One of the highlights of my career has always been connecting with customers and partners across industries to learn how they are using technology to drive their businesses forward. In the past 30 years, we’ve seen four major platform shifts, from client server to internet and the web to mobile and cloud to now—the next major platform shift to AI.

As today’s platform shift to AI continues to gain m omentum, Microsoft is working to understand just how organizations can drive lasting business value. We recently commissioned a study with IDC, The Business Opportunity of AI, to uncover new insights around business value and help guide organizations on their journey of AI transformation. The study found that for every $1 organizations invest in generative AI, they’re realizing an average of 3.7x return—and uncovered insights about the future potential of AI to reshape business processes and drive change across industries. 

Today, more than 85% of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft AI solutions to shape their future. In working with organizations large and small, across every industry and geography, we’ve seen that most transformation initiatives are designed to achieve one of four business outcomes:

1. Enriching employee experiences: Using AI to streamline or automate repetitive, mundane tasks can allow your employees to dive into more complex, creative, and ultimately more valuable work.
2. Reinventing customer engagement: AI can create more personalized, tailored customer experiences, delighting your target audiences while lightening the load for employees.
3. Reshaping business processes: Virtually any business process can be reimagined with AI, from marketing to supply chain operations to finance, and AI is even allowing organizations to go beyond process optimization and discover exciting new growth opportunities.
4. Bending the curve on innovation: AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development, reducing the time to market and allowing companies to differentiate in an often crowded field.

In this blog, we’ve collected more than 200 of our favorite real-life examples of how organizations are embracing Microsoft’s proven AI capabilities to drive impact and shape today’s platform shift to AI. We hope you find an example or two that can inspire your own transformation journey.

IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, 2024 Business Opportunity of AI, IDC# US52699124, November 2024 

Enriching employee experiences

Generative AI is truly transforming employee productivity and well-being. Our customers tell us that by automating repetitive, mundane tasks, employees are freed up to dive into more complex and creative work. This shift not only makes the work environment more stimulating but also boosts job satisfaction. It sparks innovation, provides actionable insights for better decision-making, and supports personalized training and development opportunities, all contributing to a better work-life balance. Customers around the world have reported significant improvements in employee productivity with these AI solutions:

