Good morning, good afternoon to everyone out there. Welcome to episode 62 of the Leading IT Podcast. In this podcast, we’re going to review the Microsoft Power Platform Conference in Vegas, which I had the pleasure of attending with Andrew Hehir. We’re also going to talk about the Copilot Wave 2 review.
If you’re new to our podcast, welcome! This podcast is for Australian IT leaders looking to stay up to date with the latest IT news and trends in AI, cybersecurity, low code, cloud and infrastructure strategy, and leadership. I’m your host, Tom Leyden, who’s the CIO at Long View.
Good day, Tom.
Good day, Josh. I’m looking forward to hearing about the trouble you caused in Vegas.
Yes, good. And myself, Josh Rubens, who’s the CEO at consulting firm Empyrean IT. Today, we’re joined by former CIO Andrew Hehir, who is now the Power Platform lead at Empyrean. Andrew also attended the conference with me in Vegas.
G’day, Andrew.
Hey, Josh. Hey, Tom. Nice to be here. Thank you very much for bringing me in on this one. Interesting topic.
Yeah, I think you might have been on like episode two or three of the podcast.
That’s right, previous life talking about low code platforms, and now we’ve come full cycle. So here we are.
Here you are, yes. So, quick one, Andrew. How are you finding the move from CIO to being on the vendor side?
Yeah, well, I think both have unique challenges, but I’m enjoying moving out of essentially a cost center role to something that has a real commercial focus. That’s exactly what I wanted out of changing careers a little bit. I’m certainly enjoying the variety of work you get in consulting, coming up with different solutions for clients, and getting successful outcomes for both them and us. So, yeah, very much enjoying the change to the other side of the paradigm.
Great. Well, hopefully you’d say that if I wasn’t here asking you the question as well.
I rehearsed it with some friends over the weekend.
Good. All right. And Tom, how have you been?
Yeah, mate, we’ve been well. All good, all good. Stuck in Australia though, unfortunately. No overseas trips for me. Maybe next year I’ll get a go.
Yes, it’s a good one. All right, we’ll get into some news, and Andrew, you can comment on the news. So, Tom, do you want to go first?
Yeah, I got a few. The first one is the cybersecurity bill that’s been put up for review by the Labor government. So, we’ve seen this one. Basically, I think there’s a little bit, it’s not that exciting, but the interesting one is it’s mandatory reporting for ransomware payments within 72 hours. I think that’s important in terms of visibility on what actually happens and who actually pays and who doesn’t pay. I think that’s quite important. How they police that, I have no idea. I’ll leave that to other people to work out, but it’s probably a good step in the right direction. There’s also voluntary sharing of information about the attack, but there is a risk, of course, that you could be reporting the fact that you’ve done something stupid as well. So, there are some challenges around that, no doubt they’ll be debated in the parliament.
Did they, um, talk about a bit of an amnesty if you report that?
There was a talking about it, but it’s not clear how that actually works yet, and I think that could be a sticking point.
Yeah, um, there’s a bit of focus on smart devices as well. So, I think if you’ve got an organisation that, if you’re in charge of smart devices or a lot of smart devices, you should read the detail behind that. But overall, I think it’s just more about the government trying to get more visibility on what’s going on. Is it actually going to help anything or change anything? Not really, not in this instance.
Yeah, so my first bit of news, I think everyone would have seen about four weeks ago that Amazon have announced they’re calling all staff back to the office full time. Back to the office, yes, back to the office. So, Andy Jassy said five days a week starting in January. So, they’ve had three days for a little while. They have 1.5 million people working for them globally and part-time.
There was a protest staged at the Seattle headquarters and the organiser of the protest was fired. Good, fired. But I think they have taken that to a labor dispute. I don’t know what’s happened there. And they said, yeah, it’s sort of really, um, people working from home, they’re saying that that era is over, the COVID post-COVID era is over, and it will help them invent, collaborate, and stay connected to each other. But there has been, since that, there has been a lot of pushback from the staff. So, they surveyed 2,500 of their staff and 73% of them said that they’re looking for another job as a result of it.
Yeah, that’s what it’s about. It’s about the competition for talent. So, on that thread, I actually had my news item. 78% of tech managers are willing to increase starting salaries for new hires to get them to work five days. So, they’re paying up to 20% more to get them to come to the office.
Yeah, yeah, I, I, I, uh, that’s a good point. I mean, look, I think, you know, there in a tech role, um, if we think about ourselves, I think, you know, we do a couple of days a week and maybe three. So it’s really, you know, what problem are we solving? You know, I think, I think there’s got to be, there’s got to be a bit of a balance there. But from a trend point of view in Australia, uh, Tab Corp also announced five days a week. Uh, Gillon McLachlan, the ex-CEO of the AFL, has gone in there, so they’re calling everyone back. Um, yeah, interesting to see how, you know, it seems to be that’s the way it’s going. Um, and, you know, Amazon, I think, I don’t think they’ll have any trouble getting people to work for them because a lot of people want to work for Amazon. Um, well, we’ll see, right? We’ll see.
