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Microsoft at 50: The journey and future of the partner ecosystem
As we celebrate Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, our annual State of the Partner Ecosystem moment is a great opportunity to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve shared with our partners, employees and customers. Together, we’ve harnessed technology as a force for good, transforming industries and communities. From our early days of revolutionizing personal computing to leading the way in cloud innovation and now AI, our shared milestones highlight the power of collaboration and reinvention.
Fifty years ago, Microsoft started with a bold idea: the belief that technology could change the world. Thanks to the largest partner ecosystem in the industry, numbering 500,000 and growing, that vision became a reality, and I know we are just getting started. From the early days of distributing Windows PCs and Office to now delivering AI transformation strategies that solve the most complex customer challenges, our ability to stay at the forefront of innovation as technology evolves is a testament to our culture of continuous reinvention.
According to IDC, for every $1 of Microsoft revenue, services partners earn $8.45, and software partners earn $10.93. This underscores the immense opportunity available to partners of all types. As we look ahead to the future, we know that generative AI (GenAI) is forecast to grow exponentially faster than the overall IT market. Partners generating at least 25% of their Microsoft-related revenue from AI can expect higher margins and revenue growth, unlocking even more potential for transformation and success.*
Microsoft has always been a partner-led company. Our partners are core to our heritage and our future. Their innovation and collaboration have driven real transformation and customer success and will continue to shape the future of industries around the world. As we commemorate this historic moment, I want to take the opportunity to say Thank You to our partners for being on this incredible journey with us.
Here are just a few ways you can join us to celebrate this milestone:
- Watch this video from Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Microsoft.
- Join the Microsoft AI Skills Fest for 50 days of learning and discovery starting April 8! Gain skills that will empower you and your team to build innovative AI solutions with Microsoft’s apps and services.
“For decades, Intel’s partnership with Microsoft has sparked innovation and delivered value to our customers. Together, we’ve revolutionized industries and established new benchmarks for excellence. We look forward to collaborating for the next 50 years — and beyond.”
— Jim Johnson, Senior Vice President, Client Computing Group, Intel
Preparing for the future with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program (MAICPP)
Microsoft succeeds when our partners succeed. MAICPP has evolved to enable partners worldwide to deliver customer outcomes across every industry, from small businesses to the largest enterprises. Our program is designed to provide our partners with the most relevant tools and resources they need to thrive in a rapidly changing market, and it serves as the home for all partner types.
“As a proud Microsoft alum, I’ve seen firsthand how our collaboration has evolved to drive meaningful change for businesses across industries. From strategy through engineering and implementation, PwC and Microsoft drive innovation and deliver real business outcomes for clients worldwide.”
— Stephanie Mosticchio, Principal, US and Global Microsoft Alliance Leader, PwC
Through MAICPP, all partners can access updated benefits packages designed to accelerate growth and meet specific business needs. Software development companies are encouraged to explore ISV Success, a pathway offering additional benefits to expand development capabilities and shorten time to market. Whether building, publishing or growing sales, partners can leverage targeted offers to get the support they need.
“As someone who has led global partnerships at several of the world’s leading technology companies, I am impressed by how Microsoft has leaned in with their partner ecosystem and taken a leadership position in cloud computing and AI. We, at Snowflake, are excited to continue to strengthen our partnership in the years to come, and we look forward to jointly driving customer success in the age of enterprise AI. Congratulations!
— Tyler Prince, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Alliances & Channels, Snowflake
Depending on business goals, partners may pursue a Solutions Partner designation or specialization, both of which provide tailored benefits to help differentiate their business in a competitive market. Achieving a designation unlocks valuable go-to-market resources, sales support, new incentives and product benefits to help expand customer reach, sharpen skills and drive growth. For software development companies, becoming a Solutions Partner** with certified software*** further enhances market presence by validating software capabilities in high-demand areas.
“Having worked alongside every CEO of Microsoft in my career, I would like to personally congratulate Microsoft for its 50 extraordinary years of driving relentless innovation.”
“Lenovo is proud to be a major part of this amazing journey with Microsoft and we are committed to this partnership for many more decades to come.”
— Yuanqing Yang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Lenovo
For partners holding an Azure designation or Azure specialization, additional incentives are available through Azure Migrate and Modernize and Azure Innovate — both underpinned by Azure Essentials. With comprehensive resources, extensive coverage across scenarios and tailored incentives in one easy-to-navigate hub, Azure partners can better support customers from migration to innovation. Learn more in What’s new for Azure partner-led offerings: ISV Success and specialization updates.
Our program offers benefits for partners aligned to their growth stage and across all customer segments. We have recently made the process of obtaining an Azure Solutions Partner designation more aligned to our partners who specialize in working with small and midsize customers. We are also expanding access to Azure Migrate and Modernize and Azure Innovate incentives for SMB pathways. Read more about the SMB path to Azure Solutions Partner designations.
Cloud Solution Provider is our partner hero motion for small and medium enterprises
In November at Microsoft Ignite, we highlighted the $661 billion total addressable market (TAM) opportunity for SME&C customers in FY25 and beyond. Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners are the trusted advisors who serve these customers and accelerate their AI transformation with the value-added services and solutions that create real business impact. CSP is our hero motion that enables those partners to drive this business transformation.
“Our Microsoft partnership has evolved to meet the needs of our business and our partners. Together we’ve been able to support our partners to deliver true solution and value selling, leveraging the robust resources available through Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and benefitting from the rich incentives. It has enabled us to drive innovation and deliver exceptional experiences for our partners through our ArrowSphere platform and broader enablement programs to ensure they’re empowered to deliver real customer outcomes. Together, we’re enabling the channel to deliver solutions that deliver real impact for customers around the world.”
— Brendan Murphy, Global Director, Public Cloud, Arrow Electronics
We strive to provide CSP partners with the skilling, capabilities and investments to make this opportunity a reality. So far in FY25, we have:
- focused our incentives to clearly align to our five strategic priorities — Copilot on every device across every role, AI design wins with every customer, securing the cyber foundation of every customer, a focus on migrations and Microsoft 365 execution
- dedicated 70% of our total incentive spend to partners that serve the Small and Medium Enterprise and Customer (SME&C) segment
- introduced a series of new promos, including a new-to-Microsoft 365 E5 offer to enable CSP partners to win new customers
Expanding our portfolio of CSP offers and capabilities is an ongoing priority. We share updates as they become available.
Capturing the marketplace opportunity
As customers increasingly centralize their solution procurement, marketplaces have become the preferred buying platform. For software companies, adopting cloud marketplaces accelerates deal closure and increases deal sizes. Serving as a global B2B commerce engine, our marketplace empowers Microsoft partners to provide solutions to customers worldwide. It offers various sales models: digital direct, through partners or with Microsoft — providing flexibility to align with how customers want to buy and how partners want to sell. Learn more in this recent blog.
Unlocking success through skilling and events
The speed of technology innovation requires continuous learning. To support this, we offer our partners a variety of skilling opportunities, such as our popular in-person Microsoft AI Partner Training Days, designed to help partners develop both technical and sales capabilities.
We are also streamlining and simplifying our skilling portals through initiatives like Microsoft Sales Titan (currently in private preview for CSP Accelerate partners and available for all partners in summer 2025), a program tailored to equip sales professionals with in-depth knowledge of Microsoft Threat Protection SKUs, empowering them to position themselves as industry leaders. Discover these and other skilling opportunities.
Looking ahead, we invite our partners to join us at Microsoft Build, taking place May 19–22, 2025. This flagship event offers an exclusive opportunity to explore the latest advancements in AI, learn how to work smarter and elevate your projects. Connect with peers, industry experts and Microsoft leadership while diving into the code and innovations that will shape the future.
“Schneider Electric and Microsoft have been driven by a shared vision of a world that is more electric and digital. We’re thrilled to celebrate Microsoft’s 50th anniversary and excited to continue pioneering innovative solutions together, harnessing the transformative power of AI, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for our customers and shaping a sustainable future for generations to come.”
— Frédéric Godemel, Executive Vice President, Energy Management, Schneider Electric
Looking forward – the next 50 years
As we celebrate this remarkable milestone, we remain focused on and optimistic for the future. We continue to innovate, collaborate and empower our partners to thrive in the era of AI and beyond. The past 50 years have been defined by shared success, and this will continue for our future. Together, we will unlock new opportunities, drive transformation and shape the future of technology.
Throughout this journey, stories of innovation have inspired us. A few examples of how partners are celebrating our 50th anniversary are included in this blog. See the full list of partner quotes on the Microsoft 50th Anniversary celebration site.
Thank you for being an integral part of our story. We can’t wait to see what we’ll accomplish together next!
*IDC: Microsoft Partners: Driving Economic Value and AI Maturity
**“Solutions Partner” refers to a company that is a member of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and may offer software, services, and/or solutions to customers. Reference to “Solutions Partner” in any content, materials, resources, web properties, etc. and any associated designation should be not interpreted as an offer, endorsement, guarantee, proof of effectiveness or functionality, a commitment or any other type of representation or warranty on the part of Microsoft. All decisions pertaining to and related to your business needs including but not limited to strategies, solutions, partner selection, implementation, etc. rest solely with your business.
***A certification is (A) specific to the solution’s interoperability with Microsoft products and (B) based on self-attestation by the solution owner. Solutions are only certified as of the date the solution is reviewed. Solution functionality and capability are controlled by the solution owner and may be subject to change. The inclusion of a solution in marketplace and any such designations should not be interpreted as an offer, endorsement, guarantee, proof of effectiveness or functionality, a commitment or any other type of representation or warranty on the part of Microsoft. All decisions pertaining and related to your business needs including but not limited to strategies, solutions, partner selection, implementation, etc. rest solely with your business.
The post Microsoft at 50: The journey and future of the partner ecosystem appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
As we celebrate Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, our annual State of the Partner Ecosystem moment is a great opportunity to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve shared with our partners, employees and customers. Together, we’ve harnessed technology as a force for good, transforming industries and communities. From our early days of revolutionizing personal computing to leading…
The post Microsoft at 50: The journey and future of the partner ecosystem appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More
Microsoft senior leadership update: EVP, Chief People Officer and EVP, Office of Strategy and Transformation
Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, shared the below communication with Microsoft employees this morning.
As we’ve seen time and again throughout our 50-year history, times of great change for the world and for our industry require us to have a mindset that enables us to continually adapt and transform ourselves. There’s no question that we are at the forefront of another such moment, with the rapid changes across every industry and business function in this AI era.
This means we must have the right product portfolio, the right business models, attract and retain top talent, and optimize our processes to meet changing customer expectations and succeed in the marketplace.
With this context, I’ve asked Kathleen Hogan to transition to a new role focused on defining our overarching corporate strategy and structure and leading our continuous transformation as a company. Kathleen will assume a new role as EVP, Office of Strategy and Transformation, reporting to me.
It is hard to overstate the impact Kathleen has had on Microsoft as Chief People Officer. Over the past 10+ years, she has led our cultural transformation, as we embraced a growth mindset, positioning us to seize new opportunities with agility and attract and retain world-class talent. She is recognized externally as a consequential HR leader transforming culture and the world of work. Her more than 20-year tenure at Microsoft, including leading our global services business, paired with her prior experience as a McKinsey partner in Silicon Valley, and a development manager at Oracle, makes her uniquely suited to lead this work as we accelerate our pace of change across our people, processes, and portfolio. Kathleen will work across the SLT as we chart this next phase of our transformation, which requires both interpreting the outside and redefining the inside.
Kathleen and I have been discussing this transition and succession planning for some time, and we both agree this is the critical juncture to apply new focus and intention to this work.
With this transition, I’m very pleased to share that Amy Coleman will assume the role of EVP, Chief People Officer, leading our HR organization. She joins the senior leadership team reporting to me.
Amy has led HR for our corporate functions across the company for the past six years, following various HR roles partnering across engineering, sales, marketing, and business development spanning 25 years. In that time, she has been a trusted advisor to both Kathleen and to me as she orchestrated many cross-company workstreams as we evolved our culture, improved our employee engagement model, established our employee relations team, and drove enterprise crisis response for our people. Amy’s commitment to operational excellence and high performance will be key in driving our continued success, and I’m confident in the perspective, expertise, and thoughtful approach she’ll bring as we navigate the next phase of our journey.
Please join me in congratulating Kathleen and Amy on their new roles.
Satya
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Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, shared the below communication with Microsoft employees this morning. As we’ve seen time and again throughout our 50-year history, times of great change for the world and for our industry require us to have a mindset that enables us to continually adapt and transform ourselves. There’s no question that we…
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Microsoft Ability Summit 2025: Accessibility in the AI era
Today, we hosted the 15th annual Microsoft Ability Summit, with over 20,000 attendees from 164 countries coming together virtually to discuss the future of AI and accessibility. Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to investing in accessibility, grounded in our business model and going back over three decades from the earliest accessibility features in Windows 95 and continuing today with new hardware and software functionalities powered by AI. We are innovating faster than ever before and people with disabilities continue to lead the way.
Accessibility is a fundamental right for people with disabilities and makes technology easier for everyone. We see this reflected in how customers are using Microsoft technologies around the world. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is unlocking workplace productivity like never before, more than 10 million people use Edge each month to have the web Read Aloud, over 1 million people use Immersive Reader to make webpages easier to read and partners like Tobii Dynavox and Special Olympics are bringing AI to people with disabilities globally. And these are just some of the highlights of what we shared today!
Here’s a quick summary of the new accessibility products, features and programs announced at the 2025 Ability Summit.
What’s new in 2025?
We announced that the Xbox Adaptive Joystick is now available for purchase exclusively at Microsoft Store. With more than 429 million players with disabilities worldwide, we know each player has unique needs and preferences for how they choose to play. The Xbox Adaptive Joystick is a singular, wired controller primarily designed to meet the needs of players with limited mobility. Its versatility helps players seamlessly incorporate it into their existing gaming setups. Built with the Gaming and Disability community who inform the development of Xbox products from the beginning. The joystick joins our family of adaptive accessories including the mouse, pen, adaptive kit and Xbox Adaptive Controller. For more details visit Xbox Support.