1. Access Holdings Plc adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrating generative AI into daily tools and, as a result, writing code now takes two hours instead of eight, chatbots launch in 10 days instead of three months, and presentations are prepared in 45 minutes instead of six hours.
2. Adobe is connecting Adobe Experience Cloud workflows and insights with Microsoft 365 Copilot to deliver generative AI-powered capabilities that enable marketers to increase collaboration, efficiency, and creativity.
3. Amadeus empowers its teams to focus their time and skills on value-added tasks with Microsoft 365 Copilot by summarizing email threads, chat, or transcripts, and summing up information from diverse sources.
4. ANZ has invested in Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Copilot in Microsoft Edge to boost productivity and innovation across its workforce. 
5. Asahi Europe & International (AEI) has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, saving employees potentially 15% of time previously spent on administrative tasks.
6. AXA developed AXA Secure GPT, a platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service that empowers employees to leverage the power of generative AI while targeting the highest level of data safety and responsible use of the tool.
7. Axon Enterprise developed a new AI tool with Azure OpenAI Service called Draft One, resulting in an 82% decrease in time spent on reports, which freed up officers to engage more with their community.
8. Aztec Group enhanced productivity and client experience by trialing Microsoft 365 Copilot with 300 staff, uncovering “unlimited” use cases and plans for a wider rollout.
9. Bader Sultan & Bros. Co. W.L.L implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance employee productivity and speed up customer response times.
10. Bancolombia is using GitHub Copilot to empower its technical team, achieving a 30% increase in code generation, boosting automated application changes to an average of 18,000 per year, with a rate of 42 productive daily deployments. 
11. BaptistCare Community Services is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to save employees time as they navigate workforce shortage challenges allowing them to focus more on the people they care for.
12. Barnsley Council was recognized as “Double Council of the Year in 2023” for its implementation of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which modernized operations and reduced administrative tasks, leading to improved job satisfaction and increased creativity.
13. BlackRock purchased more than 24,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses spanning all employees, functions, and locations, helping improve the Copilot experience, including co-developing new features and functions.
14. British Heart Foundation is testing Microsoft 365 Copilot and in its initial test, users estimate that Microsoft 365 Copilot could save them up to 30 minutes per day.
15. Buckinghamshire Council deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot with staff reporting productivity improvements, quality enhancements, and time savings which are enabling the different teams to do more with less. 
16. Campari Group adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to help employees integrate it into their workflow, resulting in time savings of about two hours a week from the support of routine activities such as email management, meeting preparation, content creation, and skill acquisition.
17. Capita is using GitHub Copilot for productivity improvements as well as improvements in developer satisfaction, recruitment, and retention.
18. CDW used Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve work quality for 88% of users, enabling 77% to complete tasks faster, and increasing productivity for 85% of users.
19. Chi Mei Medical Center is lightening workloads for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists with a generative AI assistant built on Azure OpenAI Service. 
20. E.ON is focused on Germany’s energy transition, leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to manage the complex grid in real-time, increasing productivity and efficiency for its workforce.
21. Enerijisa Üretim has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meeting summaries, reformat documents, and compile reports, enabling employees to concentrate on more strategic and fulfilling activities instead of spending six hours in meetings.
22. EPAM is deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot to consolidate information and generate content and documents. 
23. Farm Credit Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot which resulted in time savings on routine tasks for 78% of users, with 30% saving 30 to 60 minutes per week and 35% saving over an hour per week, allowing employees to focus on more value-added tasks.
24. Finastra used Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate tasks, enhance content creation, improve analytics, and personalize customer interactions, with employees citing a 20% to 50% time savings.
25. Four Agency Worldwide increased employee productivity using Microsoft 365 Copilot to generate ideas for creative work and support administrative-heavy processes, data analysis, and report generation, allowing staff to focus on outreach and less time doing paperwork.
26. Goodwill of Orange County developed an AI-powered app using Azure AI capabilities to help more people, including those with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities, work in unfilled e-commerce positions.
27. Honeywell employees are saving 92 minutes per week—that’s 74 hours a year! Disclaimer: Statistics are from an internal Honeywell survey of 5,000 employees where 611 employees responded.
28. Insight employees using Copilot are seeing four hours of productivity gained per week from data summarization and content creation.
29. Joos uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to grow its brand with worldwide collaboration by streamlining meetings, optimizing presentations, and improving communications.
30. Kantar is harnessing the power of Microsoft 365 Copilot by reducing costly, time-consuming IT processes and boosting productivity for employees.
31. KPMG Australia is using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, and Microsoft 365 Copilot to perform advanced text analysis of dozens of client source documents to identify full or partial compliance, or noncompliance, in a fraction of the time required for manual assessments.
32. LGT is launching Microsoft Copilot LGT to improve efficiency, showing users save an average of an hour a week even in the pilot phase. 
33. Lotte Hotels & Resorts has been creating a new work culture that allows employees to work more efficiently and focus on the nature of the work by adopting Microsoft Power Platform for automation.
34. MAIRE is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate routine tasks, saving more than 800 working hours per month, freeing up engineers and professionals for strategic activities while supporting MAIRE’s green energy transition by reducing their carbon footprint.
35. McDonald’s China chose Microsoft Azure AI, GitHub Copilot, and Azure AI Search to transform its operations, resulting in a significant increase in AI adoption, consumption, and retention from 2,000 to 30,000 employee transactions monthly.