That would be, sorry, I was going to say, that would be a real drain though, a real drain of their IP and their organisational knowledge if that many people left, right? Like, that does have an impact. And there’s plenty of other options out there in the market where, you know, companies are not enforcing this five-day-a-week thing. Um, so it’s not the ideal scenario that I was reading about. People are saying three days a week, everyone says three days a week. Like, if you can’t get your business to work on it, it seems like a really good flexible option. Three days a week doesn’t mean you have two days off, you’re only working for three days out of five. You’re still working for those two days, it just means you can have your family and deal with all the crap you have to deal with as a working parent, right, for example. Or, you know, you’ve got space to actually get stuff done and you can work hard as well.
Yeah, well, my perspective on it is that I’ve always, um, measured people on output, right? And if you set yourselves up to measure on output, then, you know, I’m all for the collaboration of being in the same space for a part of the week. But I certainly think you can run successful teams without being in the same space the whole time. I mean, you know, in one of my last gigs, I had people right across the region, and so they were never going to be together, right? Um, and we still ran effective teams. And, um, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, um, I, I don’t think it’s a determining factor in success being together the whole time.
Think Amazon will change their mind?
No, because I think, I think that, um, well, I, I don’t think so because they’ve made the public statement. And I, I was thinking while you guys were talking about the Tab Corp thing, like, what’s behind the Tab Corp thing, right? Like, is, is there, um, are they expecting a different outcome of having people all together? Or is it, is it an ego-driven thing of where, you know, someone new has come in and just said, I want to stamp, you know, um, put my own stamp on this?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Tom. Like, feels a bit like that, right?
Yeah, yeah. I think the outcome they’re looking for is to make money. I think if you’re doing well, that’s, that’s good. But like, does the five days change it?
No, no. I, yeah, I, I think there’s a fundamental issue there, and I don’t know if that’s the right, like, they should be pinging. Or, or, or is it maybe a good way to, um, reduce your head count without having to, without having, without having to fire anyone or make anyone redundant? Hey, we’re going five days a week, and, uh, there you go.
So, all right, um, let’s, uh, I think that it’s an interesting one to keep an eye on, right?
Tom, have you got more news or back?
No, that was my news, so that’s, that’s all good, man. Let’s get into this Vegas trip.
No, I have one more and then we get… I always have two. Okay, so the other one is, I have mentioned it before but it was just following the story, is that KPMG Australia is aiming to have 50% of its consulting work done by low-cost workers and robots by 2026. So that’s a significant change in the model. They’re calling it the 2526 delivery model. So they’ve got 4,000 staff in their consulting, a lot of them are concerned. The firm is saying they’re not planning to make job cuts. Uh-huh, right, well what does that mean?
So, yeah, they’ve got this KPMG delivery network locations and the rest is going to be done by digital labor, right? Are they saying, I mean the model of those guys is, you know, surely they’re adding extra brain power to the services they provide, right? So they’re kind of saying, hang on, half our work can be done by low-cost workers. It makes you wonder what… yeah, yeah, like we’re paying a premium because we want you guys for being experts but now you’re telling us your expertise is actually robots and overseas people, isn’t it?
Well, they said they have the… we mentioned their digital FTE, so they’ve got 20 of 125 already in use and they’re saying these digital FTEs are pieces of software that can perform repetitive tasks such as acting as a research assistant to draft tax advice that was normally done by a staff member or partner. And lots of companies, Commonwealth Bank was mentioned about how to replace some of their 2,400 onshore call center workers with AI bots. Yeah, so, and there’s this news is obviously very, um, yeah, very related to the conference that we attended because it was all about Copilot and AI in relation to the Power Platform. So anyway, I thought it was, I thought that was quite interesting. So that’s quite significant.
I think I get it in terms of repetitive, um, you know, process-driven work, that makes lots of sense. So I understand that, but so it’d be interesting to see how that comes out. And as you said, it’s that call center, it’s the customer inquiries, um, you know, it’s the sort of chatbot on your website getting a meaningful response on. I understand that aspect, that makes a lot of sense.
Well, I did read something on LinkedIn where a person was sitting next to a big four consultant and, uh, apparently the big four consultant, uh, said that his whole slide deck had been done with ChatGPT. So, you know, he wondered how the client felt about paying for that. Um, yeah, I thought that was interesting. So if you’re paying 250k for a consulting engagement from the big four and it’s done by a bot, how would you feel?
