Technology waits for no one. And those who strike first will have an advantage. The steady decline in business profitability across multiple industries threatens to erode future investment, innovation and shareholder value. Fortunately, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) can help kick-start profitability. Accenture research shows that AI has the potential to boost rates of profitability by an average of 38 percent by 2035 and lead to an economic boost of US$14 trillion across 16 industries in 12 economies by 2035.
Driven by these economic forces, the age of digital transformation is in full swing. Today we can’t be “digital to the core” if we don’t leverage all new data sources – unstructured, dark data and thirty party sources. Similarly, we have to take advantage of the convergence of AI and analytics to uncover previously hidden insights. But, with the increasing use of AI, we also have to be responsible and take into account the social implications.
Finding answers to the biggest questions starts with data, and ensuring you are capitalizing on the vast data sources available within your own business. Thanks to the power of AI/machine learning and advanced algorithms, we have moved from the era of big data to the era of ALL data, and that is helping clients create a more holistic view of their customer and more operational efficiencies.
Embracing the convergence of AI and analytics is crucial to success in our digital transformation. Together,
- AI-powered analytics unlock tremendous value from data that was previously hidden or unreachable,
- changing the way we interact with people and technology,
- improving the way we make decisions, and giving way to new agility and opportunities.
While businesses are still in the infancy of tapping into the vast potential of these combined technologies, now is the time to accelerate. But to thrive, we need to be pragmatic in finding the right skills and partners to guide our strategy.
Finally, whenever we envision the possibilities of AI, we should consider the responsibility that comes with it. Trust in the digital era or “responsible AI” cannot be overlooked. Explainable AI and AI transparency are critical, particularly in such areas as
- financial services,
- healthcare,
- and life sciences.
The new imperative of our digital transformation is to balance intelligent technology and human ingenuity to innovate every facet of business and become a smarter enterprise.
The exponential growth of data underlying the strategic imperative of enterprise digital transformation has created new business opportunities along with tremendous challenges. Today, we see organizations of all shapes and sizes embarking on digital transformation. As uncovered in Corinium Digital’s research, the primary drivers of digital transformation are those businesses focused on addressing increasing customer expectations and implementing efficient internal processes.
Data is at the heart of this transformation and provides the fuel to generate meaningful insights. We have reached the tipping point where all businesses recognize they cannot compete in a digital age using analog-era legacy solutions and architectures. The winners in the next phase of business will be those enterprises that obtain a clear handle on the foundations of modern data management, specifically the nexus of
- data quality,
- cloud,
- and artificial intelligence (AI).
While most enterprises have invested in on-premises data warehouses as the backbone of their analytic data management practices, many are shifting their new workloads to the cloud. The proliferation of new data types and sources is accelerating the development of data lakes with aspirations of gaining integrated analytics that can accelerate new business opportunities. We found in the research that over 60% of global enterprises are now investing in a hybrid, multi-cloud strategy with both data from cloud environments such as Microsoft Azure along with existing on-premises infrastructures. Hence, this hybrid, multicloud strategy will need to correlate with their investments in data analytics, and it will become imperative to manage data seamlessly across all platforms. At Paxata, our mission is to give everyone the power to intelligently profile and transform data into consumable information at the speed of thought. To empower everyone, not just technical users, to prepare their data and make it ready for analytics and decision making.
The first step in making this transition is to eliminate the bottlenecks of traditional IT-led data management practices through AI-powered automation.
Second, you need to apply modern data preparation and data quality principles and technology platforms to support both analytical and operational use cases.
Thirdly, you need a technology infrastructure that embraces the hybrid, multi-cloud world. Paxata sits right at the center stage of this new shift, helping enterprises profile and transform complex data types in highvariety, high-volume environments. As such, we’re excited about partnering with Accenture and Microsoft to accelerate businesses with our ability to deliver modern analytical and operational platforms to address today’s digital transformation requirements.
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 ourcompetitors, 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.
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