And all our Microsoft hardware comes in packaging designed to be accessible and sustainable. No more plastic clamshells! To help others with accessible packaging, today at the Summit, the Packaging and Content Team at Microsoft published its Accessible Packaging Design Guide, which offers practical guidelines, best practices and strategies to create accessible packaging and foster a trusted customer experience.
At the Summit, Microsoft teams and partners also shared ways they are working to further advance accessibility through technology:
- Tobii Dynavox is integrating Microsoft Neural Voice, a capability of Azure AI Speech, into their assistive communication solutions. This AI-powered feature gives more personal options for individuals who use assistive communication devices using eye gaze. Neural Voices are available in over 50 languages within their apps TD Talk and TD Phone.
- Microsoft Teams will improve for those using Sign Language View. Later this year, Teams will be able to identify when someone is using sign language and feature them prominently as a speaker in the meeting. These video customizations are part of our ongoing product development to help deliver clear and accessible communication for everyone.
- Copilot is powering neurodiverse talent. Recently, an EY study found that Copilot helped 76% of neurodiverse employees perform better at work by enhancing communication, memory recall and focus. At the Summit, we shared how new simple features like Team Reflow and PowerPoint Designer are helping people do their work. See four early adopters of Copilot in New York share their stories.
- AI comes to Narrator. Rich image descriptions powered by AI will be coming to Narrator in Windows Insider Preview this spring and Azure AI Foundry announced new UI improvements to reduce cognitive load.
- Over 5 million learners around the world have participated in our Accessibility Skilling program and we’re grateful to our partners including Teach Access, Computacenter UK and the City of New York. The free, virtual training includes the latest on AI and is available for organizations to use in their learning management systems.
- Speech recognition improved up to 60%. The Speech Accessibility Project, led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, unlocked a breakthrough improving accuracy gains for non-standard speech, and the Azure platform team demonstrated how developers can leverage GitHub Copilot to write accessible code.
- Special Olympics shared how Copilot has been a game-changing training companion for their coaches and athletes with intellectual and development disabilities for the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
All this progress is possible because of the people who design technology with accessibility in mind. In this way, technology benefits everyone, creating a more productive and efficient workplace. It is beautiful to see that reflected in this profile of Dave Dame, Senior Director of Accessibility and Human Factors at Microsoft, where he shared how accessible technology helps him thrive as a leader.
Onward
For over 30 years, Microsoft has focused on accessibility in our products. Accessibility makes our tools and technologies easier for everyone and accelerates innovation for the world. From the introduction of Sticky Keys and speech recognition in Windows 95 to Seeing AI in 2016 and beyond, accessibility innovations have benefited people in ways we designed for and ways we could have never expected. Just think about how closed captions are now invaluable for everyone watching videos and calls.
AI has the potential to create significant advancements across every sector of our economy and society. We will continue to be grounded and responsible in our approach as we work to get the latest technology to the people who can benefit from it the most.
Whether this is your first or fifteenth Ability Summit, thank you for joining and we hope you picked up a new feature, skill or nugget that helps you, your community or your organization get the most out of technology. All content will be available to watch after the event.
Let’s move forward together.
The post Microsoft Ability Summit 2025: Accessibility in the AI era appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Today, we hosted the 15th annual Microsoft Ability Summit, with over 20,000 attendees from 164 countries coming together virtually to discuss the future of AI and accessibility. Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to investing in accessibility, grounded in our business model and going back over three decades from the earliest accessibility features in Windows 95…
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A new level unlocked
Today Microsoft released Muse, a first-of-its-kind generative AI model that we are applying to gaming. But it’s so much more than that. What we’re sharing today is a huge step forward for gameplay ideation. And what’s even more exciting is what this breakthrough represents in our journey of building and using generative AI, and what industries, developers and creators of all interests will be enabled to do next.
The impressive abilities we first witnessed with ChatGPT and GPT-4 to learn human language are now being matched by AI’s abilities to learn the mechanics of how things work, in effect developing a practical understanding of interactions in the world. As a computer scientist, this ability to understand and model a 3D world is something I and many other great researchers have pursued for over 10 years and, personally, I was not sure that it could be made possible with such speed and quality.
In the case of Muse, just from observing human gameplay, this model develops a deep understanding of the environment, including its dynamics and how it evolves over time in response to actions. This unlocks the ability to rapidly iterate, remix and create in video games so developers can eventually create immersive environments and unleash their full creativity.
Beyond gaming, I’m excited by the potential of this capability to enable AI assistants that understand and help visualize things, from reconfiguring the kitchen in your home to redesigning a retail space to building a digital twin of a factory floor to test and explore different scenarios. All these things are just now becoming possible with AI. From the perspective of computer science research, it’s pretty amazing, and the future applications of this are likely to be transformative for creators.
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At Microsoft, we have a long history of collaboration between research and engineering. Today, as we release Muse, we are also announcing Azure AI Foundry Labs, where the AI community can explore the latest from Microsoft Research. Azure AI Foundry Labs will help accelerate the transition from research to solutions, bringing new ideas to the broader community to help shape the future of AI. Learn more.
The post A new level unlocked appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Today Microsoft released Muse, a first-of-its-kind generative AI model that we are applying to gaming. But it’s so much more than that. What we’re sharing today is a huge step forward for gameplay ideation. And what’s even more exciting is what this breakthrough represents in our journey of building and using generative AI, and what industries,…
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Microsoft unveils Majorana 1
Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, shared the below communication on social media this morning.
The post Microsoft unveils Majorana 1 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, shared the below communication on social media this morning. Click here to load media
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The value of AI: How Microsoft’s customers and partners are creating differentiated AI solutions to reinvent how they do business today
Organizational leaders in every industry around the world are evaluating ways AI can unlock opportunities, drive pragmatic innovation and yield value across their business. At Microsoft, we are dedicated to helping our customers accelerate AI Transformation by empowering human ambition with Copilots and agents, developing differentiated AI solutions and building scalable cybersecurity foundations. At Microsoft Ignite we made over 100 announcements that bring the latest innovation directly to our customers and partners, and shared how Microsoft is the only technology leader to offer three distinct AI platforms for them to build AI solutions:
- Copilot is your UI for AI, with Copilot Studio enabling low-code creation of agents and extensibility to your data.
- Azure AI Foundry is the only AI app server for building real-world, world-class, AI-native applications.
- Microsoft Fabric is the AI data platform that provides one common way to reason over your data —no matter where it lives.
All three of these platforms are open and work synchronously to enable the development of modern AI solutions; and each is surrounded by our world-class security offerings so leaders can move their AI-first strategies forward with confidence.
As we look ahead to what we can achieve together, I remain inspired by the work we are doing today. Below are a handful of the many stories from the past quarter highlighting the differentiated AI solutions our customers and partners are driving to move business forward across industries and realize pragmatic value. Their success clearly illustrates that real results can be harnessed from AI today, and it is changing the way organizations do business.
To power its industrial IoT and AI platform, ABB Group leveraged Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to create Genix Copilot: a generative AI-powered analytics suite aimed at solving some of the most complex industrial problems. The solution helps customers analyze key functions in their operations —such as asset and process performance, energy optimization and emission monitoring — with real-time operational insights. As a result, customers are seeing up to 35% savings in operations and maintenance, and up to 20% improvement in energy and emission optimization. ABB also saw an 80% decrease in service calls with the self-service capabilities of Genix Copilot.
Serving government healthcare agencies across the US, Acentra Health turned to Microsoft to help introduce the latest AI capabilities that maximize talent and cut costs in a secure, HIPAA-compliant manner. Using Azure OpenAI Service, the company developed MedScribe — an AI-powered tool reducing the time specially trained nursing staff spend on appeal determination letters. This innovation saved 11,000 nursing hours and nearly $800,000, reducing time spent on each appeal determination letter by about 50%. MedScribe also significantly enhanced operational efficiency, enabling nurses to process 20 to 30 letters daily with a 99% approval rate.
To ease challenges for small farmers, Romanian agribusiness group Agricover revolutionized access to credit by developing MyAgricover. Built with help from partner Avaelgo, the scalable digital platform utilizes Microsoft Azure, Azure API Management and Microsoft Fabric to automate the loan process and enable faster approvals and disbursements. This has empowered small farmers to grow their businesses and receive faster access to financing by reducing loan approval time by 90 percent — from 10 working days to a maximum of 24 hours.
Building on its status as a world-class airline with a strong Indian identity, Air India sought ways to enhance customer support while managing costs. By developing AI.g, one of the industry’s first generative AI virtual assistants built on Azure OpenAI Service, the airline upgraded the customer experience. Today, 97% of customer queries are handled with full automation, resulting in millions of dollars of support costs saved and improved customer satisfaction — further positioning the airline for continued growth.
BMW Group aimed to enhance data delivery efficiency and improve vehicle development and prototyping cycles by implementing a Mobile Data Recorder (MDR) solution with Azure App Service, Azure AI and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The solution achieved 10 times more efficient data delivery, significantly improved data accessibility and elevated overall development quality. The MDR monitors and records more than 10,000 signals twice per second in every vehicle of BMW’s fleet of 3,500 development cars and transmits data within seconds to a centralized cloud back end. Using Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI Service, BMW Group created an MDR copilot fueled by GPT-4o. Engineers can now chat with the interface using natural language, and the MDR copilot converts the conversations into KQL queries, simplifying access to technical insights. Moving from on-premises tools to a cloud-based system with faster data management also helps engineers troubleshoot in real time. The vehicle data covered by the system has doubled, and data delivery and analysis happen 10 times faster.
Coles Group modernized its logistics and administrative applications using Microsoft Azure Stack HCI to scale its edge AI capabilities and improve efficiency and customer experience across its 1,800 stores. By expanding its Azure Stack HCI footprint from two stores to over 500, Coles achieved a six-fold increase in the pace of application deployment, significantly enhancing operational efficiency and enabling rapid innovation without disrupting workloads. The retailer is also using Azure Machine Learning to train and develop edge AI models, speeding up data annotation time for training models by 50%.
Multinational advertising and media company Dentsu wanted to speed time to insights for its team of data scientists and media analysts to support its media planning and budget optimization. Using Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI Service, Dentsu developers built a predictive analytics copilot that uses conversational chat and draws on deep expertise in media forecasting, budgeting and optimization. This AI-driven tool has reduced time to media insights for employees and clients by 90% and cut analysis costs.
To overcome the limitations of its current systems, scale operations and automate processes across millions of workflows, Docusign created the Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform on Azure. Using Azure AI, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Logic Apps and AKS, the platform transforms agreement data into actionable insights to enhance productivity and accelerate contract review cycles. IAM also ensures better collaboration and unification across business systems to provide secure solutions tailored to diverse customer needs. For example, its customer KPC Private funds reported a 70% reduction in time and resources dedicated to agreement processes.
Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) transformed its manufacturing operations by leveraging a hybrid environment with Azure Arc, Azure Stack HCI and Azure Kubernetes Service. This digital manufacturing platform resulted in 86% cost savings for AI image and video analytics and a 13-fold improvement in AI response times. The seamless hybrid cloud architecture has enhanced EGA’s operational efficiency and agility, supporting its Industry 4.0 transformation strategy.
EY collaborated with Microsoft to enhance the inclusivity of AI development using Azure AI Studio. By involving neurodivergent technologists from EY’s Neuro-Diverse Centers of Excellence, they improved the accessibility and productivity of AI tools, resulting in more inclusive AI solutions, fostering innovation and ensuring that AI tools unlock the potential of all users. With an estimated 20% of the global workforce identifying as neurodivergent, inclusive AI solutions are crucial for maximizing creativity and productivity. Neurodivergent EY technologists also collaborated with Microsoft developers to make Azure AI Foundry more inclusive and help all users work productively to create innovative AI solutions.
Colombian household appliance manufacturer Haceb integrated AI to optimize processes, reduce costs and improve service quality. Using Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure OpenAI Service, the company created a virtual technical support assistant, saving its 245 technicians 5 minutes per visit — a total of 5,000 minutes saved daily. This AI solution has enhanced efficiency and boosted customer satisfaction by allowing for faster issue resolution. Haceb’s AI adoption has also empowered employees, boosted productivity and positioned the company as a leader in AI innovation in Colombia.
To better serve its global patients, Operation Smile — in collaboration with partner Squadra — leveraged Azure AI, Machine Learning and Microsoft Fabric to develop an AI-powered solution to predict surgical outcomes and optimize resource allocation. This innovation resulted in a 30% increase in surgical efficiency, a 90% reduction in translation errors and improved patient outcomes. Additionally, report generation is now up to 95% quicker, and repeated medical events have decreased by 15%, enabling Operation Smile to provide better care to more children worldwide.
Ontada — a McKesson business dedicated to oncology data and evidence, clinical education and point-of-care technologies — needed a way to generate key insights across 150 million unstructured oncology documents. Using Microsoft Azure AI and Azure OpenAI Service, Ontada developed a data platform solution called ON.Genuity to provide AI-driven insights into the patient journey, enhance patient trial matching and identify care gaps. The company also implemented large language models to target nearly 100 critical oncology data elements across 39 cancer types, enabling the company to analyze an estimated 70% of previously inaccessible data, reduce processing time by 75% and accelerate product time-to-market from months to just one week.
As the UK’s largest pet care company, Pets at Home sought a way to combat fraud across its retail operations — particularly as its online business continued to grow. Working closely with its fraud team, it adopted Copilot Studio to develop an AI agent that quickly identifies suspicious transactions. The agent autonomously gathers relevant information, performs analysis and shares it with a fraud agent to enable a manual, data-intensive investigative process while ensuring a human remains in the loop. With this low-code agent extending and seamlessly integrating into existing systems, the company’s fraud department can act more quickly; what used to take 20 to 30 minutes is now handled by the AI agent within seconds. The company is identifying fraud 10 times faster and is processing 20 times more cases a day. Now, the company can operate at scale with speed, efficiency and accuracy — with savings expected to be in the seven figures as it continues to build more agents.
