Latest news with #MicrosoftBuild
Business Wire
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Cornerstone Announces Partnerships Alongside Suite of Agentic Product Innovation
SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Cornerstone OnDemand Inc., a leader in workforce agility solutions, today at Cornerstone Spark Las Vegas announced strategic collaborations with Microsoft and Salesforce, a series of product innovations, and laid the path for organizations to upskill, reskill and plan their human and agentic workforces for the future of work with a groundbreaking system of agents strategy. 'Today's business reality: AI is replacing tasks, interactions, and decisions at a speed previously unmatched,' said Himanshu Palsule, Chief Executive Officer at Cornerstone. 'The old way of operating and workforce planning is no longer going to work in this reality. Organizations need to reshape processes and how we approach work for the future or be left behind. These partnerships and product innovations will set up our customers to not only plan for the reality of tomorrow, but to see even deeper into competitive and market intelligence for talent strategies and workforce readiness, to truly be one step ahead.' Announced today, Cornerstone has a partnership with Salesforce to bring Cornerstone agent actions to Agentforce. The agent actions will align Salesforce's Agentforce, the digital labor platform, for augmenting teams with trusted autonomous AI agents in the flow of work, with Cornerstone's AI-powered workforce capabilities. As featured at Microsoft Build last week and at Cornerstone Spark, Cornerstone is building AI agents to bring the value and utility of Cornerstone's market-leading workforce agility solutions into the flow of work, making them accessible within Microsoft's suite of enterprise productivity and collaboration tools, like Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft 365. Continuing its commitment to a unified and thriving partner ecosystem, launching this summer, the new Cornerstone Extend Marketplace will offer a centralized hub to discover and explore both technology and services partner solutions that extend the power of Cornerstone. Built to meet growing demand for plug-and-play integrations and a unified partner ecosystem, the Extend Marketplace streamlines solution discovery for customers while giving partners a stronger platform to drive visibility and adoption. Additional innovations launched at Cornerstone Spark Las Vegas, including: Cornerstone Transform: Workforce Intelligence and Cornerstone Skill Exchange – Following its launch in April, Cornerstone Transform is continuing its evolution to help organizations gain better visibility into the skills of their people and design the workforce of the future. Built on SkyHive's dynamic labor market data, innovations in Workforce Intelligence coming in Q3 2025 will help organizations take an inside-outside look at their teams and benchmark them against the market and offer competitive intelligence. Additionally, rolling out starting in July 2025, Cornerstone Transform will help organizations drive consistent skilling experiences across talent ecosystems with Cornerstone Skill Exchange, a control center for the automation of skills mapping and serve as a translation layer for skills data. Expanded Cornerstone Galaxy AI and Immerse capabilities – In July, Cornerstone will introduce a host of new AI capabilities in Cornerstone Galaxy powered by Cornerstone Galaxy AI. These include an intelligent in-platform assistant that empowers administrators with AI capabilities for content curation, compliance monitoring, report generation, and more. Additionally, Cornerstone Immerse Companion, immersive technology that enables learners to roleplay with AI mentors and coaches, will expand to additional modalities, including browser, audio-only, and mobile versions, to broaden access and enable new use cases for the technology. This milestone release represents the first phase of Cornerstone's vision to extend AI-driven efficiency across the entire organization with personalized, on-demand assistance that transforms how enterprises develop and mobilize talent. Innovation supporting the changing frontline workforce and mobile needs – Launching in July, the reimagined Cornerstone Galaxy Mobile App scales learning and workforce readiness, giving frontline and deskless workers smarter, faster access to training, compliance, upskilling, and career mobility – anytime, anywhere. With offline access, personalized learning, and enterprise-grade security, the app empowers organizations to keep on-the-go teams aligned, compliant, productive, and ready to grow. 'Cornerstone's partnerships and AI product innovations announced today mark a pivotal step forward—not just for new buyers, but for existing customers ready to modernize,' said Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer, Sapient Insights Group. 'Combined with the bundles, they're making it far easier to grasp the full value of the Cornerstone environment in a unified way. For current customers, this is more than a packaging shift—it's a gateway to the next generation of futureproofing for human and AI hybrid workforces.' For more information, check out: About Cornerstone Cornerstone powers the potential of organizations and their people to thrive in a changing world. Cornerstone Galaxy, the complete AI platform for workforce agility, meets organizations where they are. With Galaxy, organizations can identify skills gaps and development opportunities, retain and engage top talent, and provide multimodal learning experiences to meet the diverse needs of the modern workforce. More than 7,000 organizations and 140 million users in 186 countries use Cornerstone Galaxy to build high-performing, future-ready organizations and people today.