Yeah, good, probably not. You wouldn’t feel good, but you would assume, you would assume that that’s going to have an impact on their, uh, on their, uh, their rates, right? Like surely, surely that would have to be part of their go-to market. So we’re reducing our, um, you know, our wages bill so you get the benefit of that, you would assume. But, and also the other part of that is, so just one other thing there, like if they’re investing in tech, right, and you know, they’re getting bots to do some of these services and they’ve actually built that well, that, you know, that’s, it’s reasonable that that’s chargeable at some rate.
Yeah, yeah, maybe not the full, no, maybe not the full. Yeah, all right, let’s get into this conference. So, um, this was, we attended the Microsoft Power Platform Community Conference, uh, in Las Vegas. Um, so just, uh, for those not familiar about what the Power Platform is, you’ve potentially been hiding under a rock somewhere. Uh, it’s, it’s Microsoft’s low code…
Platform is part of, uh, M365. You do get some of the functionality with your standard M365 licensing. So it includes Power BI, the business intelligence, um, data visualization platform. That’s Power Apps for building apps, Power Automate, used to be known as Flow, for automating processes, Power Pages for, um, low code websites, so for front-end, um, you know, B2C or B2B, uh, web portals. And, you know, there’s a whole, um, you know, data platform that’s Fabric integrated with it.
So the conference really covered off, um, what’s next in Power Platform, also Fabric, so Microsoft’s data platform. And Copilot was really, you know, the main thing. So it’s really, you know, Microsoft is seeing this as the way in, as the easiest and most seamless way into AI from a business process point of view for customers. So in addition to using their M365 Copilot product for, you know, user personal productivity, um, to now start to extend, uh, Copilot into business processes and business data. So we’ll cover that off.
So, um, Andrew, this was your first Power Platform conference. What was your initial, before we get into detail, what was your initial sort of impression and feel of the conference?
Um, you know, a great opportunity to see what’s coming up, um, what’s on the roadmap, um, in this space from Microsoft. Um, you know, it gives you time to think about, you know, how you can use that information to advise clients. So it always gives you some time out to sort of, you know, think strategically and about the plans for the coming period. What overall, um, you know, takeaway though was that Microsoft are investing so heavily in both the Power Platform as, you know, as a low code development platform, low code no code, and in Copilot itself that it’s going to be part of pretty much every organisation’s future. So with that investment really driving the fact that it needs to be on the agenda for all organisations, all CIOs, and part of their strategy moving forward, um, you know, both from, you know, a low code perspective and okay, we can use Copilot as, um, doing POCs and expanding our AI capability, um, as opposed to, you know, maybe trying to build things, um, themselves on other platforms. So yeah, pretty, pretty significant.
Yeah, uh, for me it was, it was my second one. So, um, there were about 6,000 attendees, so it was slightly bigger and definitely the vendor hall was about, it was about double the amount of vendors in there, which is a bit of a reflection in the, in the, you know, the pull through. And the thing that I really noticed is that is, is the sort of ecosystem around Power Platform. There were a lot more compliance vendors, cybersecurity vendors for low code. So I think it’s really this push for, you know, enterprise use, um, scaling. You know, we saw there were some big names like Merc…
Who’ve got thousands of Power Apps, so this is really becoming, you know, enterprise grade. This isn’t, you know, little corner use cases for approvals. This is now a lot of very, very big major corporates are using it as their platform for innovation. So rather than just looking at it as, um, I think the cops are coming to get you, Tom, um, rather than looking at it as, you know, we’re going to do one or two little automations and in a couple of… but now really looking at the Power Platform as a platform for innovation and a strategy. Low code as a strategy to deliver on, you know, business outcomes and business requirements. And I think that that was really, you know, prevalent across the whole conference is, you know, stop thinking about it as a can we build a low code expense app versus Concur or something else. It’s really this is a platform for innovation and, you know, that can help us solve a lot of business problems and drive the business moving forwards. I think that really strategic point I think was, you know, much more, much stronger and clearer this year as to how Microsoft were going to deliver that.
So keen for some, you know, either reviewers, CIO to, you know, for your thought on that point because I think that’s important.
Yeah, it’s interesting to tell and also the kind of who are the people attending. You get a sense that much more corporate type people were there than tech nerds or was it more business type managers?
There was a lot of customers and a lot of big names. Saw some big American names, um, state departments, you know, three-letter departments. Yeah, there was a lot of customers there who you could see were actively engaged and heavily, you know, invested in the Power Platform. That was sort of what I saw. Andrew, what are your…
There’s clearly some very large deployments that are already in place and I think there were some numbers about, you know, the amount of users on the platform that was, you know, really significant. And just the companies that they were talking about in the various sessions, um, you know, indicate that it’s something that large organisations are taking very seriously. And I think have realised that, you know, as part of that strategy part you were talking about where low code needs to be part of your software development strategy moving forward. And that Power Platform is now definitely enterprise grade. Like, it is unquestionably, um, you know, something that can fit into any organisation regardless of how small or how big.
