Microsoft rolls out additions to office, security, cloud

Microsoft Corp. is unveiling a raft of product updates and new services in security, artificial intelligence and other areas as the company tries to sustain the growth of its Azure cloud and Office software businesses.

At the company’s Ignite conference for information technology pros on Monday, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella will introduce new offerings and provide updates that include:

■ Microsoft Teams — the company’s Slack rival — has 329,000 organizations as customers, including 87 of the Fortune 100.

■ Microsoft Windows and Office apps will have a search box that queries both Bing web search and internal corporate documents and data.

■ Office 365 users can now email and share documents with LinkedIn direct connections from Office apps.

■ A little lightning bolt icon in Office apps — starting first in Excel and PowerPoint — will provide suggestions for design, layout and images based on what the user is doing.

■ The company “declared an end to the era of passwords” by adding the ability to login to hundreds of thousands of corporate apps without a password via Microsoft’s Authenticator service.

The world’s largest software company also said it’s spending $40 million to put its AI products to work in helping refugees, children and disaster response in conjunction with organizations like the World Bank.

Called AI for Humanitarian Action, the program is the latest part of the company’s AI for Good initiative begun last year. One program will provide computer vision and facial modeling tools to help surgeons improve cleft palate surgeries for needy kids. The company will also work with the United Nations and World Bank to use AI and data-modeling software for disaster forecasting.