Hans India
24-05-2025
- Business
- Hans India
Microsoft Employee Defies Email Restrictions to Voice Support for Palestinians
In a bold act of protest, a Microsoft employee has managed to bypass the company's internal filters that block terms like 'Palestine,' 'Gaza,' and 'Genocide' incorporate emails. The employee, Nisreen Jaradat, a senior tech support engineer, sent a powerful message to thousands of staff members on May 23rdwith the subject line: 'You can't get rid of us.' Her message, which was obtained by a famous publication, voiced her frustration with the company's stance on the ongoing conflict. 'As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company,' Jaradat wrote. 'I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees.' Although it remains unclear how Jaradat circumvented the internal restrictions, her email called on colleagues to support a petition by No Azure for Apartheid(NOAA), a group pushing Microsoft to end its partnerships with the Israeli government. NOAA has been behind multiple protest actions in recent weeks, including disruptions at the company's annual developer event, MicrosoftBuild. Jaradat encouraged coworkers to not only sign the petition but also to get involved in NOAA's growing internal movement. She described her email as a direct message to Microsoft leadership, urging them to confront uncomfortable truths rather than suppress employee voices. When asked about the incident, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw referred that famous publication to a previously released statement addressing the policy. 'Mass emailing colleagues about any topic not related to work is not appropriate,' the company stated, adding that it has implemented measures to limit such messages to those who have opted in. Hossam Nasr, an organizer with NOAA, criticized the company's response. 'Microsoft keeps telling its workers to go through the appropriate channels, and yet time and time again, those who speak up in 'appropriate channels' from viva engage posts to HR tickets are silenced or ignored,' Nasr said. 'What Microsoft is really telling us is: make it convenient for us to ignore you. Nisreen's email summarises it: they cannot get rid of us. We will continue protesting in all ways, big and small, until our demands are met.' This week's escalation follows a string of employee-led demonstrations that began on May 19th when a Microsoft worker, Joe Lopez, interrupted the Build conference's key note and later emailed thousands of colleagues. Lopez was terminated that same day. Protests continued through the week, including interruptions during AI-related sessions and pickets outside the venue. The unrest comes shortly after Microsoft publicly acknowledged its contracts with the Israeli government but maintained that internal and external reviews found 'no evidence' that its tools were used to 'target or harm people' in Gaza. The employee actions have intensified internal tensions and raised questions about how far corporations should go in regulating speech related to global humanitarian issues. Read the full email here Yesterday, Microsoft chose to utterly and completely discriminate against an entire nation, an entire people, and an entire community by blocking all employees from sending any outbound email containing the words 'Palestine', 'Gaza', 'genocide', or 'apartheid'. Microsoft leaders justified this blatant censorship by saying it was to prevent you from receiving emails like the email that you are reading right now. Even though Microsoft SLT are aware that this 'short term solution' is easily by passable, as this email clearly proves, Microsoft still doubled down, insisted on not rolling back the policy, and decided to continue targeting and repressing their Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and allied workers. They refused to revoke this censorship tactic, despite its potential illegality, dozens of employees expressing how racist of a decision it was, and even leaders admitting they see how it can be perceived as discriminatory and targeted. This further proves how little Microsoft values Palestinian lives and Palestinian suffering. As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company. I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees. Had this useless and discriminatory policy been revoked, as I tried to request numerous times through so-called 'proper channels'[1][2], I would not be sending you all this email. Despite claiming to have 'heard concerns from our employees and the public regarding Microsoft technologies used by the Israeli military to target civilians or cause harm in the conflict in Gaza' in a statement riddled with lies, admissions, and absurd justifications, Microsoft has shown that they are utterly uninterested in hearing what we have to say. Microsoft claims that they 'provide many avenues for all voices to be heard'. However, whenever we try to discuss anything substantial about divesting from genocidein the 'approved