And the other part that they were really, um, you know, talking about a lot in a number of sessions was the fact that, you know, the low code part is one part of solutions and you should be thinking about solutions as low code plus pro code. And they even went to the extent of talking about, um, you know, your software teams could become fusion teams that include, you know, pro coders which become sort of your solution architects, your low code developers, then Power Platform, and even extending it out to those business users, um, you know, where they can use some of those front-end tools that Copilot’s now creating, which is probably another topic we should go on to, Josh, where, um, you know, they can almost mock up the concept of the app and take it to the IT guys to say, “Hey, listen, this is what we’re thinking about. You guys go away and finish it.”
So that’s how I see the ecosystem of the whole Microsoft stack and low code’s part in it evolving to really drive that innovation and drive that capacity of the software development teams to, um, you know, to be more comprehensive.
Yeah, all right, so we’ll get into some announcements. The first point I wanted to make as well, um, was the CrowdStrike conference was on at exactly the same time. Uh, and it was humorous as soon as you walk into the airport, there was a massive Check Point advertisement and SentinelOne had really big, huge ads saying, you know, the reliable platform, the platform you can trust. It was, you know, the, uh, anyway.
So I thought that was, that was quite, that was quite funny. So, um, to getting into the, the sort of the keynotes, um, one of the things I did notice is that they said that from a trajectory of the Power Platform that there are now 48 million Power Platform users with 25 million monthly active Power Apps users. So you might think that 48 is all Power BI. No, it’s there, 25 million monthly active. So that’s, that’s some big, that’s some big numbers there.
Uh, the Copilot Wave 2, the big Microsoft announcement was done the day before and also, so they had the head of, uh, the head of M365 Copilot present as part of the keynote. So a lot of the announcements were sort of part of this conference and we will, we will cover that off. Um, yeah, the concept around having no code to pro code and, but, but enabled and accelerated with Copilot. So having sort of looking at Copilot as another part of your tool chain which changes how fast you build and what you can build.
And there was also a big renaming of Power Apps to Intelligent Applications. So the applications are now infused with AI. So there was this, apparently this, um, number came from IDC that a billion new apps will be built between now and 2028 and 40% of them will be intelligent applications. I hope so. So that’s a lot, that’s a lot of apps, um, are dumb, I guess, if it’s, yes. So, but, and, and also that a lot of the use cases we sort of are unknown at this point. Um, but, but also the point being you can’t, you’re not going to be able to build that using legacy application developments. You need a rapid platform.
Yeah, you need a, you need a platform that you can, and also, um, a Copilot-enabled platform. So there, Copilot development, you can ask Copilot to, you know, I want to build an app that does this and it will get, get you halfway there or it can review code. So, you know, that’s something that, that’s been around, um, you know, been around for a long time.
So the first sort of major thing was this, this concept of this co-generative actions in Copilot. So it’s an early access preview, uh, it’s where you can use Copilot in a work, in, in a quite a complex workflow where there’s a lot of steps and a lot of complexity, a lot of different data connections where AI will, um, you can leave AI to work out how it’s going to build it for you rather than, you know, being very, um, declarative about how you want each process to do. You’re going to say, right, this is the problem I want to solve, these are all the steps, and let AI generate it for you. So that was a big thing.
And then the other one is, um, from an RPA point of view, so Microsoft’s, um, uh, Power Automate for Desktop. So that’s more where you’re automating, you know, legacy applications that don’t have an API. It’s now multimodal. So they demonstrated where you could record yourself talking to Copilot and say, this is the automation I want to do. I’m going to, this is the table, uh, we, you know, we normally, we’re going to convert it to here and we’re going to, we’re going to, you know, um, uh, paste it into here and we’re going to write it into this application and then let Copilot build the whole automation for you.
Cool. So that was, so that whole concept of multimodal, so not just typing into a chat interface but now enabled by for Omni, the ability to sort of tell Copilot and show, so speech and visual, and then it will interpret that and create it and turn it into an automation for you. So that was, Andrew, I thought that was pretty, that was an impressive demo.
Yeah, yeah, it’s an impressive demo, um, and it’s going to be very powerful. Um, I think that it, you know, as we know, it’ll have a certain level of maturity at the moment, but you know what the key point is, you know, the investment that Microsoft are putting into this. They are very, very clear that this is, you know, the direction they’re taking their products. So it’s, it’s, it’s important to get ahead of it now so you can take advantage of it as the software matures and the capability matures and you can, you know, and, and you can position it as not just an IT, um, department tool. It’s a business tool, right? And that, you know, that’s where you’ll get, um, scalability and, you know, real business value, um, in the longer term by having it in the hands of many.