Revenue Grid, a technology company specializing in sales engagement and revenue optimization solutions, partnered with Cloud Services to modernize its data infrastructure and develop a unified data warehouse capable of handling unstructured, semi-structured and structured data. By migrating to Microsoft Fabric, Revenue Grid can now deliver data-powered revenue intelligence, driven by a unified platform, elastic scalability, enhanced analytics capabilities and streamlined operations. Revenue Grid has reduced infrastructure costs by 60% while enhancing its analytical capabilities to improve real-time data processing, empowering sales teams with accurate and diverse data.
To better manage and integrate employee data across diverse regions and systems, UST built a comprehensive Employee Data platform on Microsoft Fabric. In under a year, UST migrated 20 years of employee data with all security measures to enhance data accessibility and employee productivity. The Meta Data Driven Integration (MDDI) framework in Fabric also helped the company cut data ingestion time by 50% so employees can focus more on analysis than preparation. As a result of this implementation, the company has seen an increase in collaboration and innovation from employees, helping put its values into action.
The Microsoft Commercial Marketplace offers millions of customers worldwide a convenient place to find, try and buy software and services across 140 countries. As a Marketplace partner, WeTransact is helping independent software vendors (ISVs) list and transact their software solutions — and find opportunities for co-selling and extending their reach to enterprise customers through development of the WeTransact platform. Powered by Azure OpenAI Service, the platform is changing the way partnerships are being built by using AI pairing to facilitate a “plug and play” reseller network. More than 300 ISVs worldwide have joined the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace using the WeTransact platform, cutting their time to publish by 75%.
The opportunity for AI to create value is no longer an ambition for the future — it is happening now, and organizational leaders across industries are investing in AI-first strategies to change the way they do business. We believe AI should empower human achievement and enrich the lives of employees; and we are uniquely differentiated to help you accelerate your AI Transformation responsibly and securely. Choosing the right technology provider comes down to trust, and I look forward to what we will achieve together as we partner with you on your AI journey.
The post The value of AI: How Microsoft’s customers and partners are creating differentiated AI solutions to reinvent how they do business today appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Organizational leaders in every industry around the world are evaluating ways AI can unlock opportunities, drive pragmatic innovation and yield value across their business. At Microsoft, we are dedicated to helping our customers accelerate AI Transformation by empowering human ambition with Copilots and agents, developing differentiated AI solutions and building scalable cybersecurity foundations. At Microsoft…
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Microsoft and OpenAI evolve partnership to drive the next phase of AI
We are thrilled to continue our strategic partnership with OpenAI and to partner on Stargate. Today’s announcement is complimentary to what our two companies have been working on together since 2019.
The key elements of our partnership remain in place for the duration of our contract through 2030, with our access to OpenAI’s IP, our revenue sharing arrangements and our exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs all continuing forward – specifically:
- Microsoft has rights to OpenAI IP (inclusive of model and infrastructure) for use within our products like Copilot. This means our customers have access to the best model for their needs.
- The OpenAI API is exclusive to Azure, runs on Azure and is also available through the Azure OpenAI Service. This agreement means customers benefit from having access to leading models on Microsoft platforms and direct from OpenAI.
- Microsoft and OpenAI have revenue sharing agreements that flow both ways, ensuring that both companies benefit from increased use of new and existing models.
- Microsoft remains a major investor in OpenAI, providing funding and capacity to support their advancements and, in turn, benefiting from their growth in valuation.
In addition to this, OpenAI recently made a new, large Azure commitment that will continue to support all OpenAI products as well as training. This new agreement also includes changes to the exclusivity on new capacity, moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal (ROFR). To further support OpenAI, Microsoft has approved OpenAI’s ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.
We thank OpenAI for their continued partnership and look forward to what’s to come.
The post Microsoft and OpenAI evolve partnership to drive the next phase of AI appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
We are thrilled to continue our strategic partnership with OpenAI and to partner on Stargate. Today’s announcement is complimentary to what our two companies have been working on together since 2019. The key elements of our partnership remain in place for the duration of our contract through 2030, with our access to OpenAI’s IP, our…
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Introducing Core AI – Platform and Tools
Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, shared the below communication with Microsoft employees this morning.
As we begin the new year, it’s clear that we’re entering the next innings of this AI platform shift. 2025 will be about model-forward applications that reshape all application categories. More so than any previous platform shift, every layer of the application stack will be impacted. It’s akin to GUI, internet servers, and cloud-native databases all being introduced into the app stack simultaneously. Thirty years of change is being compressed into three years!
We will build agentic applications with memory, entitlements, and action space that will inherit powerful model capabilities. And we will adapt these capabilities for enhanced performance and safety across roles, business processes, and industry domains. Further, how we build, deploy, and maintain code for these AI applications is also fundamentally changing and becoming agentic.
This is leading to a new AI-first app stack — one with new UI/UX patterns, runtimes to build with agents, orchestrate multiple agents, and a reimagined management and observability layer. In this world, Azure must become the infrastructure for AI, while we build our AI platform and developer tools — spanning Azure AI Foundry, GitHub, and VS Code — on top of it. In other words, our AI platform and tools will come together to create agents, and these agents will come together to change every SaaS application category, and building custom applications will be driven by software (i.e. “service as software”).
The good news is that we have been working at this for more than two years and have learned a lot in terms of the systems, app platform, and tools required for the AI era. To more rapidly and boldly advance our roadmap across each of these layers, we are creating a new engineering organization: CoreAI – Platform and Tools.
This new division will bring together Dev Div, AI Platform, and some key teams from the Office of the CTO (AI Supercomputer, AI Agentic Runtimes, and Engineering Thrive), with the mission to build the end-to-end Copilot & AI stack for both our first-party and third-party customers to build and run AI apps and agents. This group will also build out GitHub Copilot, thus having a tight feedback loop between the leading AI-first product and the AI platform to motivate the stack and its roadmap.
Jay Parikh will lead this group as EVP of CoreAI – Platform and Tools, with Eric Boyd, Jason Taylor, Julia Liuson, Tim Bozarth, and their respective teams reporting to Jay.
Jay will work closely with Scott, Rajesh, Charlie, Mustafa, and Kevin to optimize our entire tech stack for both performance and efficiency. Additionally, Jay and team will lead our progress and work around developer productivity and Engineering Thrive across the company.
As our cloud infrastructure business continues to grow and scale to become Microsoft’s largest business, Scott will continue to lead Cloud + AI to ensure we’re delivering the quality, security, and innovation that our customers and partners count on for their most mission-critical applications, databases, and AI workloads.
Ultimately, we must remember that our internal organizational boundaries are meaningless to both our customers and to our competitors. When we talk about operating as One Microsoft, we are effectively talking about how we are continually increasing our customer focus, raising the bar on our innovation, and driving accountability, so we can truly live up to our mission.
Our success in this next phase will be determined by having the best AI platform, tools, and infrastructure. We have a lot of work to do and a tremendous opportunity ahead, and together, I’m looking forward to building what comes next.
Satya
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Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, shared the below communication with Microsoft employees this morning. As we begin the new year, it’s clear that we’re entering the next innings of this AI platform shift. 2025 will be about model-forward applications that reshape all application categories. More so than any previous platform shift, every layer of the…
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Ignite 2024: Why nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot
Two things can be true at the same time.
In the case of AI, it is absolutely true that the industry is moving incredibly fast and evolving quickly. It’s also true that hundreds of thousands of customers are using Microsoft AI technology today and, by making early bets on the platform, are seeing big benefits now and future-proofing their ability to benefit from the next big wave of AI improvements.
Microsoft Ignite is our annual event that spotlights the updates and creations that enable customers, partners and developers to unleash the full potential of Microsoft’s technology and change the way we approach work.
This year, we are announcing about 80 new products and features, including new capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot, additions to the Copilot + AI stack and new Copilot+ devices offerings. Underpinning each of these innovations is our commitment to security. Since launching our Secure Future Initiative (SFI) one year ago, we have made security the No. 1 job of every employee at Microsoft, dedicated 34,000 engineers to this focus and, at Ignite, we will announce innovations that are rooted in our SFI principles: secure by design, secure by default and secure operations.
More than 200,000 people have registered to join us for this year’s Ignite, with more than 14,000 attendees at our in-person events in Chicago. Attendees can choose from more than 800 sessions, demos and expert-led labs from Microsoft and our partners. Most of the Ignite content will be available on demand for those who can’t attend the live event.
Copilot momentum
Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work, and we have seen the momentum grow as more organizations are moving to Copilot and deploying it to great success. All up, nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot.
That echoes an industry trend: A recent IDC study showed that generative AI is on the rise, with 75% adoption among companies surveyed in 2024. In addition, for every $1 invested, companies are realizing a return of $3.70, and leaders are saying they are realizing as much as a $10 return, according to the study.
The investments that Microsoft has made in Copilot are paying dividends for our customers.
We recently highlighted some of the more than 200 customer stories of accelerated AI Transformation, with Copilot helping many of them spark innovation and transform their organization for the better. Several examples include:
- Power management company Eaton used Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline and automate operations, improve data access, centralize knowledge and empower teams to focus on higher-value tasks. Copilot helped Eaton’s Finance operations document over 9,000 standard operating procedures (SOPs), an 83% time savings for each SOP documented.
- Consulting firm McKinsey & Company is creating an agent to speed up the client onboarding process. The pilot showed lead time could be reduced by 90% and administrative work reduced by 30%. The agent automates complex processes, such as identifying the right expert capabilities and staffing teams and acts as a single place where colleagues can ask questions and request follow-ups. By streamlining tasks and reducing manual inputs, this agent could potentially save consultants many hours, allowing them to spend more time with clients.
Boosting productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft is continuing to supercharge productivity with new capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot designed to help simplify the workday.
Copilot Actions, now in private preview, enable anyone to automate everyday tasks with simple, fill-in-the-blank prompts, whether it’s getting a daily summary of meeting actions in Microsoft Teams, compiling weekly reports or getting an email upon return from vacation that summarizes missed meetings, chats and emails.
Anyone can easily set up Actions right in their Microsoft 365 app, allowing users to focus on more impactful work, save time and boost productivity.
New agents in Microsoft 365 are designed to help scale individual impact and transform business process. At Ignite we will introduce:
- Agents in SharePoint: These natural language AI assistants are grounded on relevant SharePoint sites, files and folders to make it easy to find answers from that content, and to make quicker decisions as a result. Now generally available, every SharePoint site will include an agent tailored to its content. Users can also create customized agents scoped to select SharePoint files, folders or sites with as little as one click.
- Interpreter: This agent in Teams helps users overcome language barriers by enabling real-time, speech-to-speech interpretation in meetings. Available in public preview in early 2025, meeting participants will also have the option to have the agent simulate their personal voice.
- The Employee Self-Service Agent: An agent available in private preview in Business Chat expedites answers for the most common policy-related questions and simplifies action-taking on key HR and IT-related tasks — like helping employees understand their benefits or request a new laptop. It can be customized in Copilot Studio to meet an organization’s unique needs.
- Other agents in public preview take real-time meeting notes in Teams and automate project management from start to finish in Planner.
Copilot + AI Stack
The Copilot stack empowers users to build more ambitious products by leveraging advanced technology at each layer of the stack. To create a unified experience where customers can design, customize and manage AI applications and agents, we are introducing Azure AI Foundry, which gives customers access to all existing Azure AI services and tooling, plus new capabilities like:
- Azure AI Foundry SDK, now available in preview, provides a unified toolchain for designing, customizing and managing AI apps and agents with enterprise-grade control and customization. With tools that help organizations responsibly scale their applications, Foundry also provides 25 prebuilt app templates and a simplified coding experience they can access from familiar tools like GitHub, Visual Studio and Copilot Studio.
- Azure AI Foundry portal (formerly Azure AI Studio), now available in preview, is a comprehensive visual user interface to help developers discover AI models, services and tools. With a new management center experience that brings essential subscription information into a single dashboard, the portal also helps IT admins, operations and compliance teams manage AI applications at scale.
- Azure AI Agent Service, coming soon to preview, will enable professional developers to orchestrate, deploy and scale enterprise enterprise-ready agents to automate business processes.
We also continue to back up our Trustworthy AI commitments with new tools. Today we’re announcing AI reports and risk and safety evaluations for images to help organizations ensure AI applications are safe and compliant. AI reports will help organizations improve observability, collaboration and governance for AI apps and fine-tuned models, while evaluations for image content will help customers assess the frequency and severity of harmful content in their app’s AI-generated outputs.
Copilot+ devices
As organizations move more workloads to the cloud to enhance security and flexibility, Microsoft is expanding its Cloud PC solution by introducing the first in a new class of devices purpose-built to connect securely to Windows 365 in seconds.
Windows 365 Link is the simple, secure, purpose-built device for Windows 365. It is in preview now and will become generally available for purchase starting in April 2025 in select markets with an MSRP of $349, allowing users to work securely in a familiar Windows desktop in the Microsoft Cloud with responsive, high-fidelity experiences.
Windows 365 Link is secure by design. The device has no local data, no local apps and admin-less users so corporate data stays protected within the Microsoft Cloud.
Other new capabilities for Copilot+ PCs for commercial customers include harnessing the power of inbuilt native processing units (NPUs) to deliver local AI. With improved Windows Search, and the new Recall experience (preview), finding what you need on your PC is easier than ever by just describing what you are looking for. These features are releasing first to our Windows Insider community on Copilot+ PCs before rolling out more broadly to our customers.
BlackRock momentum
Four years ago, BlackRock, one of the world’s pre-eminent asset management firms, formed a strategic alliance with Microsoft to move its Aladdin platform to Microsoft Azure. With this foundation on Azure, BlackRock rolled out generative AI tools for global clients with Aladdin Copilot. Through generative AI, Aladdin Copilot serves to strengthen the connective tissue across the platform, leveraging Microsoft technology to help users receive answers instantly to unlock new efficiencies and discover important business insights even faster. Aladdin Copilot makes BlackRock’s Aladdin platform even more intelligent and responsive. That results in enhanced productivity, enables scale and keeps users more informed.
BlackRock’s move to Azure and launch of Aladdin Copilot are just two of the many ongoing milestones in a long-term partnership that also includes an enterprise-wide deal for 24,000 seats of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Today, about 60% of BlackRock’s Copilot user population is leveraging Copilot on a weekly basis. Additionally, BlackRock also recently made the choice to move its on-prem CRM solution to the cloud with Dynamics 365, citing its native integration with Teams and Outlook as one of its primary decision-making factors.
