile productivity and secure collaboration, bringing together the best of Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), and Windows 10 to meet agencies’ complex compliance and security requirements.

Today, we’re announcing Microsoft Teams, a product core to our vision for delivering intelligent and modern collaboration and communications, is now available in our Government Community Cloud (GCC) High and Department of Defense (DoD) environments exclusively for the U.S. government and its partners. This means Teams is now available across all our government cloud environments including GCC.

Microsoft Teams’ chat-based workspace enables teams of government professionals to be more productive by giving them a single and secure location that brings together everything they need including chats, meetings, calls, files, and tools. Integrated access through this hub for teamwork across multiple Office 365 services enables agencies to leverage their current investments and improves collaboration by providing central file sharing, co-authoring and many more functions making it possible for government customers to better deliver against their mission.

Introducing Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement for Government

Today we’re also announcing the availability of both Microsoft Power Platform (March 2019) and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (April 2019) for government professionals. These two new products will enable government to unlock new capabilities and features in three core areas: new business applications; new intelligent capabilities infused throughout; and transformational new application platform capabilities.

Once agencies have the infrastructure for harnessing data, they also need a layer atop that data that enables them to get insights easily. Microsoft Power Platform for Government is a system that will allow them to take three key actions on data: analyze, act, and automate. The system uses Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow working together to help anyone, regardless of technical ability, to make data-driven decisions. Joining Power BI, PowerApps and Flow standalone apps are now generally available for government agencies and their partners in GCC. PowerApps and Flow general availability will also land in Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Office 365 in spring 2019.

We are also offering Dynamics 365 Government Customer Engagement for GCC High. This means agencies can now access customer service, contact centers, correspondence management, grants management, task management, mission planning and even more purpose-built cloud applications than they were able to previously.

New Microsoft 365 Government security and mobile enhancements

Recently we introduced Outlook Mobile for our GCC High and DoD customers. This update means the architecture of Outlook mobile now meets the security and compliance needs of Office 365 U.S. GCC High and DoD customers. Now government employees have advanced capabilities across email, search, and calendar from their mobile devices, so they can focus on what’s important and get more done for their citizens.

Coming soon, government agencies using Office 365 Threat Intelligence in GCC will gain new capabilities that automate investigation and remediation of cyber threats  to help them reduce the burden on their IT security teams and decrease response times. This is the latest addition to comprehensive set of Microsoft 365 Government tools designed to help government protect, detect and respond to cyberattacks.

Continuing our investments in government innovation, security and compliance

Microsoft is helping customers across the full spectrum of government, from the state and local level, to every military branch and all federal cabinet departments. We currently serve nearly 10 million U.S. government cloud professionals across more than 7,000 government entities diligently meeting their unique needs by deliver the highest levels of security and compliance.

Microsoft enables the digital transformation of government by offering effective, modern, enterprise-class cloud capabilities. Our government customers are driven by critical missions, and we are committed to helping them evolve their IT modernization efforts with innovative and trusted cloud, productivity and mobility solutions. As government agencies face a range of new challenges in meeting their missions, we are committed to enabling them to work smarter, with agility and confidence – using technology that can unlock the opportunities ahead.