Yeah, I mean, Microsoft has said they’re now an AI company. They’re no longer a software… they’ve said that they are, you know, it can’t be any clearer than that, right?
No, I’m still processing that and wondering what does it actually mean, but they have, they have made that big call.
Yeah, they have. You were there in the dot com world, so you know, we’re a dot com company, you know, you know what it means.
Yeah, yeah, that’s, yeah, right. Yeah, and next, and next it’ll be something else. So, um, the next really big thing, and we have mentioned it on the previous podcast, but it was announced, uh, as part of also the Wave 2, was this concept of Copilot agents. Yeah, so a Copilot agent is different to a normal Copilot. So a normal Copilot is, you know, it has a goldfish memory. So you ask it to do something, it’ll bring you an answer. Next time you ask it, it’s going to go back to normal. I don’t know Tom and Andrew anymore. So Tom and Andrew ask me a question and it will give you an answer. What a Copilot agent is, is something that learns over a period of time and it will remember, or so to speak in inverted commas, you know, next time you ask it, it’s going to, it’s going to be learning about a topic or something that you do all the time.
So Copilot agents were announced. So they can start with being very basic prompt-driven. So an email comes in or something, or something, you know, comes in from a database all the way to autonomous agents. So, you know, the head of the Power Platform, Ryan Cunningham, is saying that, you know, that autonomous agents is really where the value is going to be, is Copilots that can run business processes for you. And he actually said that organisations are going to have as many Copilot agents as they currently have Excel documents and Word documents.
What a night.
Yeah, I, I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t as excited as he was on that. That, that sounds…
So basically, I mean, because you can do it and create a Copilot. So part of the Wave 2 release is users can go in and create their own agent on their SharePoint data if you already, if you own an M365 license.
Yeah, yeah, so now you can do it and then you can invite other people to look at it. So I think, you know, I’m hoping customers need to be ahead of this. If you have, if you’ve got M365 Copilot out there, make sure that you’ve got Purview and you’ve got your data permissions and you’ve got everything sorted out because they’re now putting the ability to create these agents into the hands of users. So it’s now become that easy, that push-button stupid easy for users to create and connect it to their SharePoint data.
Yeah, um, yeah, like it needs to be… you’re ready for this. You need to be ready for that.
Yeah, every IT department should be doing these themselves so they understand how dangerous or how powerful these things can be, right? Yeah, so you need to do your, you know, all the data classification, all the, you know, get Microsoft Purview in place and so you can protect what goes into prompts, what comes out, what users are allowed to see. So that’s, that’s pretty… and the whole responsible AI thing is, is, you know, is big. Although if you use a Microsoft product, they, they’re already… that’s already baked in. So if you ask it something rude or how do I make a bomb, it will just say no, we can’t help you with that, right? It’s that whole responsible AI thing is built into it.
So these agents, um, and where, where this really came into, um, was sort of really solidified for me, Andrew, was where they talked about this new thing called Copilot Plan Designer.
Yeah, so I’m not sure to be… I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry, Tom, but basically I’ll tell you what this is and you can, you know, you can… I’m not sure whether, whether you’re gonna laugh or cry. So it’s called a Plan Designer. Yeah, so it’s in Early Access previews and this was the first time they’d shown it to anyone outside Microsoft, so they said. So what you can do is you can show this Plan Designer, this, this, uh, you know, application platform, um, pictures of process diagrams, screenshots of apps, whiteboards, data and say I want to build a solution. Yeah, this is what I want to do. And it, it’s not going to go and build things, right? So that there it has, has as part of it, it has a software solution architect Copilot, right? And then it has a data analyst Copilot, it has an app builder Copilot. So, so it has all these different Copilots. So it’s going to start doing what a BA would do. It will start mapping out the user stories, it will start saying this is what the solution’s going to look like and then it will start actually creating the data tables for you and building the apps.
Yeah, I mean, that’s, it’s a big jump, Tom. Sounds cool, but you kind of wonder like how much effort’s required to actually spell out to this system what to do when you could just do it yourself. So it reminds me of like you’ve got like a work experience kid in the office. It’s like how much time and energy is required to get the work experience kids to actually do something productive and I just wonder where it is on that level. Like, Andrew, what do you think?
