The tech giant, led by CEO Satya Nadella, revealed details about its efforts to use artificial intelligence (AI), data and cloud tech to help customers create the future of business and innovate for the future.
In his opening address, Nadella asked the question “How are we going to empower people?”. He went on to say that every piece of technology developed should “embellish the capability of human beings.” This brought him to what he says is Microsoft’s main mission: empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Nadella said during his Ignite keynote that the nature of work is “no longer about routine tasks – it’s about unlocking the creativity inside of your organisation” and “going beyond individual productivity to dynamic teams”.
The new announcements centred around Microsoft’s commercial businesses, including Office 365, Windows 10, Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AI.
Microsoft has plans to use its own AI tech to handle online customer service and support inquiries. This is perhaps not unlike Crystal and other innovations that are coming onto the scene that use AI to get the best reach using digital marketing.
Nadella also shed some light on how quantum computers could help solve some of the planet’s biggest challenges.
Quantum computing aims to provide far greater computing power than currently available by leveraging principles of quantum physics. While Microsoft is working to develop the hardware necessary for a quantum computer, the company is also working on the software side and is now looking to engage developers.
Microsoft said that it’s created a new programming language for use with quantum computing, and plans to make related debugging and simulation tools available to developers by the end of 2017. The aim, Nadella said, is for quantum computing to “tackle some of the biggest challenges that we still face as a world”.
