GeekWire is profiling over the next few weeks some of the people and teams that are shaping the evolution of Microsoft in what we’re calling its “Microsoft 2.5” era.

AI has had an impact on just about every tech-product category, but especially security. Attackers are using AI; customers are looking to defend with AI. The goalposts keep shifting. “Agentic security” is now the holy grail, and Hayete Gallot, the newly minted executive vice president of Microsoft Security, is leading the charge toward it.

Gallot, a 16-plus-year Microsoft veteran who rejoined the company in February after a 1.5-year Google detour, replaced Charlie Bell, who came to Microsoft from AWS in 2021 and continues at the company as an individual contributor focused on engineering quality.

“Customers care about two things: solving for security and being able to afford it,” Gallot said when I asked during our interview this week why she came back to Microsoft.

“I am a problem solver. And an engineer at heart (and by training). Security is the most important problem right now — and Microsoft is the only place with all of the puzzle pieces to help our customers.”

Since her return, Gallot hasn’t been shy about shaking things up. As noted recently by The Information, at least nine corporate vice presidents who previously reported to Bell have left the company this year.

“We’re making changes to ensure we’re in the best formation to go after this opportunity,” she acknowledged.

“I’m motivated by doing the right thing for our customers, my teams, and tech outcomes. I like to move quickly; days and weeks, not months and years, learning through execution, iterating rapidly, and adjusting based on real customer signals.”

The company isn’t starting from scratch. As of 2021, Microsoft claimed security was a $10 billion business for the company. By 2023, security had reached a $20 billion annual revenue rate, officials said.

Those claims haven’t been without controversy. Microsoft has built a huge business in finding and fixing security problems which some customers felt were of the company’s own making.

Microsoft has a wide-ranging and rather unwieldy security portfolio, encompassing identity management (Entra), endpoint protection (Defender), endpoint management (Intune), security information and event management (Sentinel), and compliance (Purview), among others.

In 2023, Microsoft introduced its Security Copilot set of AI analysis services that integrated with some of its existing security offerings. But a portal-based solution like Security Copilot doesn’t offer the kind of end-to-end coverage that an agentic security platform can, Gallot said.

The problem is that attackers are using agents, too. Customers need real-time insight into what’s happening in their environment, and the ability to act just as quickly, Gallot said.

Agentic security is about “taking the signals and turning them into a graph that is useful,” Gallot said. “If you’re trying to reason about 100 trillion signals, it’s not really effective.” The graph, she said, lets agents pick the right model for each threat and close the loop.

In practice, that means the system can quarantine a device or revoke access on its own, for example, rather than waiting for a human.

Microsoft’s core existing security products will continue to play a role as the landscape evolves, both spotting the problems and acting on them. Security Copilot isn’t going away in the process: “You’ll have Copilot and you’ll have agentic security,” she said.

The company’s new Agent 365 “control plane” — a central console for tracking every AI agent a company runs — fits in by letting customers see the “blast radius” of an agent, meaning everything a hijacked agent could reach, Gallot said. It’s similar in concept to Zero Trust, the “never trust, always verify” security model that limited how far an attacker could get with a stolen employee login, but applied now to agents rather than people.

So what exactly is this ‘agentic security’ thing? Microsoft has a whole website dedicated to the very topic.

Traditional AI security and agentic AI security are fundamentally different, Microsoft says. Agentic security doesn’t just protect models and training data; it also can protect tools, workflows, memory, connected systems and more. Because agents can take action, the potential positive and negative stakes are higher.

While AI has helped businesses make strides in finding and fixing vulnerabilities, it hasn’t gone much beyond that. Microsoft introduced its multi-model agentic scanning harness (MDASH) as its first step into the agentic security space, Gallot said.

The company used MDASH internally to boost finding and fixing Windows security issues, and it is now making it available to select customers in an expanded preview. MDASH will allow customers to use the best model for the right task to secure all different types of code bases, she said.

