Artificial intelligence is causing two major revolutions simultaneously among developers and enterprises. These revolutions will drive the technology decisions for the next decade. Developers are massively embracing AI. As a platform company, Microsoft is focused on enabling developers to make the shift to the next app development pattern, driven by the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. AI is the runtime that will power the apps of the future.

At the same time, enterprises are eager to adopt and integrate AI. Cloud and AI are the most requested topics in Microsoft Executive Briefing Centers. AI is changing how companies serve their customers, run their operations, and innovate. Ultimately, every business process in every industry will be redefined in profound ways. If it used to be true that “software was eating the world,” it is now true to say that “AI is eating software”.

• A new competitive differentiator is emerging: how well an enterprise exploits AI to reinvent and accelerate its processes, value chain and business models. Enterprises need a strategic partner who can help them transform their organization with AI.
  Microsoft is emerging as a solid AI leader as it is in a unique position to address both revolutions. Our strength and differentiation lie in the combination of multiple assets:
  Azure AI services that bring AI to every developer. Over one million developers are accessing our pre-built and customizable AI services. We have the most comprehensive solution for building bots, combined with a powerful platform for Custom AI development with Azure Machine Learning that spans the entire AI development lifecycle, and a market leading portfolio of pre-built cognitive services that can be readily attached to applications.
• A unique cloud infrastructure including CPU, GPU, and soon FPGA, makes Azure the most reliable, scalable and fastest cloud to run AI workloads.
• Unparalleled tools. Visual Studio, used by over 6 million developers, is the most preferred tool in the world for application development. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are powerful “front doors” through which to attract developers seeking to add AI to their applications.
• Ability to add AI to the edge. We enable developers, through our tools and services, to develop an AI model and deploy that model anywhere. Through our support for ONNX – the open source representation for AI models in partnership with Facebook, Amazon, IBM and others – as well as for generic containers, we allow developers to run their models on the IoT edge and leverage the entire IoT solution from Azure

But the competition to win enterprises is not only played in the platform battlefield, enterprises are demanding solutions. Microsoft AI solutions provide turnkey implementations for customers who want to transform their core processes with AI. Our unique combination of IP and consulting services address common scenarios such as business agents, sales intelligence or marketing intelligence. As our solutions are built on top of our compelling AI platform, unlike our competitors, our customers are not locked in to any one consulting provider, they remain in full control of their data and can extend the scenarios or target new scenarios themselves or through our rich partner ecosystem.

This article is an extract from ‘The Innovation Game: How Data is Driving Digital Transformation” You can download the full report here:

By Jaime Pereña
Director Marketing and Strategy -
Enterprise Artificial Intelligence
Microsoft