I thought it looked pretty, I thought it looked pretty good. Yeah, I think the concept is really strong. Um, and, and Tom, just so you know, to answer the sort of questions or concerns you raised, it’s stuff that you would have to do anyway, right? And, and normally, normally you would as a, as a business user, you would give that to a BA. A BA would go away and do the mockups and, you know, do the generate the user stories, all that sort of stuff, right? So it’s stuff that happens anyway about using Copilots to do it. So you could literally like sketch, you know, what a screen looks like on a whiteboard and then give it to them, a wireframe comes out, right?
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, so it’s, it’s sort of, uh, I, I felt that it was like accelerating a process that’s already there. Um, but you know, it’s our, our first look at the capability. So I would, I would say again that it is, uh, you know, really, really strong concept for accelerating that app build process, but it will take for, for a while to mature to a point where you get, you know, a comparable output from an experienced BA.
I think the point is though that it’s Copilot agents in collaboration with people. Yeah, it’s very similar to, you know, the Copilot-driven app development. You’re not going to leave a Copilot to build an app for you because, you know, if you do and it builds the whole app and it’s working, whenever there’s an issue, no one’s going to be able to support it because they have no idea what it’s done. So it’s really, so it’s, you know, but it can really help you get started. So it can save you 80% of the time because all you need to do is review. So it’s wireframes to creating user stories. You can go, okay, well that’s pretty good, but I want to change. So it’s still highly editable.
But I think there, you know, what Microsoft was putting forward is that this is their vision for the next generation of low code, is this concept of intelligent applications where you still have, you know, low code still there, you still have, you know, your builder, your designer, you still build apps and workflows. It’s just really turbocharging it in order to be able to meet this 1 billion intelligent apps by, you know, by 2028 number, which is obviously a, you know, sort of, uh, what’s the word, arbitrary pressure they’re putting on the industry created by some BS, but they’ve asked IDC to come up with it.
That’s just me being very, being very skeptical. But I think, you know, I mean, even putting that aside, but I think this is really showing how much more Copilot and AI can be rather than just a bit of a chat and ask some questions. I think you’re right there about it. It doesn’t replace the BA, but the BA becomes the jockey, if you like, on this particular horse. So they become really orchestrate the process.
Yeah, they’re the guys who can draw the whiteboard really well and take the photo and smash the wireframe out. So all of a sudden their output goes up, I don’t know, 400% or something because they know that. I mean, do that. Yeah, I’ve already worked with, uh, you know, product managers that, um, were, you know, pretty early in adopting AI to build out user stories. And, um, while it wasn’t absolutely going to replace the role of a product manager or a BA, it accelerates like the ability, the amount you can output so, you know, so dramatically. And so they’re still there, you know, making sure that the quality is right, making sure that the output is something that’s going to work, you know, downstream. So yeah.
Yes, that was good. All right, so the next, the next, um, bit that I wanted to sort of cover off was the amount of, um, Fabric, Microsoft Fabric sessions there were and, and, and sort of go through that. Um, so the whole concept was really talking about driving a data culture. Yeah, and you know, data is the fuel that drives AI. So, you know, none of this stuff works if your data is a mess and you’ve got data sitting in silos and different systems and, you know, you don’t, you don’t have your, um, you know, you don’t have a data lake, you don’t have any centralisation.
So what Fabric is, is for those who don’t know, it’s a Microsoft, uh, SaaS solution. Um, it’s automatically provisioned within your tenant and it’s the orchestration layer, the overall umbrella layer for all the Azure analytics platforms. And, um, it sits on top of, uh, the data lake platforms called OneLake. So the whole idea is that OneLake is like the OneDrive for your data.
So where in OneDrive you have all these folders and you’re connecting to data, you have, um, folders connecting to different data sources where you actually, um, don’t have to move your data. So you can, you can do… Andrew and I had a, had a really, you know, a number of conversations about this because he didn’t believe that you could have a link to data and do stuff with that without actually moving it. So, um, I’m not sure if he still believes it even after attending the sessions, but you know, it’s the ability to have, uh, so if you’ve got data sitting in AWS or you’ve got data sitting in Google or other connected applications, you can now run queries and do data services against data through these shortcuts because they’re all in the same data format, which I think is called Delta Parquet.
So as long as they’re in that, they’re in that open format. It’s an open format, um, and it’s, yeah, it’s Microsoft’s competitor to platforms like, um, Databricks and Snowflake, which actually, uh, have connectors to Fabric. So this is a really big move, a really, really big move for Microsoft. So all those Azure services and Power BI all go into this OneLake, which is part of Fabric, and then you can run AI queries, uh, across… there’s a Copilot for Fabric and you can start using Copilot to ask queries and do things for you within your whole Fabric data set, which is, you know, which is really exciting.