Strength in security
We know that the threat landscape is rapidly evolving, and it’s imperative that we stay ahead of bad actors. At Microsoft we believe that security is a team sport, and we are stronger when we partner as a security community to share information, collaborate and stop bad actors.
In that spirit, and as part of our Secure Future Initiative (SFI), at Ignite we are announcing the largest public security research event in history: the Zero Day Quest. This event, which focuses on AI and cloud security, will offer the largest award pool in the industry at $4 million, in addition to our existing $16 million annual bounty program. This competition aims to attract the world’s best security minds to tackle high-impact scenarios critical to our customers’ security, with award multipliers, starting today.
As the threat landscape has changed, we have seen rapid evolution in the way attackers exploit weaknesses within systems — particularly by navigating graph relationships between identities, files and devices to uncover attack paths. Attackers thinking in graphs cause wider damage from the first point of intrusion. Traditional security products, with limited visibility into these graph relationships, are often better suited to protect specific devices or mediums — like laptops or inboxes — rather than the full scope of potential attack surface.
Today’s Microsoft Security Exposure Management launch is a pivotal step in transforming cybersecurity with savvy data and AI-based strategies. The power of incorporating Microsoft graph data, in context with data from customers’ other third-party security tools, creates a powerful single pane of glass to visualize attack paths before threat actors do. With computing power and cloud-scale performance to distill powerful real-time mapping of assets and evolving risks, Exposure Management assists security teams in preventing intrusions and provides IT, operations and risk leaders with real-time data to support cyber risk decision-making.
This is only a small section of the many exciting features and updates we will be announcing at Ignite. As a reminder, you can view keynote sessions from Microsoft executives including Satya Nadella, Rajesh Jha, Scott Guthrie, Charlie Bell and Vasu Jakkal, live or on-demand.
Plus, you can get more on all these announcements by exploring the Book of News, the official compendium of all today’s news.
The post Ignite 2024: Why nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Two things can be true at the same time. In the case of AI, it is absolutely true that the industry is moving incredibly fast and evolving quickly. It’s also true that hundreds of thousands of customers are using Microsoft AI technology today and, by making early bets on the platform, are seeing big benefits…
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8080 Books, an imprint of Microsoft, launches, offering thought leadership titles spanning technology, business and society
As fans of books, especially in their physical format, it is our great pleasure to launch 8080 Books, an imprint of Microsoft. Our first title, No Prize for Pessimism, is authored by Sam Schillace, deputy chief technology officer at Microsoft, and is available today. Our second title, Platform Mindset, by Marcus Fontoura, will be available later this year.
Computing has become an essential ingredient to almost every endeavor on our planet, and, as students of both Microsoft and technology, our goal with 8080 Books is to publish original research, ideas and insights at the intersection of science, technology and business, and, in doing so, to help advance discourse on this important landscape.
The name of our imprint takes its inspiration from the 8080 microprocessor — a foundation for the company’s earliest software breakthroughs. Not coincidentally, 8080 is also the last four digits of Microsoft’s corporate headquarters phone number.
With a combined tenure of, well, let’s just say a long time, we’re both acutely aware of the rich well of talent at Microsoft from which we can draw upon and publish under the 8080 Books imprint over time. However, our intention is that we will seek to use this not just as a platform for Microsoft authors but also to showcase minds and ideas from outside of the company.
While we are not currently accepting unsolicited manuscripts, our website does provide more details about our plans, such as evaluating out of print titles that we feel remain relevant to today’s leaders, and why we feel the time is right to launch this imprint.
We hope you enjoy our launch title, which is available here, and we look forward to hearing your feedback, questions and ideas as we embark on this new adventure.
For anyone in the Puget Sound area, we invite you to Schillace’s first reading and signing at Brick & Mortar Books, on Wednesday, Dec. 11 in Redmond, Washington. Check here for details. Space is limited.
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As fans of books, especially in their physical format, it is our great pleasure to launch 8080 Books, an imprint of Microsoft. Our first title, No Prize for Pessimism, is authored by Sam Schillace, deputy chief technology officer at Microsoft, and is available today. Our second title, Platform Mindset, by Marcus Fontoura, will be available…
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From questions to discoveries: NASA’s new Earth Copilot brings Microsoft AI capabilities to democratize access to complex data
Every day, NASA’s satellites orbit Earth, capturing a wealth of information that helps us understand our planet. From monitoring wildfires to tracking climate change, this vast trove of Earth Science data has the potential to drive scientific discoveries, inform policy decisions and support industries like agriculture, urban planning and disaster response.
But navigating the over 100 petabytes of collected data can be challenging, which is why NASA has collaborated with Microsoft to explore the use of a custom copilot using Azure OpenAI Service to develop NASA’s Earth Copilot, which could transform how people interact with Earth’s data.
Geospatial data is complex, and often requires some level of technical expertise to navigate it. As a result, this data tends to be accessible only to a limited number of researchers and scientists. As NASA collects more data from new satellites, these complexities only grow and may further limit the potential pool of people able to draw insights and develop applications that could benefit society.
Recognizing this challenge, NASA embarked on a mission to make its data more accessible and user-friendly. As part of its Transform to Open Science initiative, the agency seeks to democratize data access, breaking down technical barriers to empower a diverse range of audiences, from scientists and educators to policymakers and the general public.
The challenge: Navigating the complexity of data
NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Program is responsible for collecting an incredible variety of data from spaceborne sensors and instruments. This data spans everything from atmospheric conditions to land cover changes, ocean temperatures and more. However, the sheer scale and complexity of this information can be overwhelming. For many, finding and extracting insights requires navigating technical interfaces, understanding data formats and mastering the intricacies of geospatial analysis — specialized skills that very few non-technical users possess. AI could streamline this process, reducing time to gain insights from Earth’s data to a matter of seconds.
This issue isn’t just a matter of convenience; it has real-world implications. For example, scientists who need to analyze historical data on hurricanes to improve predictive models, or policymakers who want to study deforestation patterns to implement environmental regulations, may find themselves unable to easily access the data they need. This inaccessibility affects a broad array of sectors, including agriculture, urban planning and disaster response, where timely insights from spaceborne data could make a significant difference.
Moreover, as new satellites with new instruments continue to launch and collect more data, NASA is constantly faced with the challenge of building new tools to manage and make sense of this growing repository. The agency explored emerging technologies that could not only streamline data discovery but also broaden accessibility, enabling more people to engage with the data and uncover new insights.
The solution: AI-powered data access through Microsoft Azure
To address these challenges, NASA IMPACT worked with Microsoft to develop an AI-driven customer copilot, called Earth Copilot, which could simplify data access and encourage a wider range of users to interact with its Earth Science data. Together, they built the proof of concept AI model that leverages Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and advanced AI capabilities to transform how users can search, discover and analyze NASA’s geospatial data.
The key to NASA’s Earth Copilot lies in the integration of cloud-based technologies like Azure OpenAI Service, which provides access to powerful AI models and natural language processing capabilities that enable developers to integrate intelligent, conversational AI into their applications. This approach allows NASA to integrate AI into its existing data analysis platform — VEDA. These technologies together make it easier for users to search, discover and analyze Earth Science data
By combining these technologies, Earth Copilot enables users to interact with NASA’s data repository through plain language queries. Instead, they can simply ask questions such as “What was the impact of Hurricane Ian in Sanibel Island?” or “How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect air quality in the US?” AI will then retrieve relevant datasets, making the process seamless and intuitive.

“Azure’s robust suite of services, including machine learning, data analytics and scalable cloud infrastructure, powers this AI prototype,” said Juan Carlos López, former NASA engineer and current Azure Specialist at Microsoft. “We’ve designed the system to handle complex queries and large datasets efficiently, ensuring that users can quickly find the information they need without getting bogged down by technical complexities. Our goal was to create a seamless, scalable solution that could evolve as NASA’s data, tools and applications grow.”
Democratizing data for open science
The collaboration between NASA IMPACT and Microsoft has resulted in a solution that democratizes access to spaceborne data, enabling a broader range of users to engage with NASA’s science data. This has significant benefits for the scientific community, as researchers can now spend less time on data retrieval and more on analysis and discovery. For example, climate scientists can quickly access historical data to study trends, while agricultural experts can gain insights into soil moisture levels to improve crop management.
Educators and teachers can use real-world examples to engage students in Earth Science, fostering curiosity and encouraging the next generation of scientists and engineers. Policymakers can leverage the data to make informed decisions on critical issues like climate change, urban development and disaster preparedness, ensuring they have the most accurate information at their fingertips.
“The vision behind this collaboration was to leverage AI and cloud technologies to bring Earth’s insights to communities that have been underserved, where access to data can lead to tangible improvements,” said Minh Nguyen, Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft. “By enabling users to interact with the data through simple, plain language queries, we’re helping to democratize access to spaceborne information.”
The development of this AI prototype aligns with NASA’s Open Science initiative, which aims to make scientific research more transparent, inclusive and collaborative. By removing barriers to data discovery, NASA and Microsoft are setting the stage for a new era of discovery, where insights are not confined to a select few but can be explored and expanded by anyone curious about the world.
Looking ahead: Bridging the gap between data and insights
At the moment, the NASA Earth Copilot is available to NASA scientists and researchers to explore and test its capabilities. Any responsible deployment of AI technologies requires rigorous assessments to ensure the data and outputs cannot be misused. After a period of internal evaluations and testing, the NASA IMPACT team will explore the integration of this capability into the VEDA platform.
This collaboration exemplifies how technology can empower people, drive innovation and create positive change. Solutions like this will be essential in ensuring the benefits of data are shared widely, enabling more people to engage with, analyze and act upon information that shapes our world.
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Every day, NASA’s satellites orbit Earth, capturing a wealth of information that helps us understand our planet. From monitoring wildfires to tracking climate change, this vast trove of Earth Science data has the potential to drive scientific discoveries, inform policy decisions and support industries like agriculture, urban planning and disaster response. But navigating the over…
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Microsoft introduces new adapted AI models for industry
Across every industry, AI is creating a fundamental shift in what’s possible, enabling new use cases and driving business outcomes. While organizations around the world recognize the value and potential of AI, for AI to be truly effective it must be tailored to specific industry needs.
Today, we’re announcing adapted AI models, expanding our industry capabilities and enabling organizations to address their unique needs more accurately and effectively. In collaboration with industry partner experts like Bayer, Cerence, Rockwell Automation, Saifr, Siemens Digital Industries Software, Sight Machine and more, we’re making these fine-tuned models, pre-trained using industry-specific data, available to address customers’ top use cases.
Underpinning these adapted AI models is the Microsoft Cloud, our platform for industry innovation. By integrating the Microsoft Cloud with our industry-specific capabilities and a robust ecosystem of partners, we provide a secure approach to advancing innovation across industries. This collaboration allows us to create extensive scenarios for customers globally, with embedded AI capabilities — from industry data solutions in Microsoft Fabric to AI agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio to AI models in Azure AI Studio — that enable industries to realize their full potential.
Introducing adapted AI models for industry
We’re pleased to introduce these new partner-enabled models from leading organizations that are leveraging the power of Microsoft’s Phi family of small language models (SLMs). These models will be available through the Azure AI model catalog, where customers can access a wide range of AI models to build custom AI solutions in Azure AI Studio, or directly from our partners. The models available in the Azure AI model catalog can also be used to configure agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio, a platform that allows customers to create, customize and deploy AI-powered agents, which can be applied to an industry’s top use cases to address its most pressing needs.
- Bayer, a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of healthcare and agriculture, will make E.L.Y. Crop Protection available in the Azure AI model catalog. A specialized SLM, it is designed to enhance crop protection sustainable use, application, compliance and knowledge within the agriculture sector. Built on Bayer’s agricultural intelligence, and trained on thousands of real-world questions on Bayer crop protection labels, the model provides ag entities, their partners and developers a valuable tool to tailor solutions for specific food and agricultural needs. The model stands out due to its commitment to responsible AI standards, scalability to farm operations of all types and sizes and customization capabilities that allow organizations to adapt the model to regional and crop-specific requirements.
- Cerence, which creates intuitive, seamless and AI-powered user experiences for the world’s leading automakers, is enhancing its in-vehicle digital assistant technology with fine-tuned SLMs within the vehicle’s hardware. CaLLM
Edge, an automotive-specific, embedded SLM, will be available in the Azure AI model catalog. It can be used for in-car controls, such as adjusting air conditioning systems, and scenarios that involve limited or no cloud connectivity, enabling drivers to access the rich, responsive experiences they’ve come to expect from cloud-based large language models (LLMs), no matter where they are.
- Rockwell Automation, a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation, will provide industrial AI expertise via the Azure AI model catalog. The FT Optix Food & Beverage model brings the benefits of industry-specific capabilities to frontline workers in manufacturing, supporting asset troubleshooting in the food and beverage domain. The model provides timely recommendations, explanations and knowledge about specific manufacturing processes, machines and inputs to factory floor workers and engineers.
- Saifr, a RegTech within Fidelity Investments’ innovation incubator, Fidelity Labs, will introduce four new models in the Azure AI model catalog, empowering financial institutions to better manage regulatory compliance of broker-dealer communications and investment adviser advertising. The models can highlight potential regulatory compliance risks in text (Retail Marketing Compliance model) and images (Image Detection model); explain why something was flagged (Risk Interpretation model); and suggest alternative language that might be more compliant (Language Suggestion model). Together, these models can enhance regulatory compliance by acting as an extra set of review eyes and boost efficiency by speeding up review turnarounds and time to market.
- Siemens Digital Industries Software, which helps organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform, is introducing a new copilot for NX X software, which leverages an adapted AI model that enables users to ask natural language questions, access detailed technical insights and streamline complex design tasks for faster and smarter product development. The copilot will provide CAD designers with AI-driven recommendations and best practices to optimize the design process within the NX X experience, helping engineers implement best practices faster to ensure expected quality from design to production. The NX X copilot will be available in the Azure Marketplace and other channels.
