Microsoft New Research Reveals Businesses Need to Prioritize Skills as much as Technology to Maximize Value from AI

Microsoft India today released new research revealing that organizations that combine deployment of AI with skilling initiatives are generating most value from AI.  Topline findings of the research underscore that mature AI firms are more confident about the return on AI and skills. Over 93% of senior executives surveyed from these companies were sure their business was gaining value from AI.  The research further highlights that employees from mature AI companies are eager to deepen their AI skills and reinvest freed up time to add value for the organization. The research surveyed employees and leaders within large enterprises across industry verticals in India, and 19 other countries, to look at the skills needed to thrive as AI becomes increasingly adopted by businesses, as well as the key learnings from early AI adopters. 

Dr Rohini Srivathsa, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India, said, “As we look to rebound and reimagine the future after months of economic fluidity, technology will play a key role in rebooting enterprises. AI is at the heart of digital transformation - which has accelerated at an extraordinary pace - and will continue to play a critical role in helping businesses be more agile, resilient and competitive during this time. However, the path of unlocking the full potential of AI lies in combining its deployment with skilling initiatives that focus on both tech and soft skills. We believe this will be important for us to emerge from this crisis successfully.”

AI Maturity stages of enterprises

The AI maturity of companies has been divided into three categories in the survey

* AI Beginners: AI is neither explored nor used in any way right now

* AI Intermediates: AI applications are being explored / experimented with, for a range of use cases but sporadically

* AI Leading: AI is a part of the corporate strategy and is embedded into the company’s offerings

Both the senior executives and employees surveyed found a direct link between having the skills needed to thrive in an AI world and the value organizations gain from their AI implementations. The research further reveals that employees are keen to acquire AI relevant skills that are growing in importance and are of value to them personally and to the business. In fact, organization leaders surveyed predicted that half of all employees will be equipped with AI skills in the next 6-10 years, which is nearly one-and-a-half times more than the present estimations.

Higher growth companies are combining skilling with AI deployment for greater business value

In India, 100% of the AI-leading companies say they are actively building the skills of their workers or have plans to do so.  Over 93% employees at these firms have already been part of re-skilling programs. The employees benefitting from these programs are actively providing strategic benefits to their companies through innovating, solving, and collaborating. Notably, 98% of the employees surveyed among all the AI companies were highly motivated for reskilling.

The combination of skilling and AI deployment is helping businesses succeed. 94% of senior executives from AI Leading businesses acknowledged that they are already seeing value from AI deployment. In fact, Indian AI Intermediate companies are also not too far behind in this aspect –- with 87% sharing the same view.  The gap between the two categories across all the countries surveyed, however, is much wider at 25%.

The research shows that AI-leading firms are focused on ensuring that AI is complementing the talents of their people. These businesses are cultivating employee skills across every category – ranging from advanced data analysis and critical thinking to communications and creativity.

AI is creating company cultures more focused on innovation and learning

Notably, at the time the survey was conducted, 98% of AI Leading firms in India were increasing skills investments. These companies were looking for ways to expand their employees’ digital capabilities to unlock new avenues for growth. 93% of them were actively hiring skilled workers or had plans to, to complement their internal skilling programs. It is also interesting to note that more than 97% business leaders in India are willing to provide financial rewards in some form, fast track promotion or a combination of both in order to promote job satisfaction and higher level of AI-relevant skills among employees.

Interestingly, the overall number of Indian employees were interested in skilling (85%) is more than double of that of employees across all surveyed markets (38%). 98% of all employees were keen to participate in reskilling programs, and some 92% at AI leader businesses have already done so (vs. 85% avg.) and 87% felt their workplace was doing enough to prepare them for AI. This number rises to 95% for AI-leading businesses, which is nearly one-and-a-half times higher than the corresponding number across all surveyed markets.

“We’re seeing a virtuous circle emerge among the companies seeing the greatest value from AI. These leaders have seen that having the right skills enables them to unlock value from AI, which encourages them to extend their use of AI and, in turn, continue in up-levelling skills in their organization,” said Dr Srivathsa.

