Microsoft Corp. announced new enhancements to its personal digital assistant, Cortana, this week, and the changes appear directly aimed at improving productivity in the workplace.

The announcements from Microsoft include a Cortana-driven Play My Emails service in Outlook for business communications, along with new support for scheduling meetings using the digital assistant.

“There were some interesting announcements in the ways that Microsoft is thinking about human productivity, both individual productivity and team collaboration,” said Rebecca Knight, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the kickoff analysis on the third and final day at the Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, Florida. “Those speak volumes about how Microsoft views the future of work and the future of our lives. Make me more productive, but also give me my time back.”

Knight was joined at the conference by co-host Stu Miniman, and they discussed how Microsoft has further defined its hybrid enterprise solution and analyzed the firm’s increased activity within the developer community (see the full discussion with transcript here).

Facing hybrid competition

The latest enhancements for Cortana followed a string of releases at Ignite 2019 this week, including the announcement of Azure Arc, which further positioned Microsoft as a key player in the broader tech ecosystem. Central to the company’s approach was a clear strategy to compete in the hybrid computing space where Red Hat Inc.’s OpenShift, Google LLC’s Anthos and Amazon Web Services Inc.’s Outposts have already claimed valuable real estate, or at least mindshare.

“Welcome to the party, Microsoft,” Miniman said. “They’ve got a strong hybrid solution already because they played at both ends. But Azure Arc is really unifying and pulling those together so that it’s not just my data center and Azure.”

Microsoft, which acquired the developer-popular code repository GitHub last year, also devoted time this week to roll out new tools aimed at making it easier to build applications for enterprise use. Microsoft has highlighted the experience of a security guard at Heathrow Airport who built 17 apps for various functions at the bustling facility without learning a single line of code.

The company’s focus on developers could result in a merging of its Build developer gathering with Ignite in the near future.

“One of the things I’ve heard is they’ve really ramped up developer activity at this show,” Miniman said. “There’s been rumblings that Build and Ignite may get wrapped together. We’ll see how this all plays out.”

Here’s the complete analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Microsoft Ignite:

Photo: Microsoft