36. McKnight Foundation adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot for all staff, saving time, increasing productivity, and freeing space to focus on strategic priorities.
37. Morula Health is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance productivity, streamline medical writing tasks, and ensure data security, ultimately improving efficiency and client satisfaction. 
38. Motor Oil Group is achieving remarkable efficiency gains by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot into its workflows, with staff spending minutes on tasks that used to take weeks. 
39. Nagel-Group uses Azure OpenAI Service to help employees quickly access information which saves time, creates efficiency and transparency, and leads to higher-quality answers overall.
40. National Australia Bank is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot for daily productivity and data analysis and insights and Microsoft Security Copilot to quickly analyze millions of security event logs and allow engineers to focus on more important areas.
41. NFL Players Association integrated Azure AI Services and Azure App Service into their video review process, reducing review time by up to 73%, significantly increasing efficiency and enhancing player safety through consistent rule enforcement.
42. O2 Czech Republic boosts productivity and streamlines meetings with Microsoft 365 Copilot, revolutionizing how information is shared and making automation a part of daily work.
43. Onepoint developed a secure conversational agent based on Azure OpenAI Service, which delivers productivity gains of between 10% and 15% across all business lines.
44. Orange Group has more than 40 use cases with Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot across business functions to support employees in their day-to-day tasks, enabling them to concentrate on higher value-added activities.
45. Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve staff report productivity by saving one to two hours a week, or simple formatting tasks down to a matter of seconds, enabling more resources to deliver frontline services.
46. PA Consulting transformed its sales operations with Microsoft 365 Copilot, so its people can invest more time on the activities that have the biggest impact for clients and maximize the strategic value they provide. 
47. Petrobras used Azure OpenAI Service to create ChatPetrobras, which is streamlining workflows, reducing manual tasks, and summarizing reports for its 110,000 employees.
48. Petrochemical Industries Company automates work processes to save time with Microsoft 365 Copilot from weeks to days, hours to seconds.
49. PKSHA Technology is optimizing their time on critical work by increasing efficiency in meeting preparations, data analytics, and ideation with the help of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
50. Providence has collaborated with Nuance and Microsoft to accelerate development and adoption of generative AI-powered applications, helping improve care quality and access, and reduce physician’s administrative workloads. 
51. RTI International adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to gain productivity wherever possible, allowing staff to focus on their areas of expertise, delivering even better science-backed solutions for clients.
52. Sandvik Coromant is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to drive efficiency and accuracy, shaving at least one minute off each transaction, allowing sellers and account managers to focus their expertise on responding to customers’ needs with analysis, creativity, and adaptability.
53. Sasfin Bank built a solution on Microsoft Azure that centralized 20,000 documents to analyze contract clauses and provide real-time snapshots, moving guesswork into data-driven decision-making.
54. Scottish Water implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot reducing mundane tasks to a minimum, and thus freeing up time for employees to work on the more meaningful tasks.
55. Shriners Children’s developed an AI platform allowing clinicians to easily and securely navigate patient data in a singular location, enhancing patient care, and improving the efficiency of their healthcare services. 
56. Siemens is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to improve efficiency, cut downtime, and address labor shortages.
57. Softchoice employees are experiencing firsthand how Microsoft 365 Copilot can transform daily workflows, realizing productivity gains of 97% reduction in time spent summarizing technical meetings and up to 70% less time spent on content creation.
58. Syensqo utilized Azure OpenAI Service to develop a custom AI chatbot in three months, which improved their internal data management, decision-making, and overall efficiency.
59. Teladoc Health uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to revolutionize its telehealth operations, automating routine tasks, boosting efficiency, and increasing productivity.
60. Telstra developed two cutting-edge generative AI tools based on Azure OpenAI Service: 90% of employees are using the One Sentence Summary tool which resulted in 20% less follow-up customer contact and 84% of customer service agents using the Ask Telstra solution.
61. Topsoe achieved 85% AI adoption among office employees in seven months, significantly enhancing productivity and business processes.
62. Torfaen County Borough Council utilized Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline back-office processes, resulting in significant time savings and enhanced productivity for both business and children’s services teams, with further rollouts planned.
63. Trace3 leveraged Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline and enhance processes across the business and with clients, such as reducing the time it takes human resources (HR) recruiting managers to respond to applicants within a couple of days instead of several weeks.
64. Unilever is reinventing their marketing process with Copilot, saving time on briefing tasks, automatically pulling in relevant market data, content and insights to accelerate campaign launches. 
65. Uniper SE implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce time spent on manual and repetitive tasks, and help workers focus on more pressing work, such as developing enhanced solutions to speed up the energy transition.
66. Unum Group built a custom AI application to search 1.3 terabytes of data with 95% accuracy using Azure OpenAI Service. 
67. Virgin Atlantic adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot and is seeing real business benefits, including productivity improvements, enabling new ways of working.
68. Visier built a generative AI assistant that leverages Azure AI and Azure OpenAI Services to deliver workforce analytics and actionable insights for more than 50,000 customers.
69. Virtual Dental Care developed an AI application Smart Scan that leverages Azure to reduce paperwork for mobile dental clinics in schools by 75% and frees dentists to devote more time to patient care.
70. Zakladni Skola As Hlavkova adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and saw a 60% improvement in handling administrative documents, decreased lesson preparation from hours to few minutes, increased inclusivity, and enhanced communication with students and parents.