For an overview of the key research findings please visit: https://news.microsoft.com/en-in/leading-businesses-reveal-power-of-combining-human-ingenuity-with-ai-rohini-srivathsa/

Methodology

KRC Research conducted a random online sample of approximately 12,000 people working with enterprise companies (more than 250 employees). Within in each market the sample was comprised of at least 500 workers and 100 leaders (director / senior executive level and above). Markets represented include: Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (combined), Hungary, Australia, Brazil, Israel, Turkey, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, India, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden.

Microsoft Introduces the Power Platform Return to the Workplace solution in India

Microsoft has announced the general availability of its Power Platform Return to the Workplace solution across India.  Introduced at its flagship partner summit Microsoft Inspire 2020, this pre-built solution will help organizations plan, coordinate and manage the return to physical workplaces with confidence. Designed for fast deployment and customization, the Power Platform Return to the Workplace solution is a comprehensive, end-to-end set of modules built on a secure and compliant platform. Together, the modules provide an end-to-end experience for executive leaders, facility managers, employees, managers, as well as health and safety leaders. The solution will be free to download and use for businesses of all sizes as an integral part of all existing and new paid Power Apps licenses.

Underlining its commitment to enable small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the country to bounce back, Microsoft is also offering the Power Platform Return to the Workplace solution with its Back2Business Solution Boxes for business continuity.  Including offers on Microsoft Teams and Windows Virtual Desktop, these boxed packages are focused on providing immediate, secure and easy-to-deploy remote working solutions.

Reopening, or returning to the workplace, will be a phased process and it will be vital for organizations to be equipped to give their leaders and employees timely and accurate information. According to Rajiv Sodhi, COO – Microsoft India, “As the economic recovery begins, organizations are returning to their workplaces with stringent new guidelines for health and safety; stewardship of employees and customers; and rebuilding the business. The ability to be agile, react swiftly to changing conditions, and adapt will be core to the success of companies. Fast feedback loops and acting on data available within the organization will matter most for accurate and informed decision making. We believe the new Return to Workplace solution will help our customers reopen responsibly, monitor intelligently, and protect continuously with solutions for the rapidly evolving needs of the workplace.”

The Power Platform Return to the Workplace solution comprises

Location Readiness: allows facility managers and task force leaders to determine the readiness of their facilities and efficiently manage their safe reopening.  Facility managers and task force leaders can use the Location Readiness dashboard to quickly make informed decisions by using critical factors like COVID-19 infection rates and the availability of supplies.

Employee Health and Safety Management:  empowers employees with self-service tools that help them work safely, confidently and productively. They can check into work remotely, self-screen before entering the building, reserve a meeting room virtually and more – including from a mobile app.

Workplace Care Management: gives health and safety leaders the tools to actively manage COVID-19 cases, identify hotspots for safety improvement, and import data from third party systems to determine possible exposure. Executive dashboards enable monitoring of all Workplace Care Management data for a consolidated view.

Location Management:  gives facility managers the tools they need to keep their locations open safely. Location Management helps maintain a safe environment with tools for monitoring occupancy, health supplies, safety procedures and other facility-related best practices.

 

The Power Platform Return to the Workplace solution provides an opportunity for Microsoft partners to help and support customers with customizations and deployment. It offers a foundation that partners can integrate and extend to meet unique customer requirements, with the solution available at no additional cost. Designed to accelerate workplace readiness for stores, factories, offices or even schools, this pre-built solution can help organizations save time and money by reducing risk and streamlining their workplace reopening process.

About Microsoft Power Platform and Power Apps

Microsoft Power Platform is a low code platform that allows organizations to analyze data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents, to meet business challenges effectively.

Power Apps is Microsoft’s low code application development platform that spans Azure, M365 and D365 as well as stand-alone applications, empowering everyone, whether a citizen developer, an IT admin or a Pro Dev to collaborate and solve business problems and innovate faster. 

Low-code platforms enable a visual approach to building apps and workflows. They reduce the time and effort to build apps, automate workflows and derive value from data. They also bridge the gap between IT, professional developers and the business, driving a collaborative approach to problem solving, lowering the technical barrier to solving business challenges with technology.