- Sight Machine, a leader in data-driven manufacturing and industrial AI, will release Factory Namespace Manager to the Azure AI model catalog. The model analyzes existing factory data, learns the patterns and rules behind the naming conventions and then automatically translates these data field names into standardized corporate formats. This translation makes the universe of plant data in the manufacturing enterprise AI-ready, enabling manufacturers to optimize production and energy use in plants, balance production with supply chain logistics and demand and integrate factory data with enterprise data systems for end-to-end optimization. The bottling company Swire Coca-Cola USA plans to use Factory Namespace Manager to efficiently map its extensive PLC and plant floor data into its corporate data namespace.
We also encourage innovation in the open-source ecosystem and are offering five open-source Hugging Face models that are fine-tuned for summarization and sentiment analysis of financial data.

Additionally, last month we announced new healthcare AI models in Azure AI Studio. These state-of-the-art multimodal medical imaging foundation models, created in partnership with organizations like Providence and Paige.ai, empower healthcare organizations to integrate and analyze a variety of data types, leveraging intelligence in modalities other than text in specialties like ophthalmology, pathology, radiology and cardiology.
Accelerating transformation with industry agents
Microsoft also offers AI agents that are purpose-built for industry scenarios. Available in Copilot Studio, these agents can be configured to support organizations’ industry-specific needs. For example, retailers can use the Store Operations Agent to support retail store associates and the Personalized Shopping Agent to enhance customers’ shopping experiences. Manufacturers can use the Factory Operations Agent to enhance production efficiency and reduce downtime by enabling engineers and frontline workers to quickly identify and troubleshoot issues.
All this AI innovation wouldn’t be possible without a solid data estate, because AI is only as good as the data it’s built upon. By ensuring data is accurate, accessible and well integrated, organizations can unlock deeper insights and drive more effective decision-making with AI. Microsoft Fabric, a data platform built for the era of AI, helps unify disparate data sources and prepares data for advanced analytics and AI modeling. It offers industry data solutions that address each organization’s unique needs and allows them to discover, deploy and do more with AI.
At the forefront of addressing industry needs securely
At the core of our AI strategy is a commitment to trustworthy AI. This commitment encompasses safety, security and privacy, ensuring that AI solutions are built with the highest standards of integrity and responsibility. Trustworthy AI is foundational to everything we do, from how we work with customers to the capabilities we build into our products.
At Microsoft, we combine industry AI experience, insights and capabilities with a deep understanding of customer challenges and objectives. Along with a trusted ecosystem of experienced partners, we unlock the full potential of AI for each industry and business. Our goal is not just to offer or implement AI tools but to help customers succeed by embedding AI into the very core of what each industry does.
AI transformation is here, and Microsoft is at the forefront of this revolution. As we continue to navigate this new era of innovation, it’s clear that AI will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of business across all industries and that Microsoft will continue to lead the way. To learn more about how customers in a variety of industries are transforming with AI, visit How real-world businesses are transforming with AI.
The post Microsoft introduces new adapted AI models for industry appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Across every industry, AI is creating a fundamental shift in what’s possible, enabling new use cases and driving business outcomes. While organizations around the world recognize the value and potential of AI, for AI to be truly effective it must be tailored to specific industry needs. Today, we’re announcing adapted AI models, expanding our industry…
The post Microsoft introduces new adapted AI models for industry appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More
IDC’s 2024 AI opportunity study: Top five AI trends to watch
In 2024, generative AI emerged as a key driver for business outcomes across every industry. Already this new generation of AI is having an incredible impact on our world — yet companies and industries are just scratching the surface of what’s possible as they continue to develop new use cases across every role and function.
To help guide organizations on their AI transformation journey, Microsoft recently commissioned a new study through IDC, The Business Opportunity of AI. IDC’s findings show that when organizations truly commit to and invest in AI, the return on investment (ROI) potential grows significantly.
According to IDC, the study’s findings reflect a tipping point as AI gains momentum across industries. As companies worldwide go deeper with AI, Microsoft customers continue to deploy innovative new solutions and discover how tools like Copilot can transform their day-to-day work. In telecommunications, Lumen Technologies estimates Copilot is saving sellers an average of four hours a week, equating to $50 million annually. In healthcare, Chi Mei Medical Center doctors now spend 15 minutes instead of an hour writing medical reports, and nurses can document patient information in under five minutes. Pharmacists are now able to double the number of patients they see per day. In retail, AI models help Coles predict the flow of 20,000 stock-keeping units to 850 stores with remarkable accuracy, generating 1.6 billion predictions daily.
IDC’s 2024 top 5 trends for AI
IDC’s findings align with what Microsoft is seeing as we work with companies across industries to deploy AI. We’ve highlighted more than 200 of our top AI customer stories to show a sampling of how AI is already driving impact today. Below is a look at the top trends we’re seeing in IDC’s study and the impact of those trends on organizations working with AI today.
#1 Enhanced productivity has become table stakes. Employee productivity is the No. 1 business outcome that companies are trying to achieve with AI. The study shows that 92% of AI users surveyed are using AI for productivity, and 43% say productivity use cases have provided the greatest ROI. While productivity is a top goal, generative AI use cases that are close behind include customer engagement, topline growth, cost management and product or service innovation — and nearly half of the companies surveyed expect AI to have a high degree of impact across all those areas over the next 24 months.
Customer snapshot:
At the global marketing and advertising agency dentsu, employees are already saving 15 to 30 minutes a day using Copilot for tasks such as summarizing chats, generating presentations and building executive summaries.
“Copilot has transformed the way we deliver creative concepts to our clients, enabling real-time collaboration. Agility, security and uniqueness are crucial, but our goal is to lead this transformation company-wide, from top to bottom.”
— Takuya Kodama, Business Strategy Manager at dentsu
#2 Companies are gravitating to more advanced AI solutions. In the next 24 months, more companies expect to build custom AI solutions tailored directly to industry needs and business processes, including custom copilots and AI agents. This shows a growing maturity in AI fluency as companies realize the value of out-of-the-box use cases and expand to more advanced scenarios.
Customer snapshot:
Siemens has developed the Siemens Industrial Copilot, which has eased the challenges caused by increasing complexity and labor shortages for dozens of customers in different industries.
“In full appreciation of GenAI’s transformational potential, it’s important to remember that production does not have an ‘undo’ button. It takes diligence and effort to mature AI to industrial-grade quality. The Siemens Industrial Copilot for Engineering significantly eases our customers’ workload and addresses the pressing challenges of skill shortages and increasing complexity in industrial automation. This AI-powered solution is a game-changer for our industry with over 50 customers already using it to boost efficiency and tackle labor shortages.”
— Boris Scharinger, AI Strategist at Siemens Digital Industries
#3 Generative AI adoption and value is growing across industries. Even though it is relatively new to the market, generative AI adoption is rapidly expanding — 75% of respondents report current usage up from 55% in 2023. The ROI of generative AI is highest in Financial Services, followed by Media & Telco, Mobility, Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods, Energy, Manufacturing, Healthcare and Education. Overall, generative AI is generating higher ROI across industries.
Customer snapshot:
Providence has leveraged AI to extend and enhance patient care, streamline processes and workflows and improve the effectiveness of caregivers.
“Whether we’re partnering with organizations on the leading edge of this technology — like Microsoft — and building bespoke solutions through Azure OpenAI Service, advancing clinical research to help cancer patients receive personalized and precise treatments faster, or ‘hitting the easy button’ and adopting established technologies like Microsoft 365 Copilot or DAX Copilot, we have successfully stayed on the forefront of this tech revolution. For example, physicians who use DAX Copilot save an average of 5.33 minutes per visit, and 80% of physicians have reported lower cognitive burden after using DAX Copilot.”
— Sarah Vaezy, EVP, Chief Strategy and Digital Officer at Providence
#4 AI leaders are seeing greater returns and accelerated innovation. While companies using generative AI are averaging $3.7x ROI, the top leaders using generative AI are realizing significantly higher returns, with an average ROI of $10.3. In addition to the enhanced business value, leaders are also on an accelerated path to build and implement new solutions — 29% of leaders implement AI in less than 3 months versus 6% of companies in the laggard category.
Customer snapshot:
Södra is an international forest industry group that processes forest products from 52,000 owners into renewable, climate-smart products for international market. Every day Södra collects and interprets climate impact data to make thousands of decisions for every part of the value chain.
“With innovative AI technology from Microsoft, our business experts and data scientists have been able to help make us more sustainable while also improving revenue significantly.”
— Cristian Brolin, Chief Digital Officer at Södra
#5 Looking ahead: Skilling remains a top challenge. Thirty percent of respondents indicated a lack of specialized AI skills in-house, and 26 percent say they lack employees with the skills needed to learn and work with AI. This dovetails with findings from the Microsoft and LinkedIn 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, which found that 55 percent of business leaders are concerned about having enough skilled talent to fill roles.
That is why over the past year we have helped train and certify over 14 million people in more than 200 countries in digital skills. And we are committed to working in partnership with governments, educational institutions, industry and civil society to help millions more learn to use AI.
Customer snapshot:
The University of South Florida (USF) is partnering with Microsoft to streamline processes and enhance innovation for all aspects of university operations with AI.
“We’re giving students a leg up to do amazing things with AI as part of tomorrow’s workforce. Our focus on generative AI not only drives operational efficiency but also empowers our community to unlock new levels of creativity and impact, further positioning USF as a leader in AI adoption, which includes being among the first universities in the nation to form a college dedicated to AI, cybersecurity and computing.”
— Sidney Fernandes, CIO & VP of Digital Experiences at University of South Florida
AI’s growing economic impact
While companies today are largely implementing out-of-the-box generative AI solutions and seeing significant ROI, more than half of those surveyed expect to build custom industry and line-of-business applications in the next 24 months — demonstrating that today’s ROI is quickly becoming tomorrow’s competitive edge.
“We are at an inflection point of autonomous agent development and are beginning an evolution from using just off-the-shelf assistants and copilots that support knowledge discovery and content generation to custom AI agents to execute complex, multistep workflows across a digital world,” says Ritu Jyoti, GVP/GM, AI and Data Research at IDC. “With responsible technology usage and workplace transformation, IDC predicts that business spending to adopt AI will have a cumulative global economic impact of $19.9 trillion through 2030 and drive 3.5% of global GDP in 2030.”
Key findings from IDC’s The Business Opportunity of AI study include:
- Generative AI usage jumped from 55% in 2023 to 75% in 2024.
- For every $1 a company invests in generative AI, the ROI is $3.7x.
- The top leaders using generative AI are realizing an ROI of $10.3.
- On average, AI deployments are taking less than 8 months and organizations are realizing value within 13 months.
- Within 24 months, most organizations plan to expand beyond pre-built AI solutions to advanced AI workloads that are customized or custom-built.
- The ROI of generative AI is highest in Financial Services, followed by Media & Telco, Mobility, Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods, Energy, Manufacturing, Healthcare and Education.
- 43% say productivity use cases have provided the greatest ROI.
- The primary way that organizations are monetizing AI today is through productivity use cases. In the next 24 months, a greater focus will be placed on functional and industry use cases.
- The top barrier when implementing AI is the lack of both technical and day-to-day AI skills.
Learn how to fuel your AI journey
IDC’s study, which included more than 4,000 business leaders and AI decision-makers around the world, also identifies the top barriers organizations face when implementing AI. As businesses integrate new solutions, they navigate important considerations such as data privacy, responsible use and the need for investment in both technology and skills.
No matter where you are in your cloud and AI transformation journey, Microsoft can help. To learn more about how customers across industries are shaping their AI transformation with Microsoft, please visit Microsoft’s AI in Action page. For more on how to get started in your AI transformation journey, visit Microsoft AI.
IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, 2024 Business Opportunity of AI, IDC# US52699124, November 2024
The post IDC’s 2024 AI opportunity study: Top five AI trends to watch appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
In 2024, generative AI emerged as a key driver for business outcomes across every industry. Already this new generation of AI is having an incredible impact on our world — yet companies and industries are just scratching the surface of what’s possible as they continue to develop new use cases across every role and function….
The post IDC’s 2024 AI opportunity study: Top five AI trends to watch appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More
How real-world businesses are transforming with AI
One of the highlights of my career has always been connecting with customers and partners across industries to learn how they are using technology to drive their businesses forward. In the past 30 years, we’ve seen four major platform shifts, from client server to internet and the web to mobile and cloud to now—the next major platform shift to AI.
As today’s platform shift to AI continues to gain momentum, Microsoft is working to understand just how organizations can drive lasting business value. We recently commissioned a study with IDC, The Business Opportunity of AI, to uncover new insights around business value and help guide organizations on their journey of AI transformation. The study found that for every $1 organizations invest in generative AI, they’re realizing an average of $3.70 in return—and uncovered insights about the future potential of AI to reshape business processes and drive change across industries.
Today, more than 85% of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft AI solutions to shape their future. In working with organizations large and small, across every industry and geography, we’ve seen that most transformation initiatives are designed to achieve one of four business outcomes:
- Enriching employee experiences: Using AI to streamline or automate repetitive, mundane tasks can allow your employees to dive into more complex, creative and ultimately more valuable work.
- Reinventing customer engagement: AI can create more personalized, tailored customer experiences, delighting your target audiences while lightening the load for employees.
- Reshaping business processes: Virtually any business process can be reimagined with AI, from marketing to supply chain operations to finance, and AI is even allowing organizations to go beyond process optimization and discover exciting new growth opportunities.
- Bending the curve on innovation: AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development, reducing the time to market and allowing companies to differentiate in an often crowded field.
In this blog, we’ve collected more than 200 of our favorite real-life examples of how organizations are embracing Microsoft’s proven AI capabilities to drive impact and shape today’s platform shift to AI. We hope you find an example or two that can inspire your own transformation journey.
Enriching employee experiences
Generative AI is truly transforming employee productivity and wellbeing. Our customers tell us that by automating repetitive, mundane tasks, employees are freed up to dive into more complex and creative work. This shift not only makes the work environment more stimulating but also boosts job satisfaction. It sparks innovation, provides actionable insights for better decision-making and supports personalized training and development opportunities, all contributing to a better work-life balance. Customers around the world have reported significant improvements in employee productivity with these AI solutions:
- Access Holdings Plc adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrating generative AI into daily tools and, as a result, writing code now takes two hours instead of eight, chatbots launch in 10 days instead of three months and presentations are prepared in 45 minutes instead of six hours.