Reinventing customer engagement

We’ve seen great examples of how generative AI can automate content creation, ensuring there’s fresh and engaging materials ready to go. It personalizes customer experiences by crunching the numbers and boosting conversion rates. It makes operations smoother, helping teams launch campaigns faster. Plus, it drives innovation, crafting experiences that delight customers while lightening the load for staff. Embracing generative AI is key for organizations wanting to reinvent customer engagements, stay ahead of the game, and drive both innovation and efficiency.

71. Absa has adopted Microsoft Copilot to streamline various business processes, saving several hours on administrative tasks each day.
72. Adobe leverages Azure to streamline the customer experience, harnessing the power of the connected cloud services and creating a synergy that drives AI transformation across industries.
73. Acentra Health developed Medscribe, a web application that uses Azure OpenAI Service to generate draft letters in a secure, HIPAA-compliant enclave that responds to customer appeals for healthcare services within 24 hours, reducing the time spent on each appeal letter by 50%.
74. Alaska Airlines is using Azure, Microsoft Defender, and GitHub to ensure its passengers have a seamless journey from ticket purchase to baggage pickup and started leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to unlock more business value for its customer care and contact centers.
75. Ally Financial is using Azure OpenAI Service to reduce manual tasks for its customer service associates, freeing up time for them to engage with customers. 
76. BMW Group optimizes the customer experience connecting 13 million active users to their vehicles with the MyBMW app on Azure, which supports 450 million daily requests and 3.2 terabyte (TB) data processing.
77. Boyner has tripled its e-commerce performance using Azure, seeing a rise in customer satisfaction, engagement, conversion rate, and revenue.
78. Bradesco Bank integrated Azure to its virtual assistant, BIA, resulting in reduced response time from days to hours, improving operational efficiency and client satisfaction.
79. Capgemini Mexico integrated GitHub Copilot to support scalable AI implementations which has led to improved customer experiences and increased efficiency.
80. Capitec Bank uses Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling their AI-powered chatbot to assist customer service consultants in accessing product information more efficiently, saving significant time for employees each week.
81. Cdiscount is leveraging GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service to enhance developer efficiency, optimize product sheet categorization, and improve customer satisfaction.
82. Cemex used Azure OpenAI Service to launch Technical Xpert, an AI tool used by sales agents to provide instant access to comprehensive product and customer solution information, significantly reducing search time by 80%. 
83. Chanel elevated their client experience and improved employee efficiency by leveraging Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service for real-time translations and quality monitoring.
84. City of Burlington created two AI-powered solutions: MyFiles system using Microsoft Power Platform for building permits, and CoBy, an around-the-clock customer support assistant using Microsoft Copilot Studio.
85. City of Madrid created an AI virtual assistant with Azure OpenAI Service offering tourists accurate, real-time information and personalized responses in more than 95 languages.
86. Cognizant is making performance management more effective and meaningful with Azure Machine Learning to help clients across industries envision, build, and run innovative digital enterprises.
87. Coles Group has leveraged Azure to enhance its digital presence and improve customer engagement, rolling out new applications to its stores six times faster without disrupting workloads.
88. Commercial Bank of Dubai used Azure to upgrade its application infrastructure, improving transaction security and speed so individual customers can now open an account and start banking in about two minutes.
89. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has significantly improved productivity and customer satisfaction by integrating multiple Microsoft AI solutions, reducing task completion time from days to hours and achieving a 98% customer happiness rate.
90. Elcome uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve the customer experience, reducing response times from 24 hours to eight hours.
91. elunic developed shopfloor.GPT based on Azure OpenAI Service, leading to increased productivity for customers, saving 15 minutes per request.
92. Estée Lauder Companies is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to create closer consumer connections and increase speed to market with local relevancy.
93. First National Bank (FNB) is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to help bankers create professional, thoughtful emails in 13 native South African languages to enhance customer interactions, streamline communications, and reinforce its commitment to innovation and customer service. 
94. Flora Food Group migrated to Microsoft Fabric to offer more detailed and timely insights to its customers, enhancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.
