Brandon LeBlanc

Microsoft's early-December Azure updates illustrate a broader effort to expand AI capabilities across the platform. At the model layer, Azure is increasing choice through Microsoft Foundry Models, including open-weight frontier options such as Mistral Large 3 aimed at long-context, multimodal, and agentic application scenarios.

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Repair Advocates Tell Microsoft: Stop the ‘End of Windows 10’ Jenn Engstrom, the state director of the California Public Interest Research Group, called the “end of 10” a “lose-lose-lose” situation. “It’s bad for consumers. It’s bad for security, and it’s bad for the environment,” she said. h/t Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman https://lnkd.in/g4tu3Hce

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Microsoft is releasing the Facilitator agent in Teams to General Availability in September, bringing real-time collaborative note-taking to meetings. This AI-powered feature helps participants stay focused, enhances engagement, and simplifies post-meeting follow-ups. Once the Facilitator leaves Preview, all users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will be able to enable the Facilitator agent in Teams meetings, even without using the Teams Preview client, which is currently required for this feature. https://topedia.net/52sSa1 #Copilot #Facilitator #TeamsMeeting #MicrosoftTeams

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Broadcom’s pitch is that VMware Cloud Foundation enables IT to run a modern, virtualized, highly automated, AWS-style cloud in an on-prem environment with all of the benefits that accrue. Getting customers to embrace the full arsenal of VCF 9.0 features is the focus of VMware Explore, writes Neal Weinberg for Network World. https://lnkd.in/gFuC4AE6

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My latest: Dell Technologies jumps into the ring with NetApp and VAST Data, unveiling a new #AI #dataorchestration product built on its Dataloop acquisition, as NVIDIA #STX shakes up the #enterprisedatastorage industry. Key quote from Michael Leone: "The #cuDF and #cuVS integrations quietly showing up inside #Snowflake, #Starburst, #watsonx -- those matter more to an #enterpriseIT leader's next 12 months than anything Jensen [Huang] showed on the big stage." Find out why that is, as well as how the Dell Data Orchestration Engine stacks up to competitors, according to Rob Strechay, at the link in the comments. #GTC26 #Nvidia

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I spoke with four IT executives from diverse organizations that have deployed Copilot at scale. Their insights reveal the steps to choosing high-impact use cases, managing data and access controls, securing user adoption — and avoiding common traps. Troy Hiltbrand, Sidney Fernandes, Robin Patra, Mohamed Shalabi

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Unsurprisingly, this year’s Microsoft Build conference is all about AI and agents, and Microsoft is using the event to position The post Microsoft Brings MCP, Local AI Models and Post-Quantum Security to Windows appeared first on The New Stack .

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Very excited about our new partnership with Anthropic to expose Coursera users to skills on Claude. Coursera users can now learn everything from Claude API fundamentals and prompt engineering to advanced capabilities like tool use, structured data handling, and retrieval-augmented generation. They will also learn to build modular applications with the Model Context Protocol and design autonomous, multi-step agentic workflows for real-world AI solutions. https://lnkd.in/gmN2C-bH

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