Microsoft has long been at the forefront of innovation in the world of work. Its recent efforts to harness the power of large language models (LLMs) to boost productivity, enhance creativity, and improve employees’ skills are in keeping with this longstanding emphasis. With the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft is taking this quest to the next level.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is an intelligent assistant that’s powered by the same technology behind OpenAI’s GPT-4, the most advanced version of the high-powered chatbot that’s taken the internet by storm. Like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot was trained on massive public data stores, including books, articles, and websites, and this experience allows the engine to understand human language and interact with its users through text-based prompts. Unlike ChatGPT, however, Microsoft Copilot has access to your individual business’s data, which allows it to better understand the content and context of your communications with it.
Natively embedded into Microsoft 365, Copilot was designed to provide real-time intelligent assistance across apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, and more. It enables everyone in your organization to interact with business data in the Microsoft Graph, using easy-to-understand natural language prompts.
While Microsoft Copilot is capable of creating a new knowledge model for your organization by harnessing insights from cross-organizational data stores, it’s also designed to protect your data from misuse or leakage. Though Copilot can generate answers based on your business’s data, it does not use this data—or your prompts—for training the LLMs that it’s based on. Admins can set permissions within your tenant to ensure that users won’t have access to data that they shouldn’t be allowed to access. And Copilot automatically inherits all the security, compliance, and privacy policies that you’ve established for your Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
First of all, Microsoft Copilot was built to help knowledge workers unleash their creativity. It can help you compose first drafts of content in Microsoft Word, saving time you’d otherwise spend on writing, editing, and finding sources. It can also help you build or edit presentations in PowerPoint, automatically adding relevant content from Word documents or Excel sheets, and summarizing conversations or incorporating additional information from other sources as appropriate. With Copilot, you have instant access to more data than any individual can remember or comprehend, and you can incorporate suggestions from an intelligent assistant on how to improve your grammar or phrasing.
Copilot was also created to enhance productivity, empowering professionals to reduce the amount of time they spend on busywork by summarizing email conversation threads, instantly drafting replies, and helping Teams meeting participants understand who said what, where people agree and disagree, and which action items should follow from the meeting.
In addition, Copilot helps transform everyday users of Microsoft 365 apps into power users. Most people use only a tiny handful of the commands available in PowerPoint or Excel. With Copilot, you can take greater advantages of these powerful tools’ rich capabilities by using natural language commands to interact with them.
Although Microsoft Copilot is a powerful tool, it won’t do your job for you—and it can’t replace you. What it can do is uplevel your professional productivity, making it possible for you to work smarter instead of harder.
Copilot incorporates behavioral analytics that can help employees understand where and how they spend their time, so that they can improve their work habits.
It can also serve as a high-powered interconnect that makes it possible for all the applications in the Microsoft 365 suite to exchange information and work better together. You can ask it to summarize an email conversation within Microsoft Word, for instance. Or share an Excel sheet you’ve created with someone on your contact list in Outlook. It brings data together from across the entire Microsoft ecosystem, the public internet, and any additional sources you ask it to incorporate.
Microsoft Copilot can also help you learn to take better advantage of the tools within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It can help you find trends in data with Excel—trends you might not have known how to uncover without its assistance. It can enhance your writing, research, and data visualization skills (to name just a few things). And it can make recommendations that will take your creative and analytic work to the next level.
Will AI take over the world? Probably not, and certainly not anytime soon. Can it help you work smarter? Absolutely. For many Microsoft 365 users, the enhanced productivity Copilot brings will be well worth the add-on licensing cost.
To learn more about how Netrix’s expert team can help you enhance your Microsoft 365 experience, get in touch with us today.
Don is the SVP, Global Professional Services (Delivery) at Netrix Global. He has more than 20 years of experience building, managing, and growing professional and managed services businesses.
Don joined Netrix Global in 2013 as a Partner, driving significant growth in the Microsoft Alliance nationally and professional services delivery business. In 2020, Don led the M&A growth strategy and execution, which included the acquisition of five businesses and one divesture. In 2022, Don was asked by the board to take a leadership position over the global professional services business and lead growth, transformation and development of the teams and services while completing the integrations and value delivery of all acquired companies into one global organization.
Don’s earlier career included working as a technical consultant with specializations in infrastructure, collaboration, and messaging platforms. In 2001, Don joined Project Leadership Associates as a consultant and over twelve years focused on growing the Microsoft Strategic Alliance and professional services organization. While growing and leading in his various roles at Netrix, Don returned to school as an avid continuous learner to complete his bachelor’s degree in data Analytics in 2018 from Rasmussen University.