Microsoft is rumored to be readying a more comprehensive agentic security offering, of which MDASH is likely just one piece.

Microsoft is far from the only one doing this. AWS, Anthropic, and OpenAI are offering security tools on their platforms, and dedicated security vendors are building their own agentic platforms.

Microsoft has the advantage of scale in the enterprise. The question is whether Gallot and her new leadership team can turn that scale and emerging AI tools into both a bigger business for the company and better protection for its customers.

Windows is the OS I use every day, even though it does plenty of things I don't like. I've tried switching to Linux more than once, and I keep finding reasons to give it another shot, but I always end up back on Windows. For all its faults, it still works best with the apps, hardware, and workflow that I rely on every day.

Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 bundle pairs dev tools with courses in Python, JavaScript, and SQL.

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If you haven't used Excel in a while, you may be surprised by how much it has changed. Whether you switched to Google Sheets, moved to open-source software, stayed with an older version, or simply stopped following updates, Microsoft has added features that could dramatically change how you work with spreadsheets.

For years, Microsoft has leaned heavily into extensive backward compatibility across multiple generations of Xbox hardware as a major selling point for its consoles. Today, that effort expands past the console ecosystem, making select original Xbox titles officially playable (and purchasable) on Windows PCs for the first time.

The appropriately and bluntly named "Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC" program kicks off today with compatibility for BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy. PC players can download each title for $10, but those with Xbox Game Pass subscriptions or existing digital licenses for these games on console will have instant access without an additional purchase (no such luck if you simply stick an original Xbox disc in your PC drive, alas).

Playing these older Xbox titles on PC enables some bonus graphical features like Vsync support, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and up to 4x resolution scaling of the original SD signal (to 2560x1920). Games are limited to their original frame rates and aspect ratios, though, which means a 30 fps 4:3 image in most cases. Microsoft says this first batch of games should be playable with 11-year-old GTX 950 graphics hardware, but recommends a 2017-era GTX 1070 Ti with 8GB of VRAM for best performance.

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For years, I accepted Excel's ribbon exactly as Microsoft designed it, even though I only used a fraction of its commands. After spending 10 minutes removing the clutter and reorganizing my favorite tools, I had a personalized workspace that sped up my workflow and stayed with me every time I opened Excel.

Nearly 20 years ago (!), in 2007, I published my first and only book: Microsoft 2.0. It focused on changes I expected at the company in the “Post-Gates” era. What would remain the same and what likely would be different once co-founder and CEO Bill Gates had left the building?

CEO Satya Nadella has not exited the company (yet). But there’s no question that Microsoft and its mission have morphed considerably in the past year or two. I’m not quite ready to christen this the Microsoft 3.0 era, even though Nadella handed the reins of Microsoft’s dominant commercial business to Judson Althoff nearly a year ago.

That decision resulted in Nadella moving into more of a “founder mode” role, allowing him to focus less on the day-to-day work of running the business. (Microsoft historians may recall that Gates made a somewhat similar move back in 2000 when he became Microsoft’s chief software architect.)

While it might not yet be time for Microsoft 3.0, we arguably could be in the “Microsoft 2.5” era. Windows and Office are still around and still play a big role. Microsoft still builds and sells developer tools and databases. But there’s no question that the cloud and all things AI are at the top of the pecking order now.

I’m embarking on a series here at GeekWire that will focus on what matters to Microsoft and, by extension, to its customers, partners, investors, and employees these days. Who are some of the people shaping and leading the company? What are their opportunities and challenges right now?

Over the next few weeks, I will be profiling various Microsoft execs working on plans for Microsoft’s ongoing evolution. Some are company veterans; some are newcomers. I’ll be talking with top execs from Microsoft’s Security, Copilot, Windows + Devices, Xbox, GitHub, and more.

I’m interested in their strategies for Microsoft’s key products and technologies and how they plan to try to turn Microsoft’s ambitious vision into reality. What are their teams building? What do they see as their biggest challenges and opportunities? And where do they see the technologies in their respective areas heading?