- Adobe is connecting Adobe Experience Cloud workflows and insights with Microsoft 365 Copilot to deliver generative-AI powered capabilities that enable marketers to increase collaboration, efficiency and creativity.
- Amadeus empowers its teams to focus their time and skills on value-added tasks with Microsoft 365 Copilot, by summarizing email threads, chat or transcripts and summing up information from diverse sources.
- ANZ has invested in Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot and Copilot in Microsoft Edge to boost productivity and innovation across its workforce.
- Asahi Europe & International (AEI) has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, saving employees potentially 15% of time previously spent on administrative tasks.
- AXA developed AXA Secure GPT, a platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service that empowers employees to leverage the power of generative AI while targeting the highest level of data safety and responsible use of the tool.
- Axon Enterprise developed a new AI tool with Azure OpenAI Service called Draft One, resulting in an 82% decrease in time spent on reports, which freed up officers to engage more with their community.
- Aztec Group enhanced productivity and client experience by trialing Microsoft 365 Copilot with 300 staff, uncovering “unlimited” use cases and plans for a wider rollout.
- Bader Sultan & Bros. Co. W.L.L implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance employee productivity and speed up customer response times.
- Bancolombia is using GitHub Copilot to empower its technical team, achieving a 30% increase in code generation, boosting automated application changes to an average of 18,000 per year, with a rate of 42 productive daily deployments.
- BaptistCare Community Services is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to save employees time as they navigate workforce shortage challenges, allowing them to focus more on the people they care for.
- Barnsley Council was recognized as “Double Council of the Year in 2023” for its implementation of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which modernized operations and reduced administrative tasks, leading to improved job satisfaction and increased creativity.
- BlackRock purchased more than 24,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses spanning all employees, functions and locations, helping improve the Copilot experience, including codeveloping new features and functions.
- British Heart Foundation is testing Microsoft 365 Copilot and in its initial test, users estimate that Microsoft 365 Copilot could save them up to 30 minutes per day.
- Buckinghamshire Council deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot with staff reporting productivity improvements, quality enhancements and time savings, which are enabling the different teams to do more with less.
- Campari Group adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to help employees integrate it into their workflow, resulting in time savings of about two hours a week from the support of routine activities such as email management, meeting preparation, content creation and skill acquisition.
- Capita is using GitHub Copilot for productivity improvements as well as improvements in developer satisfaction, recruitment and retention.
- CDW used Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve work quality for 88% of users, enabling 77% to complete tasks faster and increasing productivity for 85% of users.
- Chi Mei Medical Center is lightening workloads for doctors, nurses and pharmacists with a generative AI assistant built on Azure OpenAI Service.
- E.ON is focused on Germany’s energy transition, leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to manage the complex grid in real-time, increasing productivity and efficiency for its workforce.
- Enerijisa Uretim has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meeting summaries, reformat documents and compile reports, enabling employees to concentrate on more strategic and fulfilling activities instead of spending six hours in meetings.
- EPAM is deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot to consolidate information and generate content and documents.
- Farm Credit Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot, which resulted in time savings on routine tasks for 78% of users, with 30% saving 30 to 60 minutes per week and 35% saving over an hour per week, allowing employees to focus on more value-added tasks.
- Finastra used Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate tasks, enhance content creation, improve analytics and personalize customer interactions, with employees citing a 20% to 50% time savings.
- Four Agency Worldwide increased employee productivity using Microsoft 365 Copilot to generate ideas for creative work and support administrative-heavy processes, data analysis and report generation, allowing staff to focus on outreach and less time doing paperwork.
- Goodwill of Orange County developed an AI-powered app using Azure AI capabilities to help more people, including those with developmental, intellectual and physical disabilities, work in unfilled e-commerce positions.
- Honeywell employees are saving 92 minutes per week—that’s 74 hours a year! Disclaimer: Statistics are from an internal Honeywell survey of 5,000 employees where 611 employees responded.
- Insight employees using Copilot are seeing four hours of productivity gained per week from data summarization and content creation.
- Joos uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to grow its brand with worldwide collaboration by streamlining meetings, optimizing presentations and improving communications.
- Kantar is harnessing the power of Microsoft 365 Copilot by reducing costly, time-consuming IT processes and boosting productivity for employees.
- KPMG Australia is using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search and Microsoft Copilot 365 to perform advanced text analysis of dozens of client source documents to identify full or partial compliance, or noncompliance, in a fraction of the time required for manual assessments.
- LGT is launching Microsoft Copilot LGT to improve efficiency, showing users save an average of an hour a week even in the pilot phase.
- Lotte Hotels & Resorts has been creating a new work culture that allows employees to work more efficiently and focus on the nature of the work by adopting Microsoft Power Platform for automation.
- MAIRE is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate routine tasks, saving over 800 working hours per month, freeing up engineers and professionals for strategic activities while supporting MAIRE’s green energy transition by reducing their carbon footprint.
- McDonald’s China chose Microsoft Azure AI, GitHub Copilot and Azure AI Search to transform its operations, resulting in a significant increase in AI adoption, consumption and retention from 2,000 to 30,000 employee transactions monthly.
- McKnight Foundation adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot for all staff, saving time, increasing productivity and freeing space to focus on strategic priorities.
- Morula Health is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance productivity, streamline medical writing tasks and ensure data security, ultimately improving efficiency and client satisfaction.
- Motor Oil Group is achieving remarkable efficiency gains by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot into its workflows, with staff spending minutes on tasks that used to take weeks.
- Nagel-Group uses Azure OpenAI Service to help employees quickly access information which saves time, creates efficiency and transparency, and leads to higher-quality answers overall.
- National Australia Bank is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot for daily productivity and data analysis and insights and Microsoft Copilot for Security to quickly analyze millions of security event logs and allow engineers to focus on more important areas.
- NFL Players Association integrated Azure AI Services and Azure App Service into their video review process, reducing review time by up to 73%, significantly increasing efficiency and enhancing player safety through consistent rule enforcement.
- O2 Czech Republic boosts productivity and streamlines meetings with Microsoft 365 Copilot, revolutionizing how information is shared and making automation a part of daily work.
- Onepoint developed a secure conversational agent based on Azure OpenAI, which delivers productivity gains of between 10% and 15% across all business lines.
- Orange Group has over 40 use cases with Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot across business functions to support employees in their day-to-day tasks, enabling them to concentrate on higher value-added activities.
- Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve staff report productivity by saving one to two hours a week, or simple formatting tasks down to a matter of seconds, enabling more resources to deliver frontline services.
- PA Consulting transformed its sales operations with Microsoft 365 Copilot, so its people can invest more time on the activities that have the biggest impact for clients and maximize the strategic value they provide.
- Petrobras used Azure OpenAI Service to create ChatPetrobras, which is streamlining workflows, reducing manual tasks and summarizing reports for its 110,000 employees.
- Petrochemical Industries Company automates work processes to save time with Microsoft 365 Copilot from weeks to days, hours to seconds.
- PKSHA Technology is optimizing their time on critical work by increasing efficiency in meeting preparations, data analytics and ideation with the help of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
- Providence has collaborated with Nuance and Microsoft to accelerate development and adoption of generative AI-powered applications, helping improve care quality and access and reduce physician’s administrative workloads.
- RTI International adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to gain productivity wherever possible, allowing staff to focus on their areas of expertise, delivering even better science-backed solutions for clients.
- Sandvik Coromant is using Microsoft Copilot for Sales to drive efficiency and accuracy, shaving at least one minute off each transaction, allowing sellers and account managers to focus their expertise on responding to customers’ needs with analysis, creativity and adaptability.
- Sasfin Bank built a solution on Microsoft Azure that centralized 20,000 documents to analyze contract clauses and provide real-time snapshots, moving guesswork into data-driven decision-making.
- Scottish Water implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot, reducing mundane tasks to a minimum and thus freeing up time for employees to work on the more meaningful tasks.
- Shriners Children’s developed an AI platform allowing clinicians to easily and securely navigate patient data in a singular location, enhancing patient care and improving the efficiency of their healthcare services.
- Siemens is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to improve efficiency, cut downtime and address labor shortages.
- Softchoice employees are experiencing firsthand how Microsoft 365 Copilot can transform daily workflows, realizing productivity gains of 97% reduction in time spent summarizing technical meetings and up to 70% less time spent on content creation.
- Syensqo utilized Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to develop a custom AI chatbot in three months, which improved their internal data management, decision-making and overall efficiency.
- Teladoc Health uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to revolutionize its telehealth operations, automating routine tasks, boosting efficiency and increasing productivity.
- Telstra developed two cutting-edge generative AI tools based on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service: 90% of employees are using the One Sentence Summary tool, which resulted in 20% less follow-up customer contact, and 84% of customer service agents are using the Ask Telstra solution.
- Topsoe achieved 85% AI adoption among office employees in seven months, significantly enhancing productivity and business processes.
- Torfaen County Borough Council utilized Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline back-office processes, resulting in significant time savings and enhanced productivity for both business and children’s services teams, with further rollouts planned.
- Trace3 leveraged Microsoft Copilot to streamline and enhance processes across the business and with clients, such as reducing the time it takes HR recruiting managers to respond to applicants within a couple of days instead of several weeks.
- Unilever is reinventing their marketing process with Copilot, saving time on briefing tasks, automatically pulling in relevant market data, content and insights to accelerate campaign launches.
- Uniper SE implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce time spent on manual and repetitive tasks and help workers focus on more pressing work, such as developing enhanced solutions to speed up the energy transition.
- Unum Group built a custom AI application to search 1.3 terabytes of data with 95% accuracy using Azure OpenAI Service.
- Virgin Atlantic adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot and is seeing real business benefits, including productivity improvements, enabling new ways of working.
- Visier built a generative AI assistant that leverages Azure AI and Azure OpenAI Services to deliver workforce analytics and actionable insights for more than 50,000 customers.
- Virtual Dental Care developed an AI application Smart Scan that leverages Microsoft Azure to reduce paperwork for mobile dental clinics in schools by 75% and frees dentists to devote more time to patient care.
- Zakladni Skola As Hlavkova adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and saw a 60% improvement in handling administrative documents, decreased lesson preparation from hours to a few minutes, increased inclusivity and enhanced communication with students and parents.
Reinventing customer engagement
We’ve seen great examples of how generative AI can automate content creation, ensuring there’s fresh and engaging materials ready to go. It personalizes customer experiences by crunching the numbers, boosting conversion rates. It makes operations smoother, helping teams launch campaigns faster. Plus, it drives innovation, crafting experiences that delight customers while lightening the load for staff. Embracing generative AI is key for organizations wanting to reinvent customer engagements, stay ahead of the game and drive both innovation and efficiency.
- Absa has adopted Microsoft Copilot to streamline various business processes, saving several hours on administrative tasks each day.
- Adobe leverages Microsoft Azure to streamline the customer experience, harnessing the power of the connected cloud services and creating a synergy that drives AI transformation across industries.
- Acentra Health developed Medscribe, a web application that uses Azure OpenAI Service to generate draft letters in a secure, HIPPA-compliant enclave that responds to customer appeals for healthcare services within 24 hours, reducing the time spent on each appeal letter by 50%.
- Alaska Airlines is using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Defender and GitHub to ensure its passengers have a seamless journey from ticket purchase to baggage pickup, and it has started leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to unlock more business value for its customer care and contact centers.
- Ally Financial is using Azure OpenAI Service to reduce manual tasks for its customer service associates, freeing up time for them to engage with customers.
- BMW Group optimizes the customer experience, connecting 13 million active users to their vehicles with the MyBMW app on Azure, which supports 450 million daily requests and 3.2TB of data processing.
- Boyner has tripled its e-commerce performance using Microsoft Azure, seeing a rise in customer satisfaction, engagement, conversion rate and revenue.
- Bradesco Bank integrated Microsoft Azure into its virtual assistant, BIA, resulting in reduced response time from days to hours, improving operational efficiency and client satisfaction.
- Capgemini Mexico integrated GitHub Copilot to support scalable AI implementations, which has led to improved customer experiences and increased efficiency.
- Capitec Bank uses Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling their AI-powered chatbot to assist customer service consultants in accessing product information more efficiently, saving significant time for employees each week.
- Cdiscount is leveraging GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service to enhance developer efficiency, optimize product sheet categorization and improve customer satisfaction.
- Cemex used Azure OpenAI Service to launch Technical Xpert, an AI tool used by sales agents to provide instant access to comprehensive product and customer solution information, significantly reducing search time by 80%.
- Chanel elevated their client experience and improved employee efficiency by leveraging Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service for real-time translations and quality monitoring.
- City of Burlington created two AI-powered solutions: MyFiles system using Microsoft Power Platform for building permits and CoBy, a 24/7 customer support assistant using Microsoft Copilot Studio.
- City of Madrid created an AI virtual assistant with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, offering tourists accurate, real-time information and personalized responses in 95-plus languages.
- Cognizant is making performance management more effective and meaningful with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning to help clients across industries envision, build and run innovative digital enterprises.
- Coles Group has leveraged Microsoft Azure to enhance its digital presence and improve customer engagement, rolling out new applications to its stores six times faster without disrupting workloads.
- Commercial Bank of Dubai used Microsoft Azure to upgrade its application infrastructure, improving transaction security and speed so individual customers can now open an account and start banking in about two minutes.
- Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has significantly improved productivity and customer satisfaction by integrating multiple Microsoft AI solutions, reducing task completion time from days to hours and achieving a 98% customer happiness rate.
- Elcome uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve the customer experience, reducing response times from 24 hours to eight hours.
- elunic developed shopfloor.GPT based on Azure OpenAI, leading to increased productivity for customers and saving 15 minutes per request.
- Estée Lauder Companies is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to create closer consumer connections and increase speed to market with local relevancy.
