New for This week

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• Another 3 New vendors exclaimer, Overe.io & IRONSCALE added to FirstMarketplace
• Microsoft EoL section Updated for January 2027 - Note the Biztalk Zombie!
• Microsoft Teams Keynote at ISE - It will be central to all your communication.
• Dynamics Licensing guide Feb update- A few changes - check if you are affected
• CoPilot Studio Licensing Guide updated for Feb - check to see if you can benefit
• M365 Gaps in your Backups - Good idea to review your backup processes
• Windows 11 adds new Security Baseline - Stops software you don't want!
• YouTuber got deepfaked - He's not happy - there is a bigger lesson here
• OpenCLaw caused a MAC shortage - Never fear you NVIDIA GPU will also run it
• CoPilot is actually useful in Excel - 11 Cool things you can do
• Panther Lake Delivers - It's early days, but now we're starting to see real reviews.
• Dell is back with XPS - with Panther Lake and a great review!
• Maximum resolution of the Human eye and choice of display - document here

DRAM prices have already tripled. 
Read how Intel's Panther Lake changes the game now that CES is done.

exclaimer, Overe & IRONSCALE have been added for this week.
See below for Linkedin

Get all the releases for the next 4 weeks in South Africa.
Coming up: "Hoppers"

Next big movie for 2026 is "Hail Mary".

Review what happened at CES and see links for NAMM 2026
ISE has wrapped, it was big, and even Microsoft was there with Teams!

Microsoft News This Week

Microsoft Teams Keynote at ISE

Ilya Bukshteyn's keynote explained that AI in Teams is no longer just about meeting notes — it's about multiplying what every person can achieve.
Microsoft is positioning Teams as the hub for human-to-human, human-to-agent, and agent-to-agent collaboration, with a wave of updates such as:

• Real-time interpreter is now available in Teams Phone calls, not just meetings 
  Including voice cloning so the interpreter sounds like you.
• Express Enrolment: one-click voice and face enrolment for AI recognition
  No more digging through settings
• The Meet app is becoming the Events app
  One place to create, discover, and manage Town Halls and events across your organisation

Please contact your First Technology Group account manager to connect you with our Teams specialists to help take you through all the changes that are coming from Microsoft for Teams. It is important to have regular update sessions!!!

Dynamics Licensing guide updated for February

There are new Dynamics 365 licensing resources available from February 2026. The Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide now includes a new section on the Dynamics variant of the MCP Server, explaining which Dynamics 365 licences include access to these capabilities, enabling AI tools to work with enterprise data.

The guide also adds clarification on capability and licensing nuances when integrating Dynamics 365 Field Service with Project Operations. Lastly, it has been updated to reflect the End of Sale of Commerce Recommendations and Commerce Ratings.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our Microsoft Dynamics specialists to ensure that you understand if and how you are affected by these changes and how best to take advantage (or not) of them!

Copilot Studio Licensing Guide February 2026

Microsoft have published an updated Copilot Studio Licensing Guide for February 2026. It now includes the Agent Pre-Purchase Plan as an additional way to buy Copilot Credits, delivered as an Azure reservation that bundles Copilot Credits with Microsoft Foundry services.
The guide also now signposts the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide, so you can confirm which Dynamics 365 licences include Copilot Credits. Content covering Code Interpreter, Multi-Agent Orchestration, and Bring Your Own Model has been removed from the Licensing Guide and moved into Microsoft Learn documentation.

Please contact your First Technology Group Account Manager to connect you with our Copilot and Dynamics specialists to help you understand how you are affected and how you can take advantage of these changes.

Microsoft 365 Backup Gaps Persist

Microsoft Infrastructure availability does not replace your companies responsibiilty for backing up your own data. The retention policies that Microsoft has in place are for compliance purposes and are NOT operational restoration processes.
There are even aspects of 365 that are difficult to back up and almost impossible to restore! It's important to know where there are challenges and how you get around them.

Please contact your First Technology Group Account Manager to connect you with our M365 backup specialists who can help ensure you have the correct backup and restore strategies in place for ALL aspects of how you use M365

Security

Windows 11 Adds new Secure mode

Microsoft is making it harder for changes to your operating system to slip through the cracks. Microsoft is rolling out Baseline Security Mode in stages, but it is important to be aware of these changes and know how to manage them in your business.

Please contact your First Technology Group account manager to connect you with our security specialists to help ensure you are making sure you are implementing these changes securely.

DeepFakes get scary - YouTuber gets deepfaked

The really scary thing about this is that this is just the beginning!
This is a relatively small channel following the Ukraine war, but he has still been quite effectively deep-faked - you should watch his video below. 
The implications for the future are mind-blowing. How will somebody deepfake you, an executive at your company, or even somebody important in your country, with devastating consequences?

It is critical that you stay up to date on how to spot the tell-tales, which will get increasingly harder to spot, and then how to verify that you ARE looking at and talking to the real person. Have you considered "safe words"? How do you make sure you have a "safety catch"? PLEASE contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our training specialists to help ensure everybody is kept up to date to handle the latest trickery.

OpenClaw Causes a MAC shortage

The immense popularity of OpenClaw has resulted in lead times of MAC's with lots of memory being stretched to 6 weeks! This shortage has appeared out of nowhere, driven by the demand for MACs ideally suited to running these AI models because of their unique memory architecture.
If you have an NVIDIA GPU, don't dispair, NVIDIA has published a guide on how to get it running on your GPU.

OpenClaw remains a security nightmare, so please contact your First Technology pGroup account manager to connect you with our Security specialists in helping ensure that OpenClaw does not appear in your corporate environment in any way and then with our AI specialists start engaging on how to safely start working out how to accommodate this and where it fits (or not) into the CoPilot ecosystem which IS secure from it's inception.

Cloud & AI

11 cool things CoPilot can do in Excel

Microsoft's AI tool is genuinely becoming useful for Excel, helping you become an Excel wizard without having to learn how to enter complex formulas or macros. Soon, we will ALL be Excel wizards!
Computerworld has published a good guide to help you get started.

Please contact your First Technology Group account manager to connect you with our AI specialists to start working on how you get CoPilot deployed in your environment and to see how you can start using CoPilot in Excel to make a difference in how you work. For many, this capability alone my justtify the cost of CoPIlot!