Microsoft Ignite: The Day One wrap-up

Microsoft's Ignite is a massive show -- 23,000 attendees and counting -- and a lot of news came out of it today. What do you really need to know? We'll tell you.

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If you'd like to re-live the experience of the keynote as filtered through our staff's perspective (with bonus context for why different announcements matter), check out "It's like you were there: the keynote as Windows IT Pro saw it." (And you can see it via our gallery of we-are-there shots.)

The upshot was this: the company's taking a mobile-first, cloud-first approach with three top priorities: to usher in an era of more personal computing; to reshape work and productivity via new products and processes; to build and provision an intelligent cloud.

As to how Microsoft is going to do that? The keynote covered Windows 10 -- now with features designed to ease balky Windows 7 stalwarts into the new OS, and with biometric security measures -- and Office 365, focusing heavily on the Delve feature, which acts as a personal dashboard for every user. Then there was news about improved security measures on four levels (the device, applications, individual files, user identity). And finally, a whole lot of talk about the wonders to come in the Azure Stack.

Stay tuned for more specifics over the course of the week after your intrepid Windows IT team goes to individual sessions and talks to the people behind the products.

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Our Exchange Unwashed blogger Tony Redmond provides his own take on the messages that Satya Nadella, Julie White, Brad Anderson and Terry Myerson all conveyed during the focus on Microsoft's three big ambitions: the era of more personal computing; reinventing the nature of work via productivity and business procedures; and building out an intelligent cloud.

We also have a rundown of all the big announcements that came out of the keynote, plus links to ten of the demos Brad Anderson did during his segment. We sifted through all the news and came up with lists of what you can start using now and what you'll have to wait for.

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Finally, we closed out the day at the Microsoft Research keynote, where we saw which three future problems Microsoft is tackling today.