Um, and once you have OneLake set up, then you can start, uh, there’s integrations and you can use, uh, the Fabric data and the OneLake data in M365, in Teams, in Excel, Power Platform, Copilot, VS Code. So it really gives you access to all your data. And then they’ve got some pre-built workflows and templates. The most common one that we like is, uh, the Medallion one where you can have gold, silver, bronze data. So bronze is like data that’s pretty, you know, um, dirty, so to speak. It’s, it’s just, um… Andrew, you can help me here.
Bronze is like essentially just like your raw data that you’re bringing into your lake, right? And then, and then your silver version is you’ve curated some of that data and your gold version is essentially your data warehouse. And I think the, you know, the really important thing that, that we should, you know, put across here is that for any, like, you know, Fabric is an, is awesome as a platform. Like I’m, I’m, I was, I was not sold by it when I first heard about it. I thought it was marketing spin, but, um, it’s just not. Like there’s, there’s some, um, incredibly powerful features that, um, allow you to, you know, um, spin up these, um, this capability very quickly. But it is still undeniable that you have to have a well-architected solution, um, to get the, get the best value out of your data in your organisation. So you still, you cannot get away from it. This just, um, allows you to speed that up and work with it in a very flexible, um, flexible and efficient way.
And also, Andrew, if you want to announce that we have, um, now got this Fabric data capability within, within Empyrean, which, which is really exciting thing for us because it’s, um, you know, a natural extension of the Power Platform practice to, um, to work with data. Um, and we’re, you know, we’re starting to see, um, a huge demand for, for this capability in the marketplace. So yeah, we’re, we’re super excited to…
Yeah, you’re getting more into this space, not just sitting with Power BI.
Yeah, we’ve got to brought on, um, three guys who, that’s all they do is, is Fabric and data.
Yeah, it’s been pretty exciting. One of the things that I, uh, last thing about Fabric is, is the data activator piece. So there was a bit of a, a demo about, um, I think it was 7-Elevens in, in the US and the slushy, the slushy levels. So they were getting, instead of, you know, very manual, you know, the one on Fifth Avenue’s low, we need to call someone to get the truck out here to update the slushies, is they were streaming, streaming data off all these slushies. Fabric…
Thank God someone’s fixing this problem.
Honestly, yes, and as soon as it hit a predefined level, it would kick off a business process, automate a business process, and then the people would go out. So I think what it means is you can use data, um, you know, use a tool called Data Activator where you can now, um, using low code, using Power Platform, you can now actually, um, you know, use changes in data to kick off a business process rather than having it to be quite reactive and having people sit there and look at it. Of all these AI issues, it’s okay, well, I can automate a process, but the question is how does my process actually start? A phone call or is it a customer or is it an event or what is it that triggers it? If you get enough of that, then you’re so much further along than most people.
Well, they had actually a guy from Shell there who had built this, um, using Copilot for their, um, IoT sites for their big sites when they were faults, and they had automated that whole fault reporting and rectification process using Fabric and Copilot. So to have a guy there, um, you know, a customer present, he’s already doing this, I thought that was very, very powerful.
Um, the last bit before we get into, uh, the Wave 2, which we’ll do quickly given how much time is, is, is, is that the concept of hyper-automation as a strategy, you know, that was, that was really, you know, a big piece. So where automation is not enough, it has to be hyper. So, you know, um, so what does that mean? It’s like giving your kids a coffee and they go and some Red Bull and they go hyper. So it’s really thinking about not just how I’m going to automate a couple of processes, it’s really strategically looking at your whole business and working out how am I going to use, um, AI, um, and, you know, Power Automate to, you know, move my business forward.
So yeah, Andrew, do you want to…
Yeah, for me it was, it was really, um, you know, not looking at just a process in isolation in one department. It was actually looking at an end-to-end business process and saying we are going to automate this from end to end and, um, and using those tools to do that. Um, and you know, if you’ve got the platform embedded in your business, um, at an enterprise level, then, um, then you’ve now got the capability to do it. So yes, it’s a more strategic, um, action than just saying I’m going to automate part of accounts payable, for instance, right? So it’s, it’s really looking at that end-to-end capability and it sort of ties back into, you know, what you were talking about earlier with the digital FTE, right, Josh? Like that’s really, really where you’re achieving that sort of success.
Yeah, yeah, so looking at it holistically.
Yeah, um, all right, well I was going to go through Copilot Wave 2, um, which is relevant in general and specifically if you have M365 Copilot. So this will be of interest to you, uh, and if you don’t, well it will still be of interest because it might make you go and buy it.