channels', workers are retaliated against, doxxed, or silenced. Microsoft has deleted relevant employee questions in AMAs with executives and shut down Viva Engage posts in dedicated channels for asking SLT questions. Managers have warned outspoken directs to stay quiet and have even openly retaliated against them. When my community tries to flag issues and concerns to HR/GER/WIT, we have been met with racist outcomes with double standards. Throughout all this, Microsoft has sent a clear message to their employees: There are no proper channels at Microsoft to express your concerns, disagreements, or even questions about how Microsoft is using your labor to kill Palestinian babies. Over this past week, Microsoft has shown their true face, brutalizing, detaining, firing, pepper spraying, threatening and insulting workers and former workers protesting at Microsoft Build. This email censorship is simply the latest example in a long list of recent extreme and outrageous escalations by Microsoft against my community. Enough is enough. It has become clear that Microsoft will not listen to us out of the goodness of their hearts. Microsoft will not change their stance just because it is the moral or even legal thing to do. Microsoft will only divest from genocide once it becomes more expensive for them to kill Palestinians than not. Right now, Microsoft makes a lot of money from genocide-profiteering, so we must make support for genocide even more expensive. The situation in Palestine is more urgent by the minute. More and more Palestinians are being killed of starvation under the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)'s bombing campaign, invasion, and siege that has martyred an estimated 400,000Palestinians. The IOF have kidnapped over 16,000 Palestinians and placed them in torture and rape camps. 1.93 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, and over 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank. While a hostile work environment is difficult, it cannot compare to the horrors taking place in Palestine - horrors that we as Microsoft employees are complicit in. These futile attempts to silence our community, while painful at times, are evidence that the pressure we are applying is working. This is not the time for baby steps or gradual progress. Starving infants cannot wait any longer. We, as a company of over 200,000 employees, are providing the technological backbone for Israel's genocidal war machine in Palestinian. We, as employees of this company, have a responsibility to end our employer's complicity in this AI-assisted genocide! Now is the time to escalate against Microsoft and end this Microsoft-powered genocide! I am calling on every employee of conscience to: Sign No Azure for Apartheid's petition calling for a termination of all Microsoft contracts with the Israeli military and government: Strongly consider whether you want to stay in the company and fight for change from within, or if you want to leave and stop contributing labor to genocide. If you choose to leave Microsoft to no longer be complicit in genocide, do not go quietly. The No Azure for Apartheid campaign is ready to help you make an impact on your way out for Palestine, and we will also do our best to provide you support before leaving. Reach out to us expressing your interest to leave here. If you choose to stay, continue to fight from the inside to end Microsoft's, and your own, Complicity in war crimes, join the No Azure for Apartheid campaign. If you are worried about being public with your affiliation, rest assured that as a worker-led grassroots movement, we have members with all levels of anonymity and risk level. Some of our members are publicly visible and will even publicly confront our war-criminal executives, such as Satya Nadella, Mustafa Suleyman, and Jay Parikh at major Microsoft events like the 50th Anniversary celebration and Microsoft Build. Other members choose to stay completely anonymous and still contribute to the critical work of the campaign. There is room for everyone: While I do understand that as Microsoft employees, we cannot fully boycott Microsoft, most of us can focus on the priority targets set by the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which recently set Microsoft as a priority target. The main target of the boycott is Microsoft Gaming, especially X-Box. We can also encourage our friends and family to boycott Microsoft where possible. To Microsoft Senior Leadership team specifically: You cannot silence Palestine. You cannot silence Gaza. You cannot hide your involvement in genocide and apartheid. Free Palestine Nisreen Jaradat
Digital Trends
23-05-2025
- Digital Trends
Microsoft Build summary: 4 big announcements you'll want to know
