Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes augmented reality, cloud computing services, machine learning and chatbots will reshape the IT industry, according to foreign media reports.
At the Global Partners Conference in Toronto, Nadella noted that in the next few years, chatbots, machine learning, augmented reality and cloud-based automation will become commonplace in enterprises. In his keynote, Nadella talked about Microsoft’s efforts to help companies integrate these new technologies and “transform their businesses using digital technology.”
Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include editing robots, writing robots and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.
Augmented reality and Hololens
Microsoft’s Hololens augmented reality device displays digital information and holograms of the real world in front of the user’s eyes.
Nadella described the mixed reality capabilities of Microsoft’s Hololens device as a “sea change” in personal computing that will change the traditional training mechanisms within the enterprise.
To prove the point, Lorraine Bardeen, general manager of Microsoft’s Hololens division, showed the audience how JAL uses Hololens to train its engineers.
In the demo video, Bardeen describes how a Japanese aerospace engineer expanded his horizons with the Hololens device. The engineer in the video uses Hololens to check email, calendar, browse the Web, Skype and Power BI.
Bardeen then showed off a 3D model of an airplane’s jet engine that the Hololens can display before the user’s eyes. Bardeen interacts with 3D models, resizing them with gestures and voice commands, highlighting different components within them, and detailing each engine component with animated demonstrations and voice instructions.
Bardeen said Hololens has already been released in enterprise and developer versions.
Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.
“I want everyone to pay more attention to the use of this new medium in their daily business, because it’s really the most transformative thing,” Nadella said. It should be noted that early versions of Hololens have limited functionality compared to live demonstrations.
Automation based on cloud services
Microsoft is offering businesses the ability to use Azure, Microsoft’s cloud services platform, to integrate their own collaboration and messaging applications, as well as Microsoft enterprise software and professional social networks such as LinkedIn.
“What if software applications were created to connect different worlds?” Nadella asked. He believes Microsoft is “on the cusp” of improving communication and can do just that. Nadella believes that by integrating cloud data and services, Microsoft can help companies build efficient automated business systems.
Nadella told attendees how Ecolab is building an efficient automation business with Microsoft’s cloud services.
Ecolab, the world’s leading water, sanitation and energy technology and services provider, uses Microsoft’s Power BI service to capture, view and analyze real-time data across its field management, sales and operations. Microsoft demonstrated how Ecolab uses Power BI to find and resolve customer concerns about cooling towers in real time.
Through the interplay of Microsoft cloud services, Cortana, an artificial intelligence assistant, and Dynamics 365, a business process application, Microsoft demonstrated how Ecolab can generate problem alerts through the service and quickly resolve customer problems based on on-site engineer experience, location, and available parts. Every step of the business process is automated, with a significant reduction in manual calls and data entry. Once the problem is resolved, field engineers can follow up with Dynamics 365
Microsoft also demonstrated how Dynamics 365 can be integrated with Microsoft Flow services to fully automate enterprise business. The latter can connect to different network services to accurately respond to events. When an event triggers a critical business node, Microsoft Flow sends email alerts and push notifications to specific users and updates the entire business list. Dynamics 365 also creates a list of critical times and updates the records. Ecolab also uses Microsoft’s PowerApps tools to build its own applications to make it easier to view customer information.
“This is no longer a single application deployed and used,” Nadella said. This is a continuous digital business process. That’s the Power of cloud computing and cloud data, seamlessly connecting all the capabilities like Power BI, PowerApps and Flow.”
During the presentation, GE also announced that Predix, its industrial-scale iot platform, will run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
Machine learning
Nadella sees ai as increasingly attractive to businesses, citing Microsoft’s 22 “cognitive services” of application programming interfaces (APIS) that many businesses use.
These interfaces allow developers to call Microsoft’s ARTIFICIAL intelligence services, which include speech recognition and computer vision applications.
“Any business process associated with cognition can be changed,” Nadella said, citing McDonald’s’s introduction of Microsoft’s automated voice recognition system for takeout lane orders and demonstrating how Microsoft can accurately recognize the voice of a user’s order. Nadella explained that the accuracy of the recognition comes from the continuous adaptation of Microsoft cognition services, such as the filtering of ambient noise in a user’s voice and the accurate recognition of specific fields in the voice. McDonald’s is rolling it out to all of its ordering systems, and Microsoft has improved the accuracy with which it recognizes spoken language through its JSON project.
“What we’re doing now is integrating cognitive services with business processes,” Nadella said.
Chatbot
Microsoft thinks the vast majority of users will interact with chatbots in the future.
The chatbots will be able to understand simple voice or text questions, commands, and respond appropriately, nadella said, eliminating the need for apps for user interactions. Banks and other companies are already using Microsoft’s Bot Framework to create chatbots that allow users to “communicate anytime, anywhere.”
Mr Nadella believes Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant, can provide management and information services to a wide range of computer users. It showed attendees how Cortana prepared meetings and pulled the profile of each participant through LinkedIn’s network. Cortana then adds those attendees’ profiles to the company’s CRM system and makes recommendations based on their skills and experience.
“This is a new way of accessing personal computing,” Nadella said. Over time, this approach will fundamentally change the user experience.