TOP STORIES #59

NAB Came to an end with some emphasis on video walls for virtual productions... imagine planning a new movie where most of your sets never have to be built. Here is a summary of some of the interesting things seen at NAB. Of course, search YouTube for what you would like to know about NAB 2024.

Just when I thought it would be quiet on the Microsoft front, there were a bunch of announcements that are quite important, especially when it comes to price increases.

Last Week's TOP STORIES #58 is here.

If you would like colleagues to sign up to this newsletter, they can click here.

Hardware

What is TOPS?

In this case it is not your (very important) corner SPAR, but a measurement which denotes how many Trillions of Operations a system can perform per second. As this is a measurement that is now going to be referred to a lot and something that you are going to be including in your hardware RFP's (remember a minimum of 40 TOPS for PC's) it is important to understand just what this measurement is. Here is an article that explains it a bit more. It is not a perfectly accurate metric, but does give you an idea of a system's potential AI processing capability.

AMD and Microsoft announce Ryzen 8000 Pro

These are enterprise versions of the processors with improved AI processing capabilities and include the Pluton security processor designed by Microsoft. Read more here.

Microsoft

Snapdragon joins the Elite.

It seems that AI Explorer will be reserved for PCs only with the Snapdragon Elite processor (which is capable of 45 TOPS). The clever version allows you to search a timeline for everything you do on Windows.

I suspect that this AI Explorer capability will be reserved for NPU capable Intel based computers with Lunar Lake CPU's expected to launch at the end of the year. You can read more about this here.

Power BI Premium Capacity retired in favour of Fabric

Microsoft has announced the phase-out of Power BI Premium Capacity SKUs (P-SKUs) in favour of Fabric Capacity.

After 1 July 2024, new customers will no longer be able to purchase P-SKUs. Existing non-Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers will still be able to renew their current subscriptions until 1 January 2025 and may add further capacity until the subscription term ends.

EA customers can continue to purchase or renew until their EA term concludes.

There will be no changes to the licensing for Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium Per User (for now).

It is really important to make sure you are really on top of understanding what your exposure is to Power BI licensing as Microsoft continues migrating to Fabric. You can read the Microsoft announcement here.

If you feel you need some assistance in this please reach out to your FT Account manager who will make sure you talk to the most relevant Power BI specialist to help you review your potential exposure,

This extends to the changes in PowerApps I addressed in Top Stories #55 which references an important paper from Directions on Microsoft on that subject.

Dynamics price hike

Microsoft has announced some potentially hefty price increases effective from October 2024, which gives you at least some time to recover from the surprise! You can read what The Register thinks about it here.

Across the 12 categories, Microsoft appears to have applied an average increase of 11.5% with some even higher. Microsoft has provided full details about these changes here and from TechRadar here.

If you are using Dynamics, and if you are coming up for a renewal, it is VERY VERY important you check in with our First Tech. Dynamics team along with your First Tech. account manager to understand the implications of these price increases and factor them into your roadmap with Dynamics going forward.

Microsoft 365 Plan Comparison Documents ex Teams.

These documents have been updated to to reflect the removal of Teams. You can download the one for Enterprise customers here.

Microsoft Office LTSC 2024 Public Preview available

Microsoft has announced that commercial customers and now install Office 2024 (which extends to Project and Visio 2024), and also has confirmed that prices will increase by 10%. You can read more here.

END OF SUPPORT!!!

Microsoft has announced the upcoming end of support (EOS) date for Office 2016 and Office 2019 apps, along with related productivity servers. All of those apps will no longer be supported after October 14, 2025. You can get the full list of what is coming to the end of support here.

Cloud & AI

Microsoft Demonstrates Human-Like replicas of you talking

This is quite worrying and exciting. Microsoft is demonstrating AI technology which allows it to take a single picture of your face and audio clip and then animate it so realistically it will be possible to fool people into thinking they are looking at the real you! I immediately think about with "bad guys" could do with this..... I shudder at the thought.....

You can watch the video of this technology being demonstrated here. Microsoft is calling it VASA-1. Yikes!!!! once you have watched the video, you will get an idea of what VASA-2 could be!

After watching the Mona-Lisa one, I'm not sure I'll sleep very well!!!

Adobe to Add Sora, Runway & Pike to Premier Pro

Adobe is planning to add these technologies to Premier soon allowing creators to move seamlessly between AI-generated and real footage. No props or costuming necessary!

Security

Large Scale brute force attack

CISCO is warning about a large-scale attack on Cisco, CheckPoint, Fortinet, SonicWall, and Ubiquiti devices. As always it reminds us to never drop our guard and to make sure we are applying patches as soon as they become available. You never know when you will be next

What's up at FTG

CoPilot Readiness FTG is offering an M365 CoPilot Readiness Workshop to help you get ready. You can register here

Copilot for Security You and your team are invited to a one-on-one demo session we are hosting featuring Microsoft Security Copilot. It's a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase this cutting-edge technology to you. Sign up here.

Movies

Now Playing: Sleeping Dogs

Now Playing: Abigail

Now Playing: The boy and the Heron

26 April: 10 Lives

26 April: The Fall Guy

26 April: Boy Kills World