I feel like many of us who’ve been keeping track of the biggest tech companies (myself included) have fallen into the trap of blaming or attributing everything a company does to AI. Layoffs? AI is the culprit. Price increases? It’s all thanks to AI. Changing sales strategies? Chalk it up to AI …

But upon further reflection, I believe Microsoft’s strategy is more nuanced than “AI or bust.” There’s no question that Microsoft’s AI ambitions are shaping its goals and tactics. But Microsoft, as a heavily enterprise-focused entity, can’t simply stop supporting products that aren’t built from the ground up with AI (as much as it might like to do so). Nor can it just leave behind customers who aren’t 100% onboard with its AI moves.

Couple those enterprise hurdles with some not-so-popular consumer decisions, like axing 3,200 people in the gaming unit, and Microsoft’s approach to turning the ship looks a lot trickier.

Our Microsoft 2.5 series kicks off Thursday. Stay tuned.

Microsoft launched Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC, bringing four classic original Xbox games to Windows and handhelds for the first time, complete with upscaling, VSync, and achievements coming later this year.

Microsoft is putting $60 million behind the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, a push to use artificial intelligence to speed up scientific research across the government’s 17 national labs.

The company’s investment is split into two pieces: $40 million in Azure cloud computing and AI credits over three years, and $20 million for engineering and deployment help to get DOE researchers actually using the tools, Microsoft said in a blog post Wednesday.

Microsoft is also launching a new internal group called SPARK — Scientific Partnership Advancing Research & Knowledge — to serve as the single point of contact between the company and DOE on Genesis Mission work. It’s meant to combine Microsoft’s program management, engineering, security and research teams into one coordinated effort, instead of leaving individual labs to navigate Microsoft on their own.

President Trump created the Genesis Mission through an executive order in November 2025, directing DOE to build a unified computing and data platform — since named the American Science and Security Platform — that connects the national labs’ supercomputers, AI tools and scientific datasets.

The order likened the effort’s urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project, and the White House said it’s expanded into a whole-of-government initiative involving more than 15 federal agencies, backed by more than $5 billion in commitments.

Microsoft named four initial projects taking shape under the partnership, including work with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., to speed up the discovery of new energy storage materials — cutting analysis that used to take years down to weeks — and autonomous lab work with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory aimed at detecting biological threats earlier.

“We move faster together,” Chris Barry, president of Microsoft’s U.S. Public Sector business, wrote in the blog post announcing the commitment, framing the investment as both a “national security imperative” and economic opportunity for the U.S.

Microsoft isn’t the only Seattle-area cloud giant courting the Genesis Mission. Amazon Web Services was recognized by DOE as a Genesis Mission supporter in December, highlighting its work with Idaho National Laboratory on AI tools for nuclear reactor design, and the company launched its own Genesis Accelerator Initiative in February, offering up to $50 million in cloud credits for DOE-related research over three years.

Google also announced Wednesday that it was committing $40 million of AI tokens and cloud credits for researchers in support of the Genesis Mission.

Unlock the latest user interface, enhanced security features, and new tools for hybrid and remote workers.

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Whether you're starting a new business venture and need Microsoft Office's help or you just want to get better organized in your personal life, it's a good time to take advantage of this deal.

The post Get Lifetime Access to Microsoft Office 2021 for Just $28 appeared first on TechRepublic.

After years of using Excel, it's easy to fall into muscle memory. You click the same ribbon tabs, rely on the same shortcuts, and barely notice when Microsoft adds new tools. That's how I initially overlooked Focus Cell, a simple feature that solved one of my biggest frustrations when working in Excel.

Are you an IT manager or executive building the case for a new ERP vendor? Compare the top ERP software companies in 2026 for your business.

The post Top ERP Software Vendors in 2026 appeared first on TechRepublic.

If you've ever used Win+Shift+S for quick screenshots, you'll know how handy it can be and how much time it can save. But there's another shortcut that's even more useful. On recent versions of Windows 11, Win+Shift+T extracts editable text directly from your screen, turning information trapped in images, PDFs, and presentation slides into text you can immediately reuse.

