Unleashing Productivity with Copilot+ and the Windows 11 Refresh

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Courtney
Hello and welcome back to the Dell Technologies Forum podcast series, where ideas and innovation meet acceleration. In this series, we bring together Dell Technologies brightest minds and industry pioneers to help you navigate the ever evolving landscape of technology. I'm Courtney Hughes, and today we're diving into the next major leap for workplace technology, AI powered productivity with Copilot plus and the latest Windows 11 refresh.

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Courtney
Joining me is Grant Duke from Microsoft. Thank you for being here, Grant.

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Grant
Hi Courtney. It's great to be with you again.

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Courtney
I know it's so exciting. So happy to have you here, especially on this topic. We know that AI changing the conversation in business tech, but the Copilot plus platform and Windows 11 updates are taking it further. So for someone hearing about Copilot plus for the first time, what's the leap forward here?

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Grant
Great question Courtney. This is really where Microsoft is committed in the operating system layer, so in Windows itself, of bringing AI capabilities down to the PC and replatforming the PC and the operating system in ways we haven't used before. A lot of us think of AI today as a cloud service, and whether you use the copilot service or other AI tools that are out there, they're all really focused on the cloud.

00:01:24:18 - 00:01:42:02
Grant
And so you have to have connectivity. This is about bringing those experiences down native in the operating system. So whether you're disconnected or you just want things instant to happen, we give the ability to move those AI workloads down to the new modern PC in this Copilot plus PC category.

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Courtney
Yeah. Grant, I mean, you did say, like, capability. So can you share with us a few capabilities that employees will actually notice and use?

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Grant
Absolutely. The first that I use every day on my PC is what we call enhanced studio effects. And so if you think of it, let's go back in time a little bit. If you go back five years ago when a lot of the world started working from home on a full time basis, the PC you had then wasn’t designed for hours and hours of video calls every day.

00:02:16:04 - 00:02:40:00
Grant
And I think a lot of us brought that PC home and realized how loud that fan is. And it's just churning all day to do background blur and audio processing and all of that. Well, these Copilot PCs offload that capability and AI onto this new type of silicon we call the NPU. And so your PC just performs on the things you do every day.

00:02:40:02 - 00:03:13:24
Grant
Then you start looking at things and doubling on top of it. Meeting summarization. When you miss a meeting, be able to analyze that audio and find out when was my name mentioned in that hour meeting? Do I need to listen to the whole recording, or can I just go to where my name was brought up? Then we look at things of Click to Do, which is a new really neat feature in Copilot plus that allows you to use semantic indexing, where I can look at a document and extract the text from it, manipulate the text, manipulate a photograph all on the device, even when I'm disconnected.

00:03:13:24 - 00:03:23:22
Grant
So again, it's about bringing these experiences that are maybe just ingrained in what we do every day, making them that much more efficient and making my day that much more delightful.

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Courtney
I mean, it's such a great partner to have in your workday.

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Grant
It is. I don't even know how I'd go back. I'll give you another example. I took a holiday this summer with my family, went to the beach for a week. When I came back on Monday morning and I turned on my PC, what I asked it was what are the most important emails in my inbox? And it serviced up those 5 or 6 that are the most urgent.

00:03:48:05 - 00:04:07:12
Grant
We've all been there. Rather than spending the morning digging through my inbox just chronologically and addressing things that way. The five notes that I needed to take action on immediately were there for me in outlook, and we’re investing even more to bring that sort of processing right down into the PC and give you instant access to information.

00:04:07:14 - 00:04:14:18
Courtney
And so when it comes to security and manageability, what makes this new era different for it teams?

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Grant
Absolutely, there’s two really pieces there, Courtney. The first is is that the standard from a silicon perspective on Copilot plus is something that we call Pluton for cryptography. So most people are familiar with the concept of TPM or a Trusted platform module that stores your encryption keys for BitLocker, etc. That's always been a discrete processor on the board. And what that's meant to IT teams is that if we've ever had to update the firmware on a TPM chip, very complicated, heavy touch, you had to touch the device.

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Grant
Really expensive. Now Pluton gives us the capabilities that, if needed down the road, we can update the firmware on the TPM through Pluton, straight through Windows update. That potential benefit around the world on your fleet could be massively significant if we ever run into that. The other is, that as we move forward, we expect the entire security stack.

00:05:12:18 - 00:05:35:21
Grant
And if you think of the antivirus tools as a simple example, all of those capabilities, whether it's defender for Microsoft or CrowdStrike or equivalents, are going to move off of running on the CPU to moving to the NPU. And so the A, the battery life that you get out of your devices, Dell builds these great PCs that have ten, 15 hours of battery life.

00:05:35:21 - 00:06:00:04
Grant
And we've all worked somewhere before where the corporate I.T. department shrinks that battery life because of the image. That's about undoing all that and unleashing what these pieces can really do from performance. So there's the the hardware component, and then there's the journey that will be on as the security stack moves on to the NPU. These devices will improve over time as opposed to degrading over time.

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Courtney
And are there any companies that you've seen already embracing this new technology and, I mean, honestly, what has changed for them?

