Oakland | B Corp

🚀 Wrapping Up 2024: What a Year for AI! As 2024 winds down, it’s incredible to reflect on how much has changed in the world of AI. We kicked off the year championing our intelligent agent solutions, and now it feels like the industry from Gartner to Microsoft is catching up. It's not really a spoiler alert but 2025 will officially be the year of Agentic AI and AI Agents. Data leaders we know what you're thinking... More buzzwords and hype. But what we’re developing is honestly transformational (and we're from Yorkshire and full of sensible pragmatism). Our solutions are already driving real results by boosting efficiency, cutting costs, and improving productivity across industries. 💡 So, what are the key AI trends to watch in 2025? Here are our predictions. So if you've not yet thought about introducing AI or you've had a go and the costs have spiraled out of control let's have a chat 🗣️ #AI #AgenticAI #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #Efficiency #Productivity

If you thought Oasis getting back together was the highlight of the year, think again... The Data Pubcast is back! 🎉 (Yes, let’s gracefully gloss over the fact that Season 2 took almost as long as the Oasis reunion. 🙃) This season, Andy Crossley and Nick Latocha are joined by Andrew Mason, forming a trio of (some of) the greatest minds in data today. With so many polished and professional data podcasts out there, what makes The Pubcast different? It’s as honest a conversation about data challenges as you can get without landing anyone in too much hot water! This week, the team dives into the world of self-service analytics, and it looks like they had an absolute blast doing it. Got a topic you’d love them to tackle? Drop them a line! While we can’t guarantee what they’ll say, we can promise it’ll be entertaining. Cheers to Season 2! You'll find a link in the comments below down👇🏼

Here are the five big takeaways wrapped in a cheat sheet for MS Ignite this year! 📝✨ Ready for you to look plausible when you're next asked what happened! 😏💼 AI Agents are here 🤖📈, backed by enterprise-grade development tools. Large language models have advanced insanely in the last two years 🚀, and they've matured to the point where they can take actions in your business (ask us how!). 🛠️💡 Fabric is now a first-class citizen in the cloud data workflow ☁️📊. It’s gained SQL tools (SQL will outlast us all 🕰️💻) and more integrations. 🔗🧩 MS Purview has AI governance tools 🛡️🤖, new Data Loss Prevention 🚨📉, and additional proactive risk analysis. 📋📊 Copilot is even more tightly integrated into the M365 ecosystem 📧🤝 – now significantly more than a glorified email summarisation tool. 💡📂 Hybrid Cloud workloads introduced with Azure Local 🌐🖥️ (how we chuckled until they explained... 😅). AI models can run on edge compute, bringing secure development to tricky deployments. 🔒⚙️ The AI space in particular is getting more and more exciting! 🚀💡 Comment below which new release you’re the most interested in! ⬇️💬

It's the end of the week. You might be flagging but Mike Le Galloudec is only getting started with everything we've learnt from Microsoft Ignite. It's roundup time and here are the three big pillars from the conference. 🎲AI agents are here, and if we were to place a bet they are the best way to use Generative AI to improve your business performance 🚀Purview is now ready to govern your data, and AI 🍷Fabric is maturing like a fine wine Mike is mainly talking about agents today - but please get in touch if you'd like a deeper dive into anything else! #Microsoft #AgenticAI #AgenticAgents

AI could be getting out of hand - It’s even in the terminal now! Microsoft Ignite day 3 was an absolute blast, with some properly crunchy run-downs of what is happening under the hood of AI apps. The big take away, though, has been how much AI has grown up in the last year. It is now enterprise-ready and able to solve problems in your business. The question is, which use case do you point it at?? We'll try and help you through the maze of choices. Check out our guide in the comments below 👇👇👇 #Agenticagents #AgenticAI #GenerativeAI

20% off AI? Woohoo! 🎉 Hold on... what sort of AI? 🤔 This deal isn’t quite clear. Here’s the truth: The accuracy of AI models entirely depends on the quality of the data they’re trained on (our marketing data must have been really bad to create our AI ad deal!). At Oakland, we go beyond the hype by adhering to Microsoft Azure’s 6 principles of Good AI: ✅ Fairness – AI systems should treat all people fairly. ✅ Reliability & Safety – AI systems should perform reliably and safely. ✅ Privacy & Security – AI systems should respect privacy and be secure. ✅ Inclusiveness – AI systems should empower everyone. ✅ Transparency – AI systems should be understandable. ✅ Accountability – People must be accountable for AI systems. Instead of asking, “Are you ready for AI?” we ask, “Is AI ready for you?” 🤝 This Black Friday, we’re not offering 20% off our Generative AI workshops—they’re completely free! Why? Because this technology is moving faster than Amazon delivery vans and we're here to help you navigate the challenges and opportunities. 🚚 💨 Interested? Let’s chat! ✉️

🔥Microsoft Ignite: Day two - How will Copilot in SharePoint affect you? If you take Microsoft at its word, it’s about to totally transform the way most business gets done! Want to know more?? Then, over to Mike Le Galloudec for his second breakdown of everything new in AI coming from Microsoft Ignite this week. 🎧 Spoiler alert: There has been more SharePoint and Copilot content than we ever thought possible. So, let’s dive into what is actually happening!

