20 MARKETWATCH During Ignite 2025, Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer and corporate vice president of global partner sales at Microsoft, emphasised how collaboration with partners is central to scaling AI adoption across industries. “Microsoft succeeds when our partners succeed,” she said. This commitment to partnership was further illustrated by realworld examples of AI and digital transformation in action shared by numerous Microsoft partners. Thanks to its partnership with Microsoft, which began with identifying the key challenges for financial services professionals, LSEG now uses AI to solve challenges. “We’ve built our entire experimentation platform on Microsoft Foundry and have hundreds of experiments running through it,” said Emily Prince, group head of analytics and AI at LSEG. “This is not just for engineers; it’s for everyone to participate in AI adoption.” Chris Jansen, CEO of Kantar, shared how his firm is using Microsoft AI tools to accelerate advert testing from six weeks to just 90 seconds: “We tested 2,500 Coca-Cola adverts in two days and predicted their market success with 90 per cent accuracy.” Kore.ai’s CEO and founder, Raj Koneru, highlighted how firms can harness AI effectively by automating processes, upskilling staff and implementing the right frameworks to ensure rapid, scalable, responsible and measurable transformation. Kyndryl showcased how it helped Forza Steel modernise operations with AI by leveraging SAP and Microsoft technologies. Forza Steel adopted Microsoft’s ecosystem for its comprehensive cloud capabilities, supporting SAP RISE on Microsoft Azure and enabling unified operations with real-time data. ControlUp revealed how its tool ControlUp Migrate for Windows 365 helps IT teams modernise infrastructure without disruption, with Scott Manchester, vice president of product for Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop, saying the solution “simplifies the migration process and helps organisations accelerate their journey to Windows 365 with confidence”. David Treece, vice president of standards and policy strategy at Yubico, together with Swaroop Krishnamurthy, principal product lead for Microsoft Entra, showcased how hardware-bound passkeys like YubiKeys integrate seamlessly into Microsoft environments, helping organisations meet stringent security mandates and protect users from persistent threats. Ignite will return to the Moscone Center in San Francisco, USA, from 17-20 November 2026. Microsoft evolves partner ecosystem at Ignite Over 20,000 people attended Ignite. IGNITE IN NUMBERS sessions, demos and labs took place during the four-day event. 1.3 billion AI agents will be in use worldwide by 2028, according to Microsoft predictions. 400-plus
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=