Microsoft Build 2025 is almost at an end. Microsoft's annual developer conference might be aimed at software engineers and cloud devs, but realistically, there's plenty in there to dig into even if you don't work as a programmer. Unsurprisingly, the theme throughout the conference this year (and for some years previous now) has been AI. In his opening keynote, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella highlighted the importance of AI and the company's plan of 'building the open, agentic web at scale.' The idea is to hand over the reins to Copilot and let the AI agents take over repetitive, costly tasks. Here are some of the most important announcements from this year's Microsoft Build. Recommended Videos Windows File Explorer gets an AI-powered boost By the sound of it, this is a tool we might all benefit from and not something strictly aimed at devs. Windows File Explorer will now receive something Microsoft refers to as 'AI actions.' Available in Windows 11, AI actions (or shortcuts, if you will) will let you right-click on a file of your choosing and use AI to get things done easier. Some of the highlights here include the ability to get Copilot to summarize an Office document for you, right from the File Explorer menu. You can also erase unwanted objects from photos, again, thanks to AI, or blur or remove the background with Paint (via Copilot, that is). As reported by The Verge, there might be more coming than what Microsoft specifically spoke about; four new image-related AI actions are currently in the Dev Channel builds of Windows 11. This includes the ability to find similar images on the web with the help of Bing. GitHub gets an AI coding agent The big announcement here is that GitHub Copilot will now be available to all Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Pro+ users, but also that Copilot's coding agent will save devs a lot of time — which could reduce the time it takes for new features to come out and be available to us all. Although many developers aren't huge fans of the use of AI in their daily work, many others find the benefits in automating simpler tasks, which frees them up to work on more complex code. For the latter, Microsoft has just introduced a new coding agent, now available on GitHub. The agent was made to help programmers with one of the most annoying parts of their jobs — bug fixes. It'll also take care of adding features and refactoring code. 'GitHub continues to be the home for developers. […] We're doubling down for developers building any applications. Trust, security, compliance, auditability, data residency are even more critical today. Open-source is at the core of GitHub, and we're taking this next big step,' said Nadella. You can now translate PDFs directly in Edge If you deal with a lot of PDFs, you'll love this one: You'll soon be able to translate them directly in the Microsoft Edge browser. Simply clicking 'translate' in the address bar will let you leverage AI to translate the entire document into one of over 70 languages supplied by Microsoft. This appears to only be a feature in Edge for Business, though. Right now, it's rolling out to Windows Canary users and is said to be available next month. Microsoft 365 gets a major AI boost with new agents As reported by PCMag, the new update to Copilot is said to be huge. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself referred to it as the biggest update since the launch of Teams — and whether you love it or not, it's hard to deny that Teams turned out to be a pretty big thing worldwide. Copilot's current arsenal of AI-powered goodies includes Chat, which is essentially Microsoft's version of ChatGPT. Search lets Copilot dig through your files and help you find what you're asking for. The results of both those tools can be summarized in Notebook. Of course, you can also generate images, PowerPoints, and videos with Create. Microsoft is now taking AI a few steps further by adding Agents. Agentic AI is a big topic these days, so it's not a surprise to see Microsoft jumping on the bandwagon. Microsoft's AI agents now include Researcher and Analyst. Researcher relies on deep reasoning to help you create comprehensive reports. Copilot's Researcher will be able to search the web and your own files, giving it a solid overview of various sources. Analyst fills in the gaps by being able to analyze data, including massive spreadsheets, to help you analyze (well, duh) various data points and draw accurate comparisons. Although exciting, these new AI agents will be available to large enterprises. The company needs to be included in Microsoft's Frontier program to benefit. Perhaps with time, Microsoft will bring AI agents to Copilot at large. AI, AI everywhere At this point, no one is surprised when an event such as Microsoft Build focuses solely on the use of AI. Many hoped to hear more about things like the Xbox handheld, but alas, that did not happen. A lot of the new features and improvements announced during Build weren't consumer-centric, but I recommend watching the full video if you're curious about what else is new. Remember to also check out our Best of Computex 2025 roundup to give you a better overview of the exciting tech that made a debut in the last week.