95. Groupama deployed a virtual assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that delivers reliable, verified and verifiable information, and boasts an 80% success rate.
96. International University of Applied Sciences (IU) adopted Azure OpenAI Service to revolutionize learning with a personalized study assistant that can interact with each student just like a human would.
97. Investec is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to enhance the bank’s client relationships, estimating saving approximately 200 hours annually ultimately boosting sales productivity and delivering personalized, seamless customer experience. 
98. Linum is using Azure to train their text-to-video models faster and more efficiently without losing performance or wasting resources.
99. Lumen Technologies is redefining customer success and sales processes through the strategic use of Microsoft 365 Copilot, enhancing productivity, sales, and customer service in the global communications sector.
100. McKinsey & Company is creating an agent to reduce client onboarding process by reducing lead time by 90% and administrative work by 30%.
101. Meesho leveraged Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot to enhance customer service and software development, resulting in a 25% increase in customer satisfaction scores and 40% more traffic on customer service queries.
102. Milpark Education integrated Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio and in just four months, improved efficiency and accuracy of student support, decreasing the average resolution time by 50% and escalations by more than 30%.
103. NC Fusion chose a comprehensive Microsoft solution to make marketing engagement activities easier and accurately target the best audience segments.
104. Medgate, a telehealth subsidiary of Otto Group, developed a medical Copilot powered by Azure OpenAI Service that summarizes consultations, supports triage, and provides real-time translations. 
105. Pacific Gas & Electric built a chatbot using Microsoft Copilot Studio that saves $1.1 million annually on helpdesk support. 
106. Pockyt is using GitHub Copilot and anticipates a 500% increase in productivity in the medium to long term as they continue adapting AI and fine-tuning their software development life cycle.
107. South Australia Department for Education launched an AI-powered educational chatbot to help safeguard students from harmful content while introducing responsible AI to the classrooms.
108. Sync Labs is using Azure to create AI-powered solutions that have led to a remarkable 30x increase in revenue and a 100x expansion of their customer base.
109. Syndigo is using Azure to accelerate digital commerce for its customers by more than 40% and expand its customer base.
110. Telkomsel created a virtual assistant with Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in a leap in customer self-service interactions from 19% to 45%, and call volume dropped from 8,000 calls to 1,000 calls a day.
111. Torrens University chose to use Azure OpenAI to uplift its online learning experience, saving 20,000 hours and $2.4 million in time and resources.
112. Trusting Social integrated Azure services to launch AI-driven agents that are changing how banks function and transforming their customer’s banking experience.
113. University of California, Berkeley used Azure OpenAI Service to deploy a custom AI chatbot that supports student learning and help students with complex coursework.
114. University of Sydney created a self-serve AI platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service, to enable faculty to build custom chatbots for enhancing student onboarding, feedback, career simulation, and more.
115. Van Lanschot Kempen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce the time needed for daily tasks, freeing up time to invest in that crucial personal connection.
116. Virgin Money built an award-winning virtual assistant using Copilot Studio to help build customers’ confidence in their digital products and services.
117. VOCALLS automates over 50 million interactions per year, resulting in a 78% reduction in average handling time aside from a 120% increase in answered calls.
118. Vodafone Group is leveraging Microsoft’s AI solutions, including Azure AI Studio, OpenAI Service, Copilot, and AI Search, to achieve a 70% resolution rate for customer inquiries through digital channels and reduce call times by at least one minute.
119. Walmart is using Azure OpenAI Service to deliver a helpful and intuitive browsing experience for customers designed to serve up a curated list of the personalized items a shopper is looking for.
120. Weights & Biases created a platform which runs on Azure that allows developers to keep records, log successes and failures, and automate manual tasks.
121. World2Meet is providing better customer service and operations with a new virtual assistant powered by Azure.
122. Xavier College is modernizing its student information systems on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure to unlock powerful insights, fostering innovation and data-driven decision making.
123. Zavarovalnica Triglav implemented Dynamics 365 and Azure OpenAI Service to streamline its operations with automated responses and smart rerouting of customer enquiries.