- First National Bank (FNB) is using Microsoft Copilot for Sales to help bankers create professional, thoughtful emails in 13 native South African languages, to enhance customer interactions, streamline communications and reinforce its commitment to innovation and customer service.
- Flora Food Group migrated to Microsoft Fabric to offer more detailed and timely insights to its customers, enhancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.
- Groupama deployed a virtual assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that delivers reliable, verified and verifiable information, and boasts an 80% success rate.
- International University of Applied Sciences (IU) adopted Azure OpenAI Service to revolutionize learning with a personalized study assistant that can interact with each student just like a human would.
- Investec is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to enhance the bank’s client relationships, estimating saving approximately 200 hours annually, ultimately boosting sales productivity and delivering a personalized, seamless customer experience.
- Linum is using Microsoft Azure to train their text-to-video models faster and more efficiently without losing performance or wasting resources.
- Lumen Technologies is redefining customer success and sales processes through the strategic use of Microsoft 365 Copilot, enhancing productivity, sales, and customer service in the global communications sector.
- McKinsey & Companyis creating an agent to reduce the client onboarding process by reducing lead time by 90% and administrative work by 30%.
- Meesho leveraged Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot to enhance customer service and software development, resulting in a 25% increase in customer satisfaction scores and 40% more traffic on customer service queries.
- Milpark Education integrated Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio and in just four months, improved efficiency and accuracy of student support, decreasing the average resolution time by 50% and escalations by more than 30%.
- NC Fusion chose a comprehensive Microsoft solution to make marketing engagement activities easier and accurately target the best audience segments.
- Medgate, a telehealth subsidiary of Otto Group developed a medical Copilot powered by Azure OpenAI which summarizes consultations, supports triage and provides real-time translations.
- Pacific Gas & Electric built a chatbot using Microsoft Copilot Studio that saves $1.1 million annually on helpdesk support.
- Pockyt is using GitHub Copilot and anticipates a 500% increase in productivity in the medium to long term as they continue adapting AI and fine-tuning their software development life cycle.
- South Australia Department for Education launched an AI-powered educational chatbot to help safeguard students from harmful content while introducing responsible AI to the classrooms.
- Sync Labs is using Microsoft Azure to create AI-driven solutions that have led to a remarkable 30x increase in revenue and a 100x expansion of their customer base.
- Syndigo is using Azure to accelerate digital commerce for its customers by more than 40% and expand its customer base.
- Telkomsel created a virtual assistant with Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in a leap in customer self-service interactions from 19% to 45%, and call volume dropped from 8,000 calls to 1,000 calls a day.
- Torrens University chose to use Azure OpenAI to uplift its online learning experience, saving 20,000 hours and $2.4 million in time and resources.
- Trusting Social integrated Microsoft Azure services to launch AI-driven agents that are changing how banks function and transforming their customer’s banking experience.
- University of California, Berkeley used Azure OpenAI Service to deploy a custom AI chatbot that supports student learning and helps students with complex coursework.
- University of Sydney created a self-serve AI platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service, to enable faculty to build custom chatbots for enhancing student onboarding, feedback, career simulation and more.
- Van Lanschot Kempen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce the time needed for daily tasks, freeing up time to invest in that crucial personal connection.
- Virgin Money built an award-winning virtual assistant using Copilot Studio to help build customers’ confidence in their digital products and services.
- VOCALLS automates over 50 million interactions per year, resulting in a 78% reduction in average handling time aside from a 120% increase in answered calls.
- Vodafone Group is leveraging Microsoft’s AI solutions, including Azure AI Studio, OpenAI Service, Copilot and AI Search, to achieve a 70% resolution rate for customer inquiries through digital channels and reduce call times by at least one minute.
- Walmart is using Azure OpenAI Service to deliver a helpful and intuitive browsing experience for customers designed to serve up a curated list of the personalized items a shopper is looking for.
- Weights & Biases created a platform which runs on Microsoft Azure that allows developers to keep records, log successes and failures and automate manual tasks.
- World2Meet is providing better customer service and operations with a new virtual assistant powered by Microsoft Azure.
- Xavier College is modernizing its student information systems on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure to unlock powerful insights, fostering innovation and data-driven decision making.
- Zavarovalnica Triglav implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure OpenAI Service to streamline its operations with automated responses and smart rerouting of customer enquiries.
Reshaping business process
Transforming operations is another way generative AI is encouraging innovation and improving efficiency across various business functions. In marketing, it can create personalized content to truly engage different audiences. For supply chain management, it can predict market trends so companies can optimize their inventory levels. Human resources departments can speed up the hiring process, while financial services can use it for fraud detection and risk assessments. With generative AI, companies are not just refining their current processes, they’re also discovering exciting new growth opportunities.
- Accelleron used Microsoft Power Platform to support numerous business applications and simplify processes for service agents and employees, resulting in the onboard of new agents in 30 minutes, compared to two days for other solutions.
- Accenture developed an AI-powered financial advisor that leverages RISE with SAP on Microsoft Azure to enhance their infrastructure and integrate financial data.
- Atomicwork leverages Azure OpenAI to bring together three power capabilities: a conversational assistant, a modern service management system and a workflow automation platform.
- Blink Ops fully embraced generative AI to build the world’s first Security Automation Copilot with more than 8,000 automated workflows to help any Security/IT task through prompts.
- Chalhoub Group is using Microsoft Fabric to modernize its data analytics and streamline its data sources into one platform, increasing agility, enhancing analytics and accelerating processes.
- Cineplex is developing innovative automation solutions for finance, guest services, and other departments, saving the company over 30,000 hours a year in manual processing time.
- ClearBank moved its services to Microsoft Azure to gain scalability and efficiency, pushing out 183% more monthly system releases, gaining both scalability and efficiency.
- Danske Statsbaner increases productivity up to 30% with help from Microsoft AI solutions.
- Eastman implemented Microsoft Copilot for Security, realizing the benefits of accelerated upskilling, step-by-step guidance for response and faster threat remediation.
- Fast Shop migrated to Microsoft Azure, creating a self-service culture of access to data, eliminating delays, reducing costs and increasing leadership satisfaction with data while providing more agility in reporting.
- Florida Crystals adopted a value-added solution across Microsoft products including Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce telecom expenses and automate industrial process controls.
- GHD is reinventing the RFP process in construction and engineering with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
- GovDash is a SaaS platform that leverages artificial intelligence to streamline the entire business development lifecycle for government contracting companies using Azure OpenAI.
- Grupo Bimbo is deploying Microsoft’s industrial AI technologies to modernize its manufacturing processes, optimizing production and reducing downtime, driving significant cost savings and empowering global innovation.
- Insight Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline business operations, realizing a 93% productivity gains in functions including sales, finance and human resources.
- Intesa Sanpaolo Group enhanced its cybersecurity with AI-enabled Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Copilot for Security, resulting in faster threat detection, increased productivity and reduced storage costs.
- Kaya deployed a custom implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power BI to modernize its supply chain, leading to enhanced visibility, improved planning and streamlined inter-department operations.
- Lionbridge Technologies, LLC is using Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI Service to accelerate its delivery times and improve quality, reducing project turnaround times by up to 30%.
- LTIMindtree integrated Microsoft Copilot for Security, offering automated incident response, integrated threat intelligence and advanced threat analysis.
- Mania de Churrasco used Microsoft Azure, Power Platform and Microsoft 365 to achieve high efficiency, security and scalability in its operations, in addition to improving its data intelligence, which indirectly participated in a 20% increase in sales year on year.
- National Bank of Greece built an Azure-powered Document AI solution to transform its document processing, improving the bank’s accuracy to 90%.
- Nest Bank has revolutionized its operations by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in doubled sales and increased daily transactions from 60,000 to 80,000, showcasing the transformative impact of generative AI in the financial sector.
- Network Rail modernized their data analytics solution with Microsoft Azure, helping engineers understand data 50% faster than before and improve efficiency, passenger experiences and safety—all while saving costs.
- Nsure developed an AI-powered agent that uses Copilot Studio and Power Automate to reduce manual processing time by 60% while also reducing associated costs by 50%.
- Oncoclínicas implemented Microsoft Azure to transform its entire data ecosystem with a web portal and mobile application that performs all image processing and storage.
- Pacifico Seguros has adopted Microsoft Copilot for Security to optimize its security operations and anticipate and neutralize threats more efficiently and effectively.
- Parexel adopted Azure Databricks and Microsoft Power BI, achieving an 85% reduction in data engineering tooling costs, a 30% increase in staff efficiency and a 70% reduction in time to market for data product delivery.
- Paysafe used Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meetings, information management, and document creation, addressing language barriers, eliminating time-consuming tasks, and boosting creativity along the way.
- Planted is integrating Azure OpenAI to manage everyday tasks more efficiently and facilitate the search for information for innovative process development.
- Presidio realized dramatic productivity gains saving 1,200 hours per month on average for the employees using Microsoft 365 Copilot and created 70 new business opportunities.
- Qatar Charity used Copilot Studio to increase its call center efficiency, reducing average handle time by 30%, increasing customer satisfaction by 25% and achieving a 40% reduction in IT maintenance costs.
- Saphyre uses Microsoft Azure and AI to provide an intelligent cloud-based solution that automates and streamlines financial trading workflows around client and counterparty life cycle management, reducing manual efforts by 75%.
- Swiss International Air Lines migrated and modernized with Microsoft Azure, achieving up to 30% cost savings, a remarkable boost in platform stability along with enhanced security visibility.
- ZEISS Group uses Microsoft Fabric to create a secure and trusted data supply chain that can be shared effortlessly across a range of business units.
- ZF Group builds manufacturing efficiency with over 25,000 apps and 37,000 unique active users on Power Platform.
Bending the curve on innovation
Generative AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development. It’s helping companies come up with new ideas, design prototypes, and iterate quickly, cutting down the time it takes to get to market. In the automotive industry, it’s designing more efficient vehicles, while in pharmaceuticals, it’s crafting new drug molecules, slashing years off R&D times. In education, it transforms how students learn and achieve their goals. Here are more examples of how companies are embracing generative AI to shape the future of innovation.
- Air India has incorporated Microsoft 365 Copilot into multiple departments, unlocking a new realm of operational insights that not only provide critical data on flight punctuality and operational hurdles but also empower proactive, collaborative decision making.
- Agnostic Intelligencedeployed Azure OpenAI Service to eliminate time-consuming tasks, saving users up to 80% of their time and enabling IT managers to focus on innovation and quality assurance.
- Albert Heijn is using Azure OpenAI for everything from customer personalization to demand forecast and food waste projects, making it easier for its customers to change their lifestyle.
- Amgen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to boost productivity and has the potential to speed up drug development and support advancements in their business processes.
- APEC leverages Microsoft Azure and deep neural network algorithms to develop an app that enables healthcare providers to capture retinal images, increasing the accuracy to identify Retinopathy of Prematurity (RoP) to 90%.
- ASOS is using Azure AI Studio to help customers discover new looks with genuine shopping insights, personalized conversations, naturalism and even humor to enliven the shopping journey.
- Auburn University is incorporating Microsoft Copilot to promote AI literacy, accessibility, and collaboration, with the aim to expand educational and economic opportunities for its entire academic community with AI-centric tools.
- B3 launched an AI assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that aids 10,000 users a day to answer Brazilians’ questions about how to start investing.
- Basecamp Research aims to build the world’s largest database of national biodiversity and apply AI and machine learning to advance bioscience.
- Bayer is using Microsoft Copilot to contribute to feeding a growing global population and helping people lead healthier, disease-free lives.
- Brembo leveraged Azure OpenAI to develop ALCHEMIX, a solution to generate innovative compounds for its brake pads, drastically reducing the development time of new compounds from days to mere minutes.
- Canary Speech can now train new vocal models in as little as two months and handle millions of transactions per month with Microsoft Azure.
- CapitaLand simplified internal processes, increasing efficiency to more than 10,000 worker days saved per year and deployed Azure OpenAI Service to build the first AI hospitality chatbot for its lodging business.
- Cassidy is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance efficiency across various industries, supporting over 10,000 companies.
- Coca-Cola is implementing Azure OpenAI Service to develop innovative generative AI use cases across various business functions, including testing how Microsoft 365 Copilot could help improve workplace productivity.
- Denso is developing “human-like” robots using Azure OpenAI Service as the brain to help robots and humans work together through dialogue.
- eFishery is using Azure OpenAI for farmers to get the data and insights on fish and shrimp farming, including more precise feeding and water quality monitoring.
- EY developed an application that automatically matches and clears incoming payments in SAP, resulting in an increase from 30% to 80% in automatically cleared payments and 95% matched payments, with estimated annual time savings of 230,000 hours globally.
- FIDO is using Azure OpenAI Service to develop an AI tool that uses sound to pinpoint leaky pipes, saving precious drinking water.
- Georgia Tech is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance the electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, achieving rapid data classification and predictive modeling, highlighting the reliability of networked chargers over non-networked ones.
- GigXR developed a solution to create the intelligence for specific AI patients using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and other Azure services.
- GoTo Group is significantly enhancing productivity and code quality across its engineering teams by adopting GitHub Copilot, saving over seven hours per week and achieving a 30% code acceptance rate.
- GovTech used Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to create LaunchPad, sparking more than 400 ideas and 20 prototypes, laying the foundation for the government to harness the power of generative AI.
- H&R Block is using Azure AI Studio and Azure OpenAI Service to build a new solution that provides real-time, reliable tax filing assistance.
- Haut.AI provides skin care companies and retailers with customizable, AI-based skin diagnostic tools developed with the help of Microsoft AI.
- Helfie is building a solution that caters to healthcare providers who can arm their patients with an application to more quickly and accurately access the care they need.
- Hitachi will implement Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot to create innovative solutions for the energy, mobility and other industries.
- Icertis is providing AI-based tools that will recognize contract language and then build algorithms to automatically choose the right approach based on the content of the contract.
- ITOCHU is using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Studio to evolve its data analytics dashboard into a service that provides immediate recommendations by automatically creating evidence-based product proposals.
- IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU) is using the power of Azure OpenAI Service to develop Syntea, an AI avatar integrated into Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, making learning more personalized, autonomous and flexible.