Business Insider
22-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Microsoft put an ex-Facebook exec in charge of a new AI unit. Internal memos reveal how it's going.
Microsoft hired ex-Facebook global head of engineering Jay Parikh to lead a new AI unit called CoreAI. Internal memos Parikh has sent to employees reveal the unit's early ambitions and accomplishments. Parikh's initiatives focus on cultural shifts, operational improvements, and customer focus. Microsoft envisions an " age of AI agents," and CEO Satya Nadella recently tapped one of Mark Zuckerberg's former top lieutenants to bring it to reality. In January, Nadella put Jay Parikh in charge of a new AI unit called CoreAI, central to Microsoft's ambition to help developers build digital personal assistants capable of taking over tasks from human workers. Amid Parikh's first Microsoft Build developer conference in this new role, internal memos reveal his goals for the unit, its early accomplishments, and his advice to address what he sees as problems within the company. Microsoft declined to comment. A fresh perspective for the 'next phase of Microsoft' Behind the scenes at Microsoft, Nadella prides himself on hiring outside talent from other big technology companies to add fresh perspective and giving them wide latitude to change how things are done, several people close to the CEO told BI. Those reports include Charlie Bell, who helped build Amazon's cloud from its earliest days before defecting to Microsoft to become its security boss, and AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, an ex-Google executive who joined the company from AI startup Inflection. Parikh joined their ranks in October after running cloud security company Laceworks, acquired in 2024. He previously was vice president and global head of engineering for Meta. Zuckerberg has publicly credited Parikh for many technological achievements during his 11-year tenure at the company. When Nadella announced Parikh's hiring in an email to employees, he wrote that the "next phase of Microsoft" would require "adding exceptional talent" from outside the company. In January, when Microsoft reorganized to create a new organization under Parikh. The group, called CoreAI, combined teams from Parikh's new direct reports like Eric Boyd, a corporate vice president of AI platform; Jason Taylor, a deputy CTO for AI infrastructure; Julia Liuson, president of the developer division; and Tim Bozarth, a corporate vice president of developer infrastructure. Nadella said at the time that Parikh would also work closely with the cloud-and-AI chief Scott Guthrie; the experiences-and-devices leader Rajesh Jha; Bell, the security boss; Suleyman, Microsoft's AI CEO; and Kevin Scott, the company's CTO. A copy of Parikh's latest org chart viewed by Business Insider shows he has nearly 10,000 reports, most of whom (about 7,000) are in the developer division under Liuson. Parikh's 'agent factory' vision Four months in, Parikh has started to make his mark on Microsoft with a vision to create an AI "agent factory." In the early days of Microsoft, cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen had ambitions to create the world's first "software factory," a company full of programmers who would build everything from applications to operating systems. Parikh said he met with Gates and discussed his own concept, a production line for AI agents and applications. "Building our vision demands this type of culture — one where Al is embedded in how we think, design, and deliver," Parikh wrote in an April 14 email to his team. "The Agent Factory reflects this shift — not just in what we build, but in how we build it together. If we want every developer (and everyone) to shape the future, we have to get there first." The memos reveal some of the developments at CoreAI since Parikh's arrival. Since January, Foundry — Microsoft's AI platform for developers — has "delivered $337 million of favorable COGS (cost of goods sold) impact year-to-date, with a projected $606 million on an annualized basis," according to one of Parikh's memos. Microsoft won new customers for its AI programming tool GitHub Copilot, deploying "5,000+ Copilot Business seats" for Fidelity with 5,000 more expected, another memo stated. Copilot Business sells for $19 per user per month, which would make the deal worth as much as $2.28 million annually at full price, though customers often get discounts for large deals. Fidelity declined to comment. Startup Harvey AI, meanwhile, has agreed to a two-year $150 million commitment to consume Azure cloud services, according to one of Parikh's memos. Harvey AI declined to comment. Making Microsoft think macro The memos viewed by BI show how Parikh appears to be taking seriously his mandate to introduce a new perspective to the company and fix procedural problems that Microsoft may not be able to see that it has. In a May 10 email to his team, Parikh said shifting the company's culture is "essential" to its future, and outlined progress toward priorities like accelerating the pace at which employees work, breaking down