Excel isn't known for being pretty, but the overlooked IMAGE function changes that. I'd used the IMAGE function before for simple visuals, but I wanted to see how far it could go. So I put it to the test by building a couple of interactive tools, and by the end, my spreadsheets felt more like apps than worksheets.

I use FOSS (free and open-source) tools every day on my Linux machine. But before I started really getting into it, there was one app that changed the way I thought about software to that point: LibreOffice. Discovering it changed my mind about how I use software and I consider it a hidden gem that's hiding in plain sight.

Microsoft's largest-ever Patch Tuesday, driven by AI, lands as New Zealand's stretched security teams look for help closing a 3,500-person skills gap.

The post Microsoft’s Record Patch Tuesday Is a Proof Point for New Zealand appeared first on TechRepublic.

Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa faced a barrage of pointed questions from the audience Friday during a session at the annual Pacific Northwest Climate Week in Seattle.

Protesters challenged Nakagawa through most of the 30-minute session held in a conference room at Seattle’s City Hall, calling out the company’s use of fossil fuel energy sources to power its AI data centers and challenging Microsoft’s commitment to climate goals set years ago.

As a reporter covering sustainability issues for GeekWire, I moderated the session. Many of the issues raised by the crowd were on my list of questions for Nakagawa. The disruptions also included chants from protesters seated among attendees, at times going beyond climate issues to condemn Microsoft’s technology deals with Israel.

Security guards ultimately ushered some protesters out of the space, while others remained. Interruptions from the audience continued for all but the final 10 minutes of the session.

The event capped off Pacific Northwest Climate Week, which included conversations around the city and region about climate change solutions, policies and innovations.

Microsoft has for many years been viewed as an environmental corporate leader, setting an ambitious goal in 2020 to become carbon negative within a decade. It created an internal carbon tax — one of the corporate world’s largest — that charges individual Microsoft divisions for emissions from sources like air travel to fund climate-friendly initiatives. The company is credited with helping create and sustain the carbon dioxide removal sector, among other roles.

But the rapid expansion of AI data centers and their huge energy demands are undercutting Microsoft’s standing. The company recently released its annual sustainability report, disclosing that its carbon footprint grew 25% last year, moving it further from its 2030 target.

One protester’s question was about a deal announced earlier this year in which Microsoft is partnering with Chevron to build a 2.7 gigawatt natural gas facility to power a data center campus in Texas. I asked Nakagawa how the company defends the agreement, and she pointed to the 4.7 gigawatts of renewable energy that Microsoft has supported in the state. I followed up by asking about the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s commitment to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects given recent reports about a pause on new deals.

Nakagawa was unable to answer before the crowd drowned her out with a call-and-response chant: “Microsoft, you can’t hide. We can see your dirty side.”

Another protester criticized the escalating pursuit of AI. “You’re selling us a product that we don’t even need, and we never should ask for,” he said. “No one wants AI. You’re destroying the climate with AI.”

I brought up legislation proposed earlier this year in Washington to mandate clean energy use and bring transparency to data center impacts in the state. Microsoft opposed and helped defeat the bill, though the company says it wants to work with lawmakers to pass rules next year. I asked what needed to change in the legislation for Microsoft to support it.

Nakagawa didn’t provide specifics, but noted that this year, for the first time, the company shared facility-level information in its annual report on electricity and water use for data centers worldwide.

“People want to know more about the data, and we believe you can have an honest and candid conversation with transparency and access to that information and data,” she said.

Given the obvious public concerns, I asked Nakagawa, “Do you really honestly believe that by 2030, the company can hit that carbon-negative goal?”

Nakagawa pointed to wide-ranging initiatives that are starting to help curb specific emissions, including investments to make Xbox devices lower carbon and financial support for the recent opening of a production plant in Moses Lake, Wash., for sustainable aviation fuel company Twelve.