Dean Gels brings over 20 years of corporate finance and leadership experience as CFO to Netrix Global. He joins the team from his most recent role as CFO for LRN. His work history extends to several high-growth tech companies, including MSA Security, OVHcloud, Borderfree, and RBC Capital Markets.
Earlier in his career, Dean was the VP of Corporate Development at Borderfree (NASDAQ: BRDR) managing the sale of the business to Pitney Bowes for $489 million. Prior to that, he was a Technology Investment Banker at RBC Capital Markets completed more than 40 deals, amounting to $17 billion in aggregate transaction value.
Dean proudly served as an infantry officer in the United States Army in the Pacific theater during his 5-year commitment. Dean holds an MBA from Boston University and a BS from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Carolyn has over 20 years of experience driving employee engagement and aligning talent strategies to meet business objectives. Her collaborative approach has built cultures of initiative, ownership, and results for organizations undergoing rapid change and growth.
Before joining Netrix, Carolyn led people strategy at technology companies such as Infrascale and OVH US. She also spent several years with CGI, a global technology and services provider, leading a team of 20 HR professionals supporting 6,500 employees worldwide, responsible for talent strategies, workforce development, and employee engagement.
Carolyn has a BA in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario and holds her SHRM-SCP and SPHR certifications. She is an avid hockey fan and loves anything chocolate!
James has been a part of Netrix since 2006. During that time James has worked in different facets of the organization that includes, Direct selling, Sales leadership, Channel and Strategic Partnerships. James has been part of the Operating Committee for the Netrix Collaboration group known as TetraVX. James is a graduate of Arizona State University.
James is the proud father of two sons. In his downtime, he enjoys adventure traveling, golf, and fishing.
Jay brings more than 25 years of client-facing consulting experience to Netrix. Jay started in information technology with two manufacturing companies before moving into consulting in 1997. Jay began consulting as a delivery engineer covering all aspects of integration and design around desktop operating systems starting with Windows 95 to Windows 10. Jay also focuses on working with law firms to help them with their digital transformation.
Jay joined Netrix in 2015 to start the End User Compute practice as Windows 10 was about to be released. Within two years of starting that practice, Netrix became Microsoft’s Windows 10 Partner of the Year. Jay now has moved from engineering to a sales leadership role overseeing all aspects of the Microsoft relationship. Jay holds a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems Degree from Devry University. He is happy to be a proud parent of a young son and has married his wife, Manali, for over 20 years. Jay and his family like to travel, cook, and watch basketball and movies.
Mike has 25 plus years of client-facing IT consulting experience with Netrix. Mike has been with Netrix for ten years in multiple sales leadership roles and leverages his knowledge in developing, deploying, and executing sales models and Go-to-Market for Mid-Market and Enterprise segments. Mike has extensive experience working with clients to understand their current state, future state, hurdles to success, and ultimately how to bridge the divide to exceed their goals. Mike leads the Account Management Mid-Market team working with existing clients to execute their digital transformation.
Mike holds a degree in Political Science and Business Communications from the University of Kansas. Mike is a proud father of two. He is actively involved with endurance racing, from 17 Ironman total distance finishes to summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Justin Rapacz has over 25 years of experience in Information Technology, with many of those years spent at Netrix serving in various roles since joining the team in 1998. Leading several professional services practices throughout the years, Justin made the transition to leading the Netrix Managed Services practice in 2016.
With a deep technical foundation, Justin’s focus in managed services has been on delivering both technical and business value to his customers. Today Justin leads the recurring services delivery organization servicing the end-user to the hybrid data center and everything in between.
Justin has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from DeVry Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is the father of two boys and enjoys travel, technology, pinball, and cooking.
David Ter Molen brings more than 20 years of legal experience to his role as General Counsel at Netrix Global. David oversees all legal operations and corporate compliance affairs of the company and its global affiliates. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day legal affairs of Netrix Global, David successfully guided the company through its 2020 recapitalization by an affiliate of OceanSound Partners and the company’s subsequent acquisitions and divestitures.
Prior to joining Netrix, David was in private practice for 17 years, most recently as a partner at Freeborn & Peters in Chicago.
David received his JD from Northwestern University School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude, and his BA from Dartmouth College. Prior to law school, David worked at Accenture as a business and technology consultant.