siloes to work better as one team, and making products more reliable and secure. "One of my early observations coming into Microsoft is that we sometimes treat symptoms rather than systems," Parikh wrote in a May 5 email. "We often focus too much on the micro, which results in band-aids and bolt-ons vs taking a broader system view (which may mean thinking beyond what one team directly owns). This often leads to more complexity and operational burden. We'll help each other get better at this." Parikh's plan to get Microsoft to focus on the macro is to create a "learning loop" with a debrief after every product launch, incident, customer meeting, internal meeting, or decision. He's started new processes to make this happen, according to the memos. Parikh has an "Ops Review" series, going team by team to make specific improvements but also to "find common patterns of engineering pain that need broader improvements," he wrote. The reviews, he explained, focus on longer-term operational metrics to help with strategy. "We are zooming out and taking a more end-to-end view of a team's operational setup, creating space for an open discussion around what's working and what's not." The reviews began in April with the App Services team. Also among Parikh's mandates: more customer focus. His organization is required to conduct reviews of major incidents, like outages, that could impact customers, and chart how quickly the teams identified the problem and deployed a fix. He also started "get well plans" for unhappy customers after he "encountered a couple of fairly unhappy customers" in recent meetings, according to an April 26 email. His solution? Weekly reviews to "understand where we went off track, identify solutions, and execute the recovery plan," tracking progress until the accounts "get well again." What Parikh thinks Microsoft should change so far In the May 5 email, Parikh shared "several recurring themes and insights" within Microsoft that he believes the company should seek to change or simplify. First, he encouraged his organization to engage engineers from outside their direct team because "different perspectives help." In his view, Microsoft also takes too long and the process is too hard to deprecate, or discourage use of, old versions of software. "Supporting too many versions is unattainable," Parikh wrote. "We are following up with C+Al (the Cloud + AI organization, under Scott Guthrie) to brainstorm how we can modernize and streamline this." Incident reviews are overloaded with metrics that don't have enough value, Parikh wrote, and Microsoft sends out too many alerts, which creates noise. "It's important to periodically zoom out and audit how your monitoring is running and to simplify if you are overloaded on alerts and metrics. Use Al to help triage complex alerting situations," he urged. Parikh encouraged his teams to "see the forest for the trees on scalability," and to organize brainstorming sessions when faced with a traffic load they can't support to see what it would take to support five or 10 times as much traffic. "You may be stuck in a local maxima with incremental improvements, and it might be time to brainstorm how you can get a step function more scale," he wrote. He also recommended employees seek to address classes of problems, not just one-offs. "Quick fixes lead to complexity," Parikh wrote. "Instead of band-aids, we should aim for broader system improvements that solve whole categories of issues and boost long-term efficiency." "We're building muscle in spotting patterns, not just patching symptoms," Parikh wrote. "And that's a big deal."
The Hindu
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Microsoft blocks emails containing the terms 'Palestine,' 'Gaza' and 'genocide'
Microsoft has temporarily blocked any emails that contain the words 'Palestine' or 'Gaza' after employee protests at their Microsoft Build event, according to a report The Verge. The news was first discovered by the protest group No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA). whose employees found that they couldn't send emails with terms like 'Palestine,' 'Gaza' and 'Genocide' in the subject line or body. A Microsoft spokesperson told the outlet that over the past few days thousands of employees had written mails to each other about such political subjects, which was inappropriate. During the Microsoft Build conference, there were multiple interruptions from former and current company employees including one during CEO Satya Nadella's session. The protests were against Microsoft's contract to provide AI and cloud services to Israeli military. Leaked documents, per the report, showed that the company's Azure cloud service enables surveillance of Palestinians by the Israeli government and has also been used by the Israeli air force to manage databases of potential targets for lethal airstrikes. A week ago, Microsoft shared a statement saying although they did have cloud and AI contracts with Israel, they had conducted a review to find that there was no conclusive evidence that their tools were being used to target or hurt Gazans.