So I’m just going to do it. So first thing, um, it has, uh, GPT-4 Omni is now included, so they’ve dramatically improved performance. Uh, there was a new thing called Copilot Pages. I don’t know if any of you guys saw it. So it’s, it’s from the Microsoft Loop application and that this is actually going to be a free feature. So if you’ve got, if you’ve got an Entra ID license, so that’s any customer got any E365 license, they will be able to use it. So these pages is using something, it’s quite confusing, so it’s called Biz Chat, Microsoft Business Chat. All Biz Chat is, is the, um, the web app where you talk to Copilot. That’s what Biz Chat is. So that’s basically they’re calling that a canvas and now and allowing you to sort of turn that in, transform that into a separate space called Pages where other people can now come in and collaborate with you and the Copilot in the same space. So they, you know, they’re saying they’re revolutionising, you know, multiplayer AI to AI, AI to human collaboration. I’m not sure, but, um, anyway, that, that was quite interesting.
Um, ones that were more interesting was Copilot in Excel. So this is now, I think a lot of customers are really going to be, uh, excited about this. So even if your data isn’t formatted, there are skills like XLOOKUP, SUMIF, and they’ve also announced a Copilot in Excel with Python. That’s pretty cool. So it’ll be like having, you know, an advanced analyst working with you. It could do like risk analysis, forecasting. Yeah, um, so that’s also part of it.
Uh, Copilot in PowerPoint, it’s been around, but now they got something called, uh, Narrative Builder. So you can connect it with other types of documents and it will help you can ground it in other data and create a draft of your presentation. The other new thing is called Brand Manager. Yes, so you can upload your branding template and it will, and it will build it on brand for you.
Copilot in Teams has also been around for a while. So the new feature is it can now bring in the chats within Teams as well as the video. It only used to be able to look at the video, so now it can also include the summary of what’s going on in the chat.
Uh, Copilot in Outlook has also, um, been out for a little while. So around prioritising my inbox, soon you’re going to be able to teach it topics, keywords, and people, and it will highlight priority people, so it’ll bring that to the front.
Uh, Copilot in Word, so improved ability to bring documents, uh, to bring data in from other types of documents, even encrypted documents, PDF, to bring that into, um, Copilot Word.
Copilot in OneDrive, so this is interesting. So having Copilot to be able to trawl through your OneDrive, your personal data and documents. So that’s, uh, already, already out and, um, has the ability to compare up to five documents at the same time for you. So that’s quite interesting.
And Copilot Agents has been announced, so the ability, as I mentioned earlier, for users to create their own Copilot agent in SharePoint and share that, um, share that data with other people. So that was the main, the main announcement from Copilot Wave 2.
So Tom, you’ve had a play with M365 Copilot. Does that, that change the world? How did that make you feel?
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I think the, uh, general feedback I’ve heard from other people as well is said, look, Copilot, it’s okay, it’s a bit of a novelty, but not really engaging you. It’s kind of like, okay, that’s good, but now get out of the way while I do some work. So if it actually becomes more useful and actually relevant to the actual task you’re trying to do, uh, so I can see a couple of use cases there with that, with that sit. I’m not sure if they’re there yet. Um, I mean, the PowerPoint Copilot was pretty, pretty hopeless, but this sounds more relevant. Yeah, we’ll have to see it, right, to see, to see it actually works.
Yeah, right. And Andrew, um, so that’s the end of the news portion, so we’ll wrap up here. Andrew, any other points, anything else you wanted to mention?
I think just to go off the last topic of discussion, I think that there’s all of these great features and products coming out from Microsoft and, um, some of them will stick and some of them won’t, right? But I think for organisations to get ahead of it, like we were talking about earlier in the podcast, is, you know, the best strategy is probably to, um, you know, assign a champion that can stay on top of this and actually find where the value is. Um, because it’s like there’s so much to take in that not everyone is going to be able to do that, right? But, um, you know, if you’re serious about getting ahead of it, you probably want, um, someone to be on it and, and, and coming back to you with, um, you know, where you should focus your efforts and also engage with consultants to help.
Andrew, bring in the capacity and the specialisation where it’s needed.
That’s exactly what we’re here for. Thank you.
It just sounds like, you know, just find those low-hanging fruit, right? And just, yeah, get some examples, get the business engaged with it, and all of a sudden the business starts coming back to the IT organisation with all their ideas and then all of a sudden you’re off, right?
Yeah, all right. Excellent. Well, thank you. I think it’s been good, been a really good chat as ever. Um, Andrew, if people want to reach out to you, how can they get hold of you?
Uh, they can get me on my mobile 0437 076 650 or A Hehir, that’s ahehir@empyreanit.com.au.
Excellent. Thank you. Thanks for joining us, Tom, as ever. Tom, you can find on LinkedIn and myself as well. And yeah, if anyone wants to have a chat around their low code or Copilot initiatives, feel free to reach out to jrubens@empyreanit.com.au. And as usual, everyone, thanks for listening. Thanks, Tom. Andrew, see you Tom. See you everyone. Thanks.