The NEDAS Virtual Symposium aired live September 8-10, 2020 was chock-full of insights from communications infrastructure industry thought leaders. The event closed with an insightful presentation given by Aubrey Blosser, a Senior Program Manager with the cloud operations management team at Microsoft. In her presentation, Blosser shares how the workforce at Microsoft has changed over the last six months. The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown that their need to be shifts to how teams operate. Blosser describes that Microsoft cloud services – known as Microsoft Azure – have been at the forefront of assisting companies from different sectors to adapt their workforces. Blosser notes the uptake of cloud services for companies’ workforce management – enabling Work From Home (WFH) capabilities. As of Blosser’s presentation, Microsoft records over a billion customers, 20 million businesses are using its services, all supported by data centers in over 150 locations.
Microsoft has been noted to be in collaboration with external stakeholders in the improvement journey. The emergence of COVID-19 has contributed to a large trajectory in remote workforce landscape. Digital transformation has been a key enabler, providing opportunities to support n remote teamwork environments, powered by secure critical cloud infrastructure. Microsoft’s ability to collaborate with different customers offers a pathway to help them adapt and remain operational in an era where many traditional business functions can be done remotely.
There has been a noted increase in data traffic across Microsoft’s cloud and online meeting services. In April 2020, Microsoft observed over 2 million meeting participants each day on its platform, leading to over 4.1 billion meeting minutes. This was in comparison to the highest level previously recorded of around 900 billion meeting minutes prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft has been vital to businesses, assisting companies to become more agile and accessible while enabling flexibility for their workforce.
Blosser reveals that Microsoft has a major role in enhancing today’s remote working environment. One of the challenges organizations face in implementing remote working conditions is the gap between the team members from the older generation and the new generation. New opportunities have emerged on how workforces engage each other to ensure a successful remote workforce. To learn more you can watch Aubrey Blosser’s presentation in its entirety on the NEDAS YouTube channel here.
NEDAS sits at the intersection of the wireline and wireless infrastructure where interconnectivity is key to enabling the connected world. The group serves as facilitators of the connected world through the promotion and creation of networking opportunities and innovative thought-leadership programs at the crossroads of wireless and wireline communications infrastructure space. Since 2010, NEDAS programs bring together industry thought leaders, cutting-edge technologies and end-user solutions shaping a new communications infrastructure landscape enabling a more connected world. The NEDAS Virtual Symposium is available online by visiting virtual.nedas.com.