L&T Technology Services Expands Collaboration with Microsoft to Offer Solutions for Workplace Transformation

L&T Technology Services Limited (BSE: 540115, NSE: LTTS), a leading global pure-play engineering services company, today announced that it has expanded its collaboration with Microsoft Corporation and launched its latest and enhanced version of the state-of-the-art i-BEMSTM solution on Microsoft Azure to transform buildings into future-ready smart campuses.

With growing digital transformation, there has been a clear impetus on the need for organizations to revamp their office premises to be eco-friendly, taking into consideration sustainability aspects including greenhouse gas and carbon emissions. Another important aspect for office and facility administrators today is to find balance in their buildings to ensure health, safety and wellbeing of their workforce.

LTTS’ award-winning Intelligent Building Experience Management System i-BEMSTM is a system-of-systems solution that focuses on creating digital experiences and intelligent space management. The cloud-based smart buildings/campus/spaces solution helps monitor and manage building operations and optimize business metrics leveraging advanced IoT based Edge Analytics and machine learning algorithms.

i-BEMS™ uses advanced energy analytics and fault diagnostics for energy savings, and net-zero energy compliance. i-BEMSTM has enterprise-grade security features and can create a digital twin to test changes in a virtual build of the building.

LTTS has earlier collaborated with Microsoft to develop a smart campus in Israel for a leading technology company. The two companies have also partnered to leverage  Azure IoT platform for Sustainability solutions and connect with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service to enable real-time optimization, improve ROI and employee productivity for Facility Management and Operations globally. In 2018, LTTS furthered their working relationship with Microsoft by setting up a Digital Industrial Transformation Applied Innovation Centre for shared enterprise customers.

The current expanded collaboration leverages Azure to enable i-BEMSTM to act as a Facility Information Broker, unifying data from all systems making the building/campus a single entity rather than a heterogeneous collection of systems focused on employee health and safety and preservation of the immediate environment.

Experts from LTTS and Microsoft also shared the latest best practices on the holistic approach for enterprises planning eco-friendly and safe smart buildings, which can be read here: Smart buildings: From design to reality.

Alind Saxena, Chief Business Officer - Transportation & Alliances, L&T Technology Services said, “With digital transformation, enterprises are also increasingly focusing on finding sustainable ways to grow, while protecting the planet and its resources. Another important determinant for companies is maintaining employee safety and wellbeing within a building by reducing resource usage and improving operational efficiency. i-BEMS covers the best practices from designing to construction to operations for enterprises planning environmentally friendly and socially responsible smart building projects. We are excited to further expand our partnership leveraging Microsoft Azure IoT & Edge technology to serve enterprise customers with industry-leading solutions.”

Sanjay Jacob, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation said, “As a leader in engineering solutions for smart and sustainable campuses, LTTS’ Smart Building solutions enable modern workplaces by leveraging cutting-edge Microsoft Azure IoT, Edge & AI technology. Employee safety, energy-efficiency and sustainability is the need of the hour and LTTS delivers an integrated, advanced Azure based Smart Building solution for global enterprises to deploy smart and sustainable campuses. The whitepaper provides an excellent template with the most current best practices for enterprises to go from design to reality of their smart buildings.”

About L&T Technology Services Ltd

L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D (ER&D) services. We offer consultancy, design, development and testing services across the product and process development life cycle. Our customer base includes 69 Fortune 500 companies and 53 of the world’s top ER&D companies, across industrial products, medical devices, transportation, telecom & hi-tech, and the process industries. Headquartered in India, we have over 16,600 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 51 innovation labs as of June 30, 2020.

AI-Powered Diagnostic Solution from QuEST Global to Accelerate Covid-19 Screening

QuEST Global, a global product engineering and lifecycle services company, today announced that it has developed a robust AI-powered solution that will enable healthcare professionals to accelerate the screening of COVID-19 patients with pneumonia symptoms. Using advanced deep learning models, the AI-powered diagnostic solution can sort and identify chest X-rays of patients with COVID-19. With an accuracy of more than 95%, the solution can be deployed on the cloud as a service, making it easily accessible on edge for healthcare professionals and end-users. The solution is backed by Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, which helps accelerate the development and deployment on machine learning models in a highly secure and trusted fashion.