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Grant
I have and I've seen them meeting with customers all over the world in our partnership with Dell, where I'm most surprised, honestly, to see it is in the regulated industries. Financial sector and financial services, and, you know, being based here in the US, the financial sector in New York, heavily regulated, of course, by not just the US government, but the world Bank is interested all sorts of regulatory issues.

00:06:31:20 - 00:06:54:02
Grant
These firms have instantly seen the performance that they get out of these devices is game changing. I met with the CIO earlier this summer who explained that where the a light bulb went off for this individual, it was when he had gone away for the weekend and never brought his power cord. That the device was able to function for 2 or 3 days at a time.

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Grant
And he said, wait a second, this is different. What's going on? Let's explore this beyond IT, and let's see if our bankers and all of our regulated individuals can really take advantage of these devices. It's a neat journey that they're on. That's just one example in financial services. But we're seeing it in governments. We're seeing it in large enterprise across the world.

00:07:14:13 - 00:07:30:04
Grant
And then of course everyday users. Yeah. Be able to use these features in Copilot plus PC helping, you know, that's our mission of Microsoft is to help every individual and organization achieve more. These benefits come to a sole proprietorship all the way up to the largest enterprises.

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Courtney
And so grant what advice, like what is your advice for organizations thinking about the next upgrade cycle? Is this the moment to jump in?

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Grant
I think so, and really you have to look at what else is in the PC world that we need to think about. October 14th of 2025, so whether you're listening to this, that might be in a few weeks or it might have happened a few weeks ago, but that's the end of support on Windows 10. And so a lot of firms have to make the decision or have made the decision on moving forward with Windows 11.

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Grant
The key there is to getting current, to the most current build of Windows 11. So 24 H2, that's what lights up all these Copilot Plus features in the operating system. So you don't just want to get to 11. You want to get to 24 H2. And then you're in a position where you can start bringing these devices into your environment and prepare your workforce for the AI workloads that you'll be deploying at the edge as we move into the future.

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Courtney
Grant. I mean, if our listeners today were to take away one idea from this episode, what should it be?

00:08:33:24 - 00:09:13:23
Grant
Thanks, Courtney, and it's been great spending some time with you here today. I think it's to look at not just the Windows 10 end of support moment and the shift to Windows 11 in isolation. It's to look at it in parallel and understanding in your enterprise or organization. What is your AI strategies? What are your key pieces that the business wants to deploy, and are you putting in the PCs that will allow for whatever that happens to be, whether that's optimizing a manufacturing scenario, again, could be very industry specific around financial services, etc., or it could be role based.

00:09:14:00 - 00:09:35:05
Grant
That may be for, what is HR going to need, what is finance going to need as we move into the future? And what I mean that AI strategy, is as you're looking at those line of businesses, are those applications where you're going to inject AI, is that going to run in the cloud? Is it going to run in your data center, or is it going to run on the device?

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Grant
And just going through that action of thinking through where is your I want to run. Do you have needs, for example, that maybe you're cloud averse because of some regulation, for example. And you need the AI inferencing to take place on the device, or maybe you just simply want it for low latency and speed and those aspects of it.

00:09:59:00 - 00:10:30:11
Grant
But when you start to think of things of maybe it's just pure efficiency of not using a cloud service or space inside my data center, but bringing in, thinking through what are those scenarios, reaching out to your Dell representative, whether it's on the client side or the data center side, or within Dell services, to have those conversations and consultative thought process of where do I not just need to be to be compliant with Windows 11, but where am I going to be in 2026 and 2027?

00:10:30:13 - 00:10:40:12
Grant
And then am I bringing the right devices in now that set me up for this AI journey and success over this next life cycle of the PC.

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Courtney
Yeah, I mean, and it's to that point that you were talking about Grant, talk to your Dell representative. We talked about the Copilot, the Windows 11 refresh. I mean, that's included in the Dell AI PCs that we have as well.

00:10:56:09 - 00:11:23:15
Grant
Absolutely. It's in the view that you have the Dell folks in sales, marketing, engineering and product that I work with all around the world. They've all been scaling and ramping up on this technology. We called it Microsoft having tech intensity that their training and learning just like you are every day. But they do it every day. Yeah. So they're ready to have those conversations with you and map out the longer term plan and journey with you.

00:11:23:15 - 00:11:47:18
Grant
And that's really even selfishly why I like working with Dell Technologies, and I've anchored my career on to that relationship. Is that the way they meet the customer where you are today and help you see the journey. Yeah. And then the solutions will come because there are business needs that are ever changing. Those things will happen. Have the proper conversation with that long term plan and success will be inevitable.

00:11:47:20 - 00:11:51:04
Courtney
Thank you so much Grant. I really enjoy talking to you.

00:11:51:06 - 00:11:53:10
Grant
My pleasure Courtney. It's always a treat.

00:11:53:12 - 00:12:14:19
Courtney
And thanks to everyone listening. Thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to follow and share the podcast for more on the technology shaping the way we work. And if today's episode got you thinking, join us at a Dell Technologies forum near you. Connect with peers, see these innovations live and take the conversation further. Find the nearest forum on our website.

00:12:15:00 - 00:12:17:12
Courtney
Thanks again for listening. We'll be back soon.