Reshaping business processes

Transforming operations is another way generative AI is encouraging innovation and improving efficiency across various business functions. In marketing, it can create personalized content to truly engage different audiences. For supply chain management, it can predict market trends so companies can optimize their inventory levels. Human resources departments can speed up the hiring process, while financial services can use it for fraud detection and risk assessments. With generative AI, companies are not just refining their current processes, they’re also discovering exciting new growth opportunities.

124. Accelleron used Microsoft Power Platform to support numerous business applications and simplify processes for service agents and employees, resulting in the onboard of new agents in 30 minutes, compared to two days for other solutions.
125. Accenture developed an AI-powered financial advisor that leverages RISE with SAP on Azure to enhance their infrastructure and integrate financial data.
126. Atomicwork leverages Azure OpenAI to bring together three power capabilities: a conversational assistant, a modern service management system, and a workflow automation platform.
127. Blink Ops fully embraced generative AI to build the world’s first Security Automation Copilot with more than 8,000 automated workflows to help any Security/IT task through prompts.
128. Chalhoub Group is using Microsoft Fabric to modernize its data analytics and streamline its data sources into one platform, increasing agility, enhancing analytics, and accelerating processes.
129. Cineplex is developing innovative automation solutions for finance, guest services, and other departments, saving the company more than 30,000 hours a year in manual processing time.
130. ClearBank moved its services to Azure to gain scalability and efficiency, pushing out 183% more monthly system releases, gaining both scalability and efficiency.
131. Danske Statsbaner increases productivity up to 30% with help from Microsoft AI solutions.
132. Eastman implemented Microsoft Security Copilot realizing the benefits of accelerated upskilling, step-by-step guidance for response, and faster threat remediation.
133. Fast Shop migrated to Azure creating a self-service culture of access to data, eliminating delays, reducing costs, and increasing leadership satisfaction with data while providing more agility in reporting.
134. Florida Crystals adopted a value-added solution across Microsoft products including Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce telecom expenses and automate industrial process controls.
135. GHD is reinventing the request for proposal (RFP) process in construction and engineering with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
136. GovDash is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that leverages AI to streamline the entire business development lifecycle for government contracting companies using Azure OpenAI Service.
137. Grupo Bimbo is deploying Microsoft’s industrial AI technologies to modernize its manufacturing processes, optimizing production and reducing downtime, driving significant cost savings, and empowering global innovation.
138. Insight Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline business operations, realizing a 93% productivity gains in functions including sales, finance, and human resources.
139. Intesa Sanpaolo Group enhanced its cybersecurity with AI-enabled Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Security Copilot, resulting in faster threat detection, increased productivity, and reduced storage costs.
140. Kaya deployed a custom implementation of Dynamics 365 and Power BI to modernize its supply chain, leading to enhanced visibility, improved planning, and streamlined inter-department operations.
141. Lionbridge Technologies, LLC is using Azure and Azure OpenAI Service to accelerate its delivery times and improve quality, reducing project turnaround times by up to 30%.
142. LTIMindtree integrated Microsoft Security Copilot, offering automated incident response, integrated threat intelligence, and advanced threat analysis.
143. Mania de Churrasco used Azure, Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft 365 to achieve high efficiency, security, and scalability in its operations, in addition to improving its data intelligence, which indirectly participated in a 20% increase in sales year on year.
144. National Bank of Greece built an Azure-powered Document AI solution to transform its document processing, improving the bank’s accuracy to 90%. 
145. Nest Bank has revolutionized its operations by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in doubled sales and increased daily transactions from 60,000 to 80,000 showcasing the transformative impact of generative AI in the financial sector.
146. Network Rail modernized their data analytics solution with Azure, helping engineers understand data 50% faster than before and improve efficiency, passenger experiences, and safety—all while saving costs.
147. Nsure developed an AI-powered agent that uses Copilot Studio and Power Automate to reduce manual processing time by 60% while also reducing associated costs by 50%.
148. Oncoclínicas implemented Azure to transform its entire data ecosystem with a web portal and mobile application that performs all image processing and storage.
149. Pacífico Seguros has adopted Microsoft Security Copilot to optimize its security operations and anticipate and neutralize threats more efficiently and effectively.
150. Parexel adopted Azure Databricks and Power BI, achieving an 85% reduction in data engineering tooling costs, a 30% increase in staff efficiency, and a 70% reduction in time to market for data product delivery.
151. Paysafe used Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meetings, information management, and document creation, addressing language barriers, eliminating time-consuming tasks, and boosting creativity along the way.
152. Planted is integrating Azure OpenAI Service to manage everyday tasks more efficiently and facilitate the search for information for innovative process development.
153. Presidio realized dramatic productivity gains saving 1,200 hours per month on average for the employees using Microsoft 365 Copilot and created 70 new business opportunities.
154. Qatar Charity used Copilot Studio to increase its call center efficiency, reducing average handle time by 30%, increased customer satisfaction by 25%, and achieved a 40% reduction in IT maintenance costs.
155. Saphyre uses Azure and AI to provide an intelligent cloud-based solution that automates and streamlines financial trading workflows around client and counterparty life cycle management, reducing manual efforts by 75%. 
156. Swiss International Air Lines migrated and modernized with Azure, achieving up to 30% cost savings, a remarkable boost in platform stability along with enhanced security visibility.
157. ZEISS Group uses Microsoft Fabric to create a secure and trusted data supply chain that can be shared effortlessly across a range of business units.
158. ZF Group builds manufacturing efficiency with more than 25,000 apps and 37,000 unique active users on Microsoft Power Platform.

Bending the curve on innovation

Generative AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development. It’s helping companies come up with new ideas, design prototypes, and iterate quickly, cutting down the time it takes to get to market. In the automotive industry, it’s designing more efficient vehicles, while in pharmaceuticals, it’s crafting new drug molecules, slashing years off research and development (R&D) times. In education, it transforms how students learn and achieve their goals. Here are more examples of how companies are embracing generative AI to shape the future of innovation.