💡Today we have more highlights from Microsoft Ignite💡 Fabric Databases! but you may wonder why this is a big deal? Jake Watson looks into the detail... "Fabric Databases made SQL Server now a SaaS database, which is nice for new users, but I don't think existing Azure SQL Database users will switch, as it's a pretty easy solution to manage for a PaaS. What it does add, though, is "Translytical Apps" - Power BI write (!) functionality to the Fabric Database with Fabric functions, which opens up lots of options that were only available with connecting up Power Apps or App Service, plus allows you to see your changes in real-time to analytics dashboards in real-time, without having to change tabs. OneLake catalog was also announced, catching up with Databricks Unity Catalog and Snowflake's Polaris in giving Fabric a metastore. A common question in Ignite chat was asked: "Does this now supersede Purview?". For the most part no, as OneLake is a metastore for data users, Purview is a catalog for business users". Other announcements yesterday were: 1️⃣ Co-pilot for Power BI end users. 2️⃣ AI Skills - query any Fabric source with Co-Pilot. 3️⃣ More mirroring sources, including the ability to add custom sources, which is really cool. 4️⃣ More admin tooling with Surge Protection and Workspace Monitoring. Fabric is updating at a breakneck pace, and we're having to update our internal docs on it on a weekly basis! If anyone has any questions about how to architect a Fabric deployment or how it stacks up against the competition, feel free to leave a comment or message Jake Watson. #Microsoft #Microsoftfabric #MicrosoftPartner

🚀 Microsoft Ignite: What’s New? 🚀 When you’ve taken Microsoft Copilot to the limit, what’s next? Say hello to the Azure Agent AI Foundry! At Oakland, we’ve been deep in the trenches, building and refining intelligent agent capabilities for months. So, we are very excited about this new Microsoft release - it’s a game-changer that makes our agent ecosystem even faster, smarter, and more cost-effective. Want to see it in action? Our resident AI guru, Mike Le Galloudec, breaks it all down in his signature style. Trust us, you don’t want to miss it! 🎥 One of the benefits of being 'everything data' is that we bring you the latest tech updates in easily digestible chunks! Follow Mike on LinkedIn for AI insights: #microsoft #intelligentagents #AI #agenticAI

Looking to start with Generative AI??? - Always Start With The Use Case! The Gen AI landscape is full of skeletons of proof of concepts that didn’t stick. If you want to make a difference, start with a clear use case. What is the clear and specific problem that you want to solve?🔬 Finding the right use cases is key. But you need to know what to look for. Every business is different but there are some common characteristics of use cases for Generative AI that you can look out for.💡   In our experience, there are three key problem areas that Generative AI applications are great at solving. Unlocking your document mountain: 🏔️ The same mistakes occur time and again in businesses because knowledge isn’t shared. Often, hours are spent gathering documentation about ‘lessons learned’, best practices or incident reports. But the information is just too big and messy for anyone to use it. Important lessons are lost in the noise. If you can unlock Knowledge Management with Generative AI, you can massively improve process execution, compliance and knowledge sharing. Information tsunami: 🌊 Many businesses have invested in monitoring systems for their systems or assets, but now face an overwhelming volume of alerts and alarms. Monitoring and control teams are endlessly distracted and can’t separate the genuine alerts from the noise. Generative AI is great at scanning alarms and alerts and, crucially, relating them to operating procedures and policies so that informed decisions can be made. Expert shortage: 🤯 Data is so often meaningless without context. But, applying that context or audience-specific messaging is time-consuming. How many warning signs are lost in the data or missed because nobody spots their relevance? Many companies have implemented human ‘business partnering’ models in functions like Finance, HR and IT to connect end users to expertise, but these models are expensive and often overstretched. Generative AI is great at preparing reports, highlighting insights and answering detailed user questions in a relevant way. It has great capabilities in analyst and business partnering contexts. Want to learn more about how to select the right use case for your Generative AI project? Download our guide by clicking on the link in the comments below.... #AI #GenerativeAI