- Khan Academy has partnered with Microsoft to bring time-saving and lesson-enhancing AI tools to millions of educators.
- Lufthansa Group developed an animated 3D avatar called Digital Hangar to help guide passengers from initial travel inspiration to flight booking through an exchange with an avatar in natural language.
- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is using Azure OpenAI Service to help accelerate digital innovation in power plants.
- Molslinjen has created an AI analytics toolbox that has reduced fuel emissions, improved customer satisfaction and brought in millions of additional revenue.
- Novo Nordisk recently published initial results with predictive AI models for advanced risk detection in cardiovascular diseases, including an algorithm that can predict patients’ cardiovascular risk better than the best clinical standards.
- Paige.AI is using AI and Microsoft Azure to accelerate cancer diagnoses with data from millions of images.
- Pets at Home created an agent to help its retail fraud detection team investigate suspicious transactions.
- Plan Heal is using Microsoft AI to create solutions that enable patients to monitor and report health metrics so care providers can better serve them.
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is testing a new battery material that was found in a matter of weeks, not years, as part of a collaboration with Microsoft.
- Rijksmuseum is harnessing the power of Copilot to make art accessible at scale by joining forces with Microsoft to improve and expand the art experience for blind and low-vision community members.
- Royal National Institute of Blind People is using Azure AI Services to develop an AI-based solution that quickly and accurately converts letters to braille, audio, and large print formats.
- Schneider Electric provides productivity-enhancing and energy efficiency solutions and is using a whole suite of AI tools to hasten its own innovation and that of its customers.
- SPAR ICS created an award-winning, AI-enabled demand forecasting system achieving 90% inventory prediction accuracy.
- Suzuki Motor Corporation is adopting Azure OpenAI Service for data security, driving company-wide use with five multipurpose apps.
- Tecnológico de Monterrey created a generative AI-powered ecosystem built on Azure OpenAI Service with the goal to personalize education based on the students’ needs, improve the learning process, boost teachers’ creativity and save time on tedious tasks.
- TomTom is using Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service to revolutionize the driver experience.
- Unilever is partnering with Microsoft to identify new digital capabilities to drive product innovation forward, from unlocking the secrets of our skin’s microbiome to reducing the carbon footprint of a multibillion-dollar business.
- Unity used Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to build Muse Chat, an AI assistant that can guide creators through common questions and help troubleshoot issues to make game development easier.
- University of South Florida is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to alleviate the burden of repetitive, time-consuming tasks so faculty and staff can spend this time creatively solving problems, conducting critical research, establishing stronger relationships with peers and students and using their expertise to forge new, innovative paths.
- Visma has developed new code with GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Azure DevOps and Microsoft Visual Studio as much as 50 percent faster, contributing to increased customer retention, faster time to market and increased revenue.
- Wallenius Wilhelmsen is implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot and using Microsoft Viva to drive sustainable adoption, streamlining processes, empowering better decision making and cultivating a culture of innovation and inclusion.
- Wipro is committed to delivering value to customers faster and improving the outcomes across the business by investing $1 billion in AI and training 200,000 employees on generative AI principles with Microsoft Copilot.
Read more:
- Get the study: Business Opportunity of AI | Microsoft
- Explore Microsoft AI solutions: Artificial Intelligence Solutions | Microsoft AI
- Assess your AI readiness: AI Readiness Wizard – Microsoft Adoption
- Build a strategic plan for AI: AI Strategy Roadmap | Microsoft AI
IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, 2024 Business Opportunity of AI, IDC# US52699124, November 2024
The post How real-world businesses are transforming with AI appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
One of the highlights of my career has always been connecting with customers and partners across industries to learn how they are using technology to drive their businesses forward. In the past 30 years, we’ve seen four major platform shifts, from client server to internet and the web to mobile and cloud to now—the next…
The post How real-world businesses are transforming with AI appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.Read More
Announcing the General Availability of Windows Server IoT 2025!
I am very excited to announce the General Availability of Windows Server IoT 2025! This release represents a pivotal achievement in our mission to deliver secure, innovative, and high-performance Windows Server IoT platform tailored to meet your needs. Windows Server IoT 2025 includes innovations in multiple areas including Advanced Multilayer Security, Hybrid Cloud Agility, and AI, Performance, & Scale. For more information, see Windows Server IoT documentation.
ADVANCED MULTILAYER SECURITY
In an era where cybersecurity is of utmost importance (see the Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024 and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Healthcare Ransomware Report), Windows Server IoT 2025 stands out with a suite of cutting-edge security features designed to safeguard your data and infrastructure. Here are a few key capabilities:
- Active Directory (AD): The gold standard for identity and authentication only gets better with new security capabilities to help fortify your environment against evolving threats with greater scalability and improvements in protocols, encryption, hardening, and new cryptographic support.
- File Services/Server Message Block (SMB) Hardening: Windows Server IoT 2025 includes SMB over QUIC to enable secure access to file shares over the internet. SMB security also adds hardened firewall defaults, brute force attack prevention, and protections for man in the middle attacks, relay attacks, and spoofing attacks.
- Delegate Managed Service Accounts (dMSA): Unlike traditional service accounts, dMSAs don’t require manual password management since AD automatically takes care of it. With dMSAs, specific permissions can be delegated to access resources in the domain, which reduces security risks and provides better visibility and logs of service account activity.
These advanced security features make Windows Server IoT 2025 a robust and secure platform for your IT infrastructure that you should begin evaluation immediately.
AI, PERFORMANCE, AND SCALE
Windows Server IoT 2025 is designed to handle the most demanding workloads, including AI and machine learning. Here are some key capabilities:
- Hyper-V, AI, and Machine Learning: With built-in support for GPU partitioning and the ability to process large data sets across distributed environments, Windows Server IoT 2025 offers a high-performance platform for both traditional applications and advanced AI workloads with Live Migration and High Availability.
- NVMe Storage Performance: Windows Server IoT 2025 delivers up to 70% more storage IOPs performance compared to Windows Server IoT 2022 on identical systems.
- Storage Spaces Direct and Storage Flexibility: Windows Server IoT supports a wide range of storage solutions such as local, NAS, and SAN for decades and continues to this day. Windows Server IoT 2025 delivers more storage innovation with Native ReFS deduplication and compression, Thinly Provisioned Storage Spaces, and Storage Replica Compression now available in all editions of Windows Server IoT 2025.
- Hyper-V Performance and Scale: Windows Server IoT 2025 introduces massive performance and scalability improvements that come from Azure. Windows Server IoT 2025 Hyper-V virtual machine maximums:
- Maximum memory per VM: 240 Terabytes* (10x previous)
- Maximum virtual processors per VM: 2048 VPs* (~8.5x previous)
*Requires Generation 2 VMs
Windows Server IoT 2025 delivers major advancements across the board for Hyper-V, GPU integration, Storage Spaces Direct (software defined storage), software-defined networking, and clustering. These improvements make Windows Server IoT 2025 an excellent option for organizations looking for a virtualization solution and for organizations looking to leverage AI and machine learning while maintaining high performance and scalability.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Power Automate to update columns for content stored in a document library
Hi everyone,
Wondering if this group could help answer whether it was possible to use power automate to update contents stored in a SharePoint Online Document Library. Basically update the different columns they have (eg. Description, custom columns etc) with data stored on something like a csv file?
Is that doable at all with Power Automate?
Ex.
Doc Library:
ID Name Test Field
1 Test File <Blank>
CSV File:
ID Name Test Field
1 Test File Hello World
Post Power Automate state of Doc Library Content:
ID Name Test Field
1 Test File Hello World
Hi everyone, Wondering if this group could help answer whether it was possible to use power automate to update contents stored in a SharePoint Online Document Library. Basically update the different columns they have (eg. Description, custom columns etc) with data stored on something like a csv file? Is that doable at all with Power Automate? Ex. Doc Library:ID Name Test Field1 Test File <Blank> CSV File:ID Name Test Field1 Test File Hello World Post Power Automate state of Doc Library Content:ID Name Test Field1 Test File Hello World Read More
America’s Partner Blog | Partners Make More Possible: Education
AI is revolutionizing education worldwide, and our Microsoft partners egroup, Anthology, and Territorium are leading the charge. 71% of education professionals are now harnessing AI to tailor learning experiences, enhance efficiency, and alleviate burnout. Don’t miss the latest episode of Microsoft + Partners Make More Possible with Nina Harding and Carl Hooker to discover how we’re making a remarkable impact together!
Watch the video here!
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
फ्लिपकार्ट की शिकायत कैसे करें?
फ़्लिपकार्ट ग्राहक सेवा अधिकारी से बात करने के लिए 9831×224×914 या O983~1224~914 ▪︎डायल करें । आपको अपनी समस्या को स्पष्ट और संक्षिप्त तरीके से बताना होगा। आधिकारिक शिकायत दर्ज करने के लिए अधिकारी आपसे आपकी ऑर्डर आईडी, पंजीकृत मोबाइल नंबर..
फ़्लिपकार्ट ग्राहक सेवा अधिकारी से बात करने के लिए 9831×224×914 या O983~1224~914 ▪︎डायल करें । आपको अपनी समस्या को स्पष्ट और संक्षिप्त तरीके से बताना होगा। आधिकारिक शिकायत दर्ज करने के लिए अधिकारी आपसे आपकी ऑर्डर आईडी, पंजीकृत मोबाइल नंबर.. Read More
Microsoft GenAI Accelerator: developing the UK’s best and brightest AI-focused startups
Microsoft launches GenAI Accelerator with NVIDIA and GitHub to boost UK AI start-ups
Important news for all UK startups! Microsoft has launched the GenAI Accelerator initiative in partnership with NVIDIA and GitHub to develop the UK’s brightest and best AI-focused start-ups and springboard them to future success. This initiative will provide exclusive resources and opportunities to companies looking to build, market, and scale up their generative AI products and services.
The Accelerator will run from January 2025 to early March 2025 and is specifically tailored for UK AI start-ups that have secured seed funding and are looking to take their products to the next level. Microsoft is seeking companies whose innovative AI-powered products have the potential to change people’s lives for the better, create jobs, and have significant economic impact.
The Accelerator will culminate in a Demo Day, during which participants will have the opportunity to showcase their products to top venture capitalists and private equity firms.
Participants will receive one-to-one support from Microsoft’s AI ‘Black Belt’ team – specialists in AI and machine learning – as well as access to workshops and help provided by partners NVIDIA and GitHub.
Learn more about the benefits of this initiative and how to apply: Microsoft launches GenAI Accelerator with NVIDIA and GitHub to boost UK AI start-ups.
Microsoft launches GenAI Accelerator with NVIDIA and GitHub to boost UK AI start-ups
Important news for all UK startups! Microsoft has launched the GenAI Accelerator initiative in partnership with NVIDIA and GitHub to develop the UK’s brightest and best AI-focused start-ups and springboard them to future success. This initiative will provide exclusive resources and opportunities to companies looking to build, market, and scale up their generative AI products and services.
The Accelerator will run from January 2025 to early March 2025 and is specifically tailored for UK AI start-ups that have secured seed funding and are looking to take their products to the next level. Microsoft is seeking companies whose innovative AI-powered products have the potential to change people’s lives for the better, create jobs, and have significant economic impact.
The Accelerator will culminate in a Demo Day, during which participants will have the opportunity to showcase their products to top venture capitalists and private equity firms.
Participants will receive one-to-one support from Microsoft’s AI ‘Black Belt’ team – specialists in AI and machine learning – as well as access to workshops and help provided by partners NVIDIA and GitHub.
Learn more about the benefits of this initiative and how to apply: Microsoft launches GenAI Accelerator with NVIDIA and GitHub to boost UK AI start-ups. Read More
Shame on Microsoft
So it seems like removing forum posts works, but removing a certificate from the Microsoft Database OR fixing this idoti.c Microsoft Partner Portal does not work within 2 MONTHS (whereas I see problems with this Partner Portal for almost a year now)?
Maybe the Forum admins should be levelled up to become backend administrators?
If Microsoft is not competent enough to fix the Microsoft Partner Portal problems, how about hiring skilled people rather than keep going with the current incompetent people who cannot and who are not willing to fix any problems?
Don’t be shocked but Microsoft AI is not up to it and will not fix it.
Why does Microsoft want to rely on cross signed Windows drivers if Microsoft is not competent enough to implement that in their eco-system?
Digicert is able to verify a company within 1 day while Microsoft is not able to fix their B2B issues within 2 month. Microsoft is not even able to verify the developer identification properly even though the developer is set as company owner which also shows up in the DUNS database.
What’s the goal of all that? Keep/make other people angry?
It’s so easy to fix those issues, why don’t you guys just fix them?
And reading .. the other department doesn’t share information, yes well then they should be laid off or getting taught to share information. The way Microsoft is going is absolute incompetent at the moment.
I really wonder how Microsoft can run a cloud service with such unreliable staff, customers joining this madness is nothing but an economical sui.cide mission.
So it seems like removing forum posts works, but removing a certificate from the Microsoft Database OR fixing this idoti.c Microsoft Partner Portal does not work within 2 MONTHS (whereas I see problems with this Partner Portal for almost a year now)?Maybe the Forum admins should be levelled up to become backend administrators? If Microsoft is not competent enough to fix the Microsoft Partner Portal problems, how about hiring skilled people rather than keep going with the current incompetent people who cannot and who are not willing to fix any problems?Don’t be shocked but Microsoft AI is not up to it and will not fix it. Why does Microsoft want to rely on cross signed Windows drivers if Microsoft is not competent enough to implement that in their eco-system? Digicert is able to verify a company within 1 day while Microsoft is not able to fix their B2B issues within 2 month. Microsoft is not even able to verify the developer identification properly even though the developer is set as company owner which also shows up in the DUNS database. What’s the goal of all that? Keep/make other people angry?It’s so easy to fix those issues, why don’t you guys just fix them? And reading .. the other department doesn’t share information, yes well then they should be laid off or getting taught to share information. The way Microsoft is going is absolute incompetent at the moment. I really wonder how Microsoft can run a cloud service with such unreliable staff, customers joining this madness is nothing but an economical sui.cide mission. Read More