159. Air India has incorporated Microsoft 365 Copilot into multiple departments, unlocking a new realm of operational insights that not only provides critical data on flight punctuality and operational hurdles, but also empowers proactive, collaborative decision making.
160. Agnostic Intelligence deployed Azure OpenAI Service to eliminate time-consuming tasks, saving users up to 80% of their time, and enabling IT managers to focus on innovation and quality assurance.
161. Albert Heijn is using Azure OpenAI Service for everything from customer personalization to demand forecast and food waste projects, making it easier for its customers to change their lifestyle.
162. Amgen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to boost productivity and has the potential to speed up drug development and support advancements in their business processes.
163. APEC leverages Azure and deep neural network algorithms to develop an app that enables healthcare providers to capture retinal images, increasing the accuracy to identify Retinopathy of Prematurity (RoP) to 90%.
164. ASOS is using Azure AI Studio to help customers discover new looks with genuine shopping insights, personalized conversations, naturalism, and even humor to enliven the shopping journey.
165. Auburn University is incorporating Microsoft Copilot to promote AI literacy, accessibility, and collaboration, with the aim to expand educational and economic opportunities for its entire academic community with AI-centric tools.
166. B3 launched an AI assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that aids 10,000 users a day to answer Brazilians’ questions about how to start investing.
167. Basecamp Research aims to build the world’s largest database of national biodiversity and apply AI and machine learning to advance bioscience.
168. Bayer is using Microsoft Copilot to contribute to feeding a growing global population and helping people lead healthier, disease-free lives.
169. Brembo leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to develop ALCHEMIX, a solution to generate innovative compounds for its brake pads, drastically reducing the development time of new compounds from days to mere minutes.
170. Canary Speech can now train new vocal models in as little as two months and handle millions of transactions per month with Azure. 
171. CapitaLand simplified internal processes increasing efficiency to more than 10,000 man-days saved per year and deployed Azure OpenAI Service to build the first AI hospitality chatbot for its lodging business.
172. Cassidy is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance efficiency across various industries, supporting more than 10,000 companies.
173. Coca-Cola is implementing Azure OpenAI Service to develop innovative generative AI use cases across various business functions, including testing how Microsoft 365 Copilot could help improve workplace productivity.
174. Denso is developing “human-like” robots using Azure OpenAI Service as the brain to help robots and humans work together through dialogue.
175. eFishery is using Azure OpenAI for farmers to get the data and insights on fish and shrimp farming, including more precise feeding and water quality monitoring.
176. EY developed an application that automatically matches and clears incoming payments in SAP, resulting in an increase from 30% to 80% in automatically cleared payments and 95% matched payments, with estimated annual time savings of 230,000 hours globally.
177. FIDO is using Azure OpenAI Service to develop an AI tool that uses sound to pinpoint leaky pipes, saving precious drinking water. 
178. Georgia Tech is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance the electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, achieving rapid data classification and predictive modeling, highlighting the reliability of networked chargers over non-networked ones.
179. GigXR developed a solution to create the intelligence for specific AI patients using Azure OpenAI Service and other Azure services.
180. GoTo Group is significantly enhancing productivity and code quality across its engineering teams by adopting GitHub Copilot, saving over seven hours per week and achieved a 30% code acceptance rate.
181. GovTech used Azure OpenAI Service to create LaunchPad, sparking more than 400 ideas and 20 prototypes, laying the foundation for the government to harness the power of generative AI.
182. H&R Block is using Azure AI Studio and Azure OpenAI Service to build a new solution that provides real-time, reliable tax filing assistance.
183. Haut.AI provides skin care companies and retailers with customizable, AI-based skin diagnostic tools developed with the help of Microsoft AI.
184. Helfie is building a solution that caters to healthcare providers who can arm their patients with an application to more quickly and accurately access the care they need.
185. Hitachi will implement Azure Open AI Service, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and GitHub Copilot to create innovative solutions for the energy, mobility, and other industries.
186. Icertis is providing AI-based tools that will recognize contract language and then build algorithms to automatically choose the right approach based on the content of the contract.
187. ITOCHU is using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Studio to evolve its data analytics dashboard into a service that provides immediate recommendations by automatically creating evidence-based product proposals.
188. IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU) is using the power of Azure OpenAI Service to develop Syntea, an AI avatar integrated into Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, making learning more personalized, autonomous, and flexible.
189. Khan Academy has partnered with Microsoft to bring time-saving and lesson-enhancing AI tools to millions of educators.
190. Lufthansa Group developed an animated 3D avatar called Digital Hangar to help guide passengers from initial travel inspiration to flight booking through an exchange with an avatar in natural language.
191. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is using Azure OpenAI Service to help accelerate digital innovation in power plants.
192. Molslinjen has created an AI analytics toolbox that has reduced fuel emissions, improved customer satisfaction, and brought in millions of additional revenue.
193. Novo Nordisk recently published initial results with predictive AI models for advanced risk detection in cardiovascular diseases, including an algorithm that can predict patients’ cardiovascular risk better than the best clinical standards. 
194. Paige.AI​ is using AI and Azure to accelerate cancer diagnoses with data from millions of images.
195. Pets at Home created an agent to help its retail fraud detection team investigate suspicious transactions.  
196. Plan Heal is using Microsoft AI to create solutions that enable patients to monitor and report health metrics so care providers can better serve them.
197. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is testing a new battery material that was found in a matter of weeks, not years, as part of a collaboration with Microsoft.
198. Rijksmuseum is harnessing the power of Copilot to make art accessible at scale by joining forces with Microsoft to improve and expand the art experience for blind and low-vision community members.
199. Royal National Institute of Blind People is using Azure AI Services to develop an AI-based solution that quickly and accurately converts letters to braille, audio, and large print formats.
200. Schneider Electric provides productivity-enhancing and energy efficiency solutions and is using a whole suite of AI tools to hasten its own innovation and that of its customers.
201. SPAR ICS created an award-winning, AI-enabled demand forecasting system achieving 90% inventory prediction accuracy.
202. Suzuki Motor Corporation is adopting Azure OpenAI Service for data security, driving company-wide use with five multipurpose apps.
203. Tecnológico de Monterrey created a generative AI-powered ecosystem built on Azure OpenAI Service with the goal to personalize education based on the students’ needs, improve the learning process, boost teachers’ creativity and save time on tedious tasks.
204. TomTom is using Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service to revolutionize the driver experience.
205. Unilever is partnering with Microsoft to identify new digital capabilities to drive product innovation forward, from unlocking the secrets of our skin’s microbiome to reducing the carbon footprint of a multibillion-dollar business.
206. Unity used Azure OpenAI Service to build Muse Chat, an AI assistant that can guide creators through common questions and help troubleshoot issues to make game development easier.
207. University of South Florida is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to alleviate the burden of repetitive, time-consuming tasks so faculty and staff can spend this time creatively solving problems, conducting critical research, establishing stronger relationships with peers and students, and using their expertise to forge new, innovative paths. 
208. Visma has developed new code with GitHub Copilot, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Visual Studio, as much as 50% faster, contributing to increased customer retention, faster time to market, and increased revenue.
209. Wallenius Wilhelmsen is implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot and using Microsoft Viva to drive sustainable adoption, streamlining processes, empowering better decision making, and cultivating a culture of innovation and inclusion.
210. Wipro is committed to delivering value to customers faster and improving the outcomes across the business by investing $1 billion in AI and training 200,000 employees on generative AI principles with Microsoft Copilot.