“There are a couple areas where we’re seeing a lot of promising progress,” she said. “Look, this is going to be a hard target. We’ve not been at all shying away from the fact that this is a difficult goal.”

Fresh off a $2 billion fundraising and $900 million line of credit, London-based data center startup Nscale is planning a big expansion at a new engineering office in Bellevue, Wash.

Nscale, one of the fastest-growing companies building AI computing infrastructure, recently inked a deal for nearly 24,000 square feet of space at The Eight office tower in downtown Bellevue.

The office is slated to open in January 2027. It will serve as Nscale’s primary engineering hub in the United States, a company spokesperson said. The company currently employs about 50 people in the Seattle area, and the new office will be able to accommodate up to 250 people.

The company earlier this year hired Nidhi Chappell, the former Microsoft corporate vice president who led Azure AI and high-performance computing infrastructure, including the supercomputers that power ChatGPT. As Nscale’s new president of AI infrastructure, based in the Seattle area, Chappell will oversee the company’s global engineering and data center operations.

“I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the biggest moments in AI over the past several years, but one thing has always stood out: the world remembers the breakthroughs, but it’s the people building the infrastructure behind the scenes who make them possible,” Chappell wrote in a LinkedIn post last week announcing the company’s first “onboarding” event in Seattle.

Nscale, which is also preparing to open an office in New York, said it selected Bellevue because of the Seattle region’s concentration of AI infrastructure talent and its proximity to major customers.

Microsoft is one example. Earlier this year, the companies announced an expanded collaboration to deploy Microsoft’s next-generation AI infrastructure across Europe, including large-scale installations of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs in Norway, Portugal and other locations. Nscale said it would be among the first providers outside of Microsoft to deploy the Vera Rubin platform, supporting Microsoft’s growing AI cloud infrastructure.

The new office is the latest sign of Bellevue’s growing role in the AI economy. The Eastside has become a magnet for companies building AI applications and infrastructure, with xAI, OpenAI, Databricks, CoreWeave, Armada, Anduril and others establishing and expanding offices.

AI companies have been giving a boost to the regional office market overall. Claude maker Anthropic, for example, recently announced an expansion of its offices in Dexter Yard in Seattle.

Nscale was founded in 2024. Its $2 billion funding round earlier this year valued the company at $14.6 billion, believed to be the largest Series C financing ever raised by a European technology company. The capital is being used to expand Nscale’s AI cloud platform, GPU infrastructure and data center footprint across North America and Europe.

Its backers include Astra Capital Management, Citadel, Dell, Jane Street, Lenovo, Linden Advisors, Nokia, NVIDIA and Point72.

News of the Nscale office in Bellevue was first reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: One of the founding members of The Document Foundation and handler of LibreOffice's PR and media relations, Italo Vignoli, took to the LibreOffice blog to call out Microsoft's practices with its Office application. The last time we saw Vignoli take to the stage, we saw him accusing Euro-Office of being just as bad as Microsoft with its practices. Vignoli's new post focuses entirely on Microsoft's strategy. He says that "the dominant format for office documents" is owned by Microsoft Office, particularly the DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX formats. The problem with these formats, Vignoli states, is that they "belong to Microsoft, are controlled by Microsoft and serve Microsoft's interest." This makes it difficult for other formats to take hold. Vignoli explains his point by stating that open document formats don't hide anything. People developing their own apps can use the format to both read and write the document format with perfection. Meanwhile, proprietary formats such as Microsoft's "contain undocumented features, private extensions or behaviors" that developers can't fully adapt to. That means that a presentation that looks great in the source software comes out strange when rebuilt in a third-party app. This, Vignoli says, is a huge issue [...]. Vignoli claims this creates a huge issue with document preservation. If a Word document was saved in one version of Office, will it still be readable in 20 years? Microsoft has added legacy support to its software before, but the company can one day decide that it's not worth the effort anymore and cut it out. When that happens, you have old documents that are either jumbled or unable to be opened at all.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.