Surface Hub more powerful with Windows 10 Creators Update

Half of Fortune 100 Companies have purchased Surface Hub to inspire creativity and collaboration

In the past 14 months since we began shipping Surface Hub, the response we’ve seen from businesses globally has been astounding. Today, over half of Fortune 100 companies have purchased Surface Hubs to improve how their teams inspire and collaborate – breaking down barriers and creating real business value.

The Creators Update is the culmination of months of listening to feedback of our best customers and includes a litany of great features and tools to help teams better create. My favorites: the amazing new Microsoft Whiteboard App that allows real-time collaborative inking across devices, deeper integration with a person’s individual authenticated Office 365 documents and new manageability and security tools to help keep your information safe.

Let’s take a deeper look at what is under the hood of Windows 10 Creators Update for Surface Hub:

The Amazing Microsoft Whiteboard

As you might have seen from us on stage in Shanghai, there is a litany of inking innovation coming to the Microsoft Whiteboard app on Windows 10, such as intelligent digital inking, geometry recognition, table conversion and automatic table shading. Microsoft Whiteboard will come first to Surface Hub starting in mid-June as an app update, with the vision to bring it to more Windows 10 devices later this year (including the Surface Studio and Surface Pro) with exclusive capabilities for Office 365 subscribers.

Real-time collaborative coauthoring in Whiteboard – which enables teams to ink with each other in real time across Surface Hub devices – for lack of a better term: is magic. Additional Microsoft Whiteboard features include new inking tools, awesome ink effects as well as more ways to integrate existing content into the whiteboard canvas to create the ultimate digital workspace. Stay tuned for more as Whiteboard comes to more Windows 10 devices.

Single sign-on and deeper integration with Office 365

We’ve made Surface Hub more personal by adding the ability for people to sign-in to their Office 365 account from the welcome screen or the updated start menu. This essentially turns Surface Hub into your personal Windows 10 device, and allows you to navigate quickly to Office 365 apps and cloud-saved content including:

• Content stored in your OneDrive
• Most recently used (MRU) documents panels inside Office applications like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint
• Integration with Microsoft Teams, which can be accessed today via the Edge browser

Enhanced audio, Miracast, and Skype experiences

I love my Surface Hub meetings because they feel as natural as being in the same room with the team. To create that sense of being in the same room the audio experience is critical. To ensure Surface Hub has the best possible audio experience, we worked with the audio masters at Dolby to optimize the audio experience for human speech.

Other updates include improved Miracast projection to make it faster and more reliable.

Skype controls have been simplified too, making it quicker and easier to call, message and share content with remote participants. Now you can easily scroll through the scheduled meetings on the welcome screen with the new meetings carousel and see who’s been invited to each meeting before you join.

New manageability and security features

Security and privacy of data are of the upmost importance to us. To ensure what happens in your meeting stays in the meeting, we’ve added several security and manageability features in the latest round of updates including:

• The ability to set Surface Hub to wipe all data at the end of each session by default;
• The option to require BitLocker encryption for USB ports to prevent malware and other security threats;
• Support for additional Mobile Device Management (MDM) features, so IT administrators can change settings remotely; and
• Support for two-factor authentication, to enable users to approve an authentication request easily on their companion device.

And more…

We are now also offering a 5-year Extended Hardware Service for Surface Hub to match the business-critical value our customers are placing on their investment.

Meeting experiences and process transformation enabled by Surface Hub will continue to evolve with a growing pipeline of Windows 10 apps built with Surface Hub in mind, including newcomers AirServer, and SAP Digital Boardroom, plus apps that work great on the Edge browser, such as iObeya.

The team is incredibly passionate about helping people be more productive and bring their ideas to life. We believe the best work is done through engaged teams. People who get together, challenge each other, and work together to accomplish so much more than they would have working independently.

Our goal is that these improvements and continued innovation and investments will help people around the world collaborate and create in innovative ways. It’s truly never been a better time to purchase Surface Hub!

Find out more about Surface Hub and the Windows 10 Creators Update on the Surface Hub update history page and the Support Site.

Thanks,

Ryan

For a deeper dive into the Windows 10 Creators Update coming to Surface Hub, click here:

*Requires OneDrive for Business