Ashish has been part of the organization since 2000, starting with Structure Technologies which merged with Netrix in 2012. During the 20+ years, Ashish has worked in various areas of the organization, from Engineering, Project Management, Sales Engineering, and Technical Architect and Team Management to Product Management and Product Development. Ashish has expertise in Unified Communications and Contact Center and started the development of TetraVX Products at Netrix. As a Technical Fellow,
Ashish brings deep technical expertise, an understanding of business operations, and a customer perspective to help Netrix implement new systems, products, and services. Currently, Ashish leads the Product Development organization to develop secure, scalable and easy-to-use products.
Ashish has a Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has Product Manager, Product Leader, and Product Executive certificates from The Product School.
Ashish lives in the Dallas, TX area with his wife and two children. He and his family enjoy vacations involving nature, learning about different cultures, watching movies, and going to the Dallas Mavs games.
The best way to attract top talent is to learn how to retain top talent.
Michael has over 20 years of experience in talent acquisition working with both start-up companies and Fortune 500 corporations. Throughout his career, Michael has demonstrated a strong commitment to finding and attracting top talent and has a proven track record of delivering outstanding results in a variety of roles and industries.
Michael started his career in Talent Acquisition as a headhunter with an external recruiting agency. He brought those skills to the corporate side working with IBM, HP/HPE, Nutanix and OVH US. He is known for his ability to create and maintain strong relationships with hiring managers, HR teams, and other key stakeholders, and is committed to delivering a seamless and positive candidate experience.
Michael has a B.S. in Finance and Business Administration from the University of South Florida. He is a devoted Washington Capitals’ fan. He loves entertaining guests on his patio with his craft cocktails, wine, charcuterie, and cheese boards.
Vladimir Gotsev has over 25 years of experience in Information Technology, serving in various roles since joining the team in 2005. As a leader he championed several professional services practices throughout the years. He led the managed services practice and security practice from the ground up and launched many service offerings and partnerships at Netrix.
Vlad led the transition to the Netrix Professional Services practice in 2021. Throughout his career Vlad’s passion and focus has been to help customers define and execute their digital transformation strategy while maximizing business value.
Vlad currently leads the professional services delivery organization focusing on Security, Cloud, Applications, Data and AI/ML, Collaboration, and everything in between.
Vlad holds a Masters’s degree in telecommunications and holds several expert-level IT certifications. He is a proud father of two boys. In his spare time, he is enthusiastic about traveling the world.
Lindsay Haun has over 18 years of proven achievements providing big picture leadership and strategic planning and innovation in customer support and operations within global, customer-focused technology organizations. As a support focused professional with hands-on experience, she brings strong leadership and business process improvements.
Prior to joining Netrix, Lindsay was a key player, holding various roles, at technical companies including MySpace, Media Temple, Uber, OVHCloud US, and Infrascale. Lindsay specializes in, and has had proven success with, improving the experience for customers and those that work directly with customers. At Netrix, Lindsay is responsible for spearheading support operations within our MSP organization to ensure our processes are streamlined, customer-centric, and scalable.
Lindsay is a proud Mom to a spirited toddler, a pop culture trivia enthusiast, and a self-described Star Wars nerd.
Eric has over 20 years of experience in IT operations and managed support industry. He provides operational leadership over all Netrix Managed IT Services businesses. Eric is ITIL Foundation certified and focuses on delivering an industry-leading customer support experience, driving process improvement, and implementing best practices. His most meaningful accomplishment has been the ability to foster an environment of continuous improvement, learning, and career growth for the employees he leads at Netrix.
Before joining Netrix, Eric managed an internal IT service desk and NOC support operation for a large Fortune 500 company headquartered in Philadelphia. He oversaw the daily operations of a high-performing support team that managed over 75,000 contacts per month.
Eric attended Kutztown University, where he studied Business Administration and Management. He holds certifications in ITIL Version 3 Foundation Certification (EXIN), Management & Leadership (Dale Carnegie), and Gartner Customer Relationship Management (Gartner). Eric resides outside of Philadelphia, PA, with his wife, Maren, two children, Will and Sam, and Dublin, the family dog. He comes from a large family, and they all make it a point to unite always to celebrate their birthdays and major holidays together.
Adam brings over 17 years of experience in IT operations, cloud infrastructure, security, and compliance management to Netrix. As a leader, he has established, scaled, and run global IT teams that excel in providing world-class service to the organizations they serve. Experienced in both startups and established companies, Adam has a demonstrated track record for transforming IT teams to deliver and exceed mission-critical business objectives.
Prior to Netrix, Adam managed global IT operations organizations at VMWare, OVHcloud US, and AWS.
Adam is a proud husband and father of two boys. In his downtime, he enjoys personal fitness, cooking, and fishing.