The Medical Devices engineering team at QuEST developed this technology demonstrator using chest X-rays of healthy individuals, patients with symptoms of pneumonia and COVID-19. These X-rays were used to train and build a deep neural network model that could discriminate the radiological patterns of pneumonia related to COVID-19 and highlight the suspicious ones, thus leading to a faster screening of the disease.

Elaborating further on QuEST’s AI solution, Krish Kupathil, Global Head, Hi-Tech and Digital, QuEST Global said, “As the pandemic continues to rage, our focus has been to deliver a solution that can support the healthcare professionals effectively. Since the fight against COVID-19 is all about faster screening and immediate isolation of maximum number of people, we aim to accelerate the screening time as much as possible. The AI-based solution will make radiography examinations much faster by leveraging modern image diagnostic systems. As we continue to add more features, we aim to reduce the screening time to less than a minute”.

Michael Kuptz, General Manager – Americas IoT & Mixed Reality Sales, Microsoft, said, “In these unprecedented times, saving human lives is the ultimate goal, and technology can help. Microsoft’s collaborations with product engineering leaders like QuEST can go a long way to driving a more positive outcome. For example, QuEST’s AI-driven diagnostic solution, built on Microsoft Azure, empowers healthcare personnel in the fight against COVID-19 by reducing screening time, thereby enabling more testing capacity.”

Over the years, QuEST has been working as a trusted thinking partner with the world’s most recognized companies in the medical devices industry. The company is committed to enabling its customers Create The Frontier by enhancing healthcare experience to improve the lives of millions of people around the world. With its expertise in new-age technologies like deep learning, AI, IoT and machine learning, the company has been developing comprehensive engineering solutions by using Azure IoT and Azure AI solutions. These solutions have been helping OEMs, and tier-one suppliers seamlessly take a giant leap in their digital transformation journey and make products safer and more reliable.

Will Google-Microsoft war cut down PC prices?

Google Inc's bid to compete with Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system may help lower the cost of personal computers at a time when prices are already being pinched by inexpensive netbooks.

Google said it will offer its just-announced Chrome operating system for free when it is launched in the second half of 2010, a move that could force Microsoft into a price war.

Although Windows is the dominant operating system -- installed on 90 percent of the world's PCs, Microsoft won't take Google's challenge lightly, analysts said. Its new Windows 7 operating system will be available in October.

"Microsoft's strategy is likely to be to compete on price," said Brent Williams, an analyst with the Benchmark Co. "Now there's a competitor with the muscle and the brand recognition. Google is that company."

Google said Chrome OS, which is based on the open-source Linux code, is being designed for all PCs but will debut on netbooks. It makes sense for Google to initially target the stripped-down, Web-centric netbooks, one of the only segments showing any growth in a PC market that is contracting.

Netbooks generally sell for $300 to $400, but prices are dropping as new offerings flood the market and wireless carriers offer subsidies with the purchase of a data plan.

Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu noted that while the prices on nearly all PC components have been falling, "the one thing that has not been coming down is the cost of the operating system. This is going to put some pressure on Microsoft."

Microsoft doesn't say how much it charges PC brands for Windows, but analysts estimate it gets $20 to $40 for the older XP system used in the vast majority of netbooks, and at least $150 for the current Vista system.

Wu said price competition could ultimately give a bump to PC makers' margins.

"I think overall it should improve the profitability for PC vendors. It's really a question of how much they pass on to the customers," he said.

REWRITING THE RULES

Between 20 million and 30 million netbooks are expected to be shipped this year, and the devices continue to rewrite the rules for the PC industry.

Even as heavyweights such as Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc roll out new netbooks, analysts expect new players, including Taiwan-based equipment manufacturers and carriers such as AT&T Inc, to release branded netbooks running on either Intel Corp's x86 chip platform or ARM chips.

Google said Chrome will work on either architecture.

Agencies