Next steps for AI transformation

Business Opportunity of AI

Get the study

• Check out the top 5 AI trends to watch from IDC and Microsoft.
• Explore Microsoft AI solutions.
• Assess your AI readiness.
• Build a strategic plan for AI.

The post How real-world businesses are transforming with AI — with 252 new stories appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

To help guide organizations on their AI transformation journey, Microsoft recently commissioned a new study through IDC, The Business Opportunity of AI. IDC’s findings show that when organizations truly commit to and invest in AI, the return on investment (ROI) potential grows significantly.

According to IDC, the study’s findings reflect a tipping point as AI gains momentum across industries. As companies worldwide go deeper with AI, Microsoft customers continue to deploy innovative new solutions and discover how tools like Copilot can transform their day-to-day work. In telecommunications, Lumen Technologies estimates Copilot is saving sellers an average of four hours a week, equating to $50 million annually. In healthcare, Chi Mei Medical Center doctors now spend 15 minutes instead of an hour writing medical reports, and nurses can document patient information in under five minutes. Pharmacists are now able to double the number of patients they see per day. In retail, AI models help Coles predict the flow of 20,000 stock-keeping units to 850 stores with remarkable accuracy, generating 1.6 billion predictions daily.

IDC’s 2024 top 5 trends for AI

IDC’s findings align with what Microsoft is seeing as we work with companies across industries to deploy AI. We’ve highlighted more than 200 of our top AI customer stories to show a sampling of how AI is already driving impact today. Below is a look at the top trends we’re seeing in IDC’s study and the impact of those trends on organizations working with AI today.

#1 Enhanced productivity has become table stakes. Employee productivity is the No. 1 business outcome that companies are trying to achieve with AI. The study shows that 92% of AI users surveyed are using AI for productivity, and 43% say productivity use cases have provided the greatest ROI. While productivity is a top goal, generative AI use cases that are close behind include customer engagement, topline growth, cost management and product or service innovation — and nearly half of the companies surveyed expect AI to have a high degree of impact across all those areas over the next 24 months.

Customer snapshot:

At the global marketing and advertising agency dentsu, employees are already saving 15 to 30 minutes a day using Copilot for tasks such as summarizing chats, generating presentations and building executive summaries.

“Copilot has transformed the way we deliver creative concepts to our clients, enabling real-time collaboration. Agility, security and uniqueness are crucial, but our goal is to lead this transformation company-wide, from top to bottom.”

— Takuya Kodama, Business Strategy Manager at dentsu

#2 Companies are gravitating to more advanced AI solutions. In the next 24 months, more companies expect to build custom AI solutions tailored directly to industry needs and business processes, including custom copilots and AI agents. This shows a growing maturity in AI fluency as companies realize the value of out-of-the-box use cases and expand to more advanced scenarios.

Customer snapshot:

Siemens has developed the Siemens Industrial Copilot, which has eased the challenges caused by increasing complexity and labor shortages for dozens of customers in different industries.

“In full appreciation of GenAI’s transformational potential, it’s important to remember that production does not have an ‘undo’ button. It takes diligence and effort to mature AI to industrial-grade quality. The Siemens Industrial Copilot for Engineering significantly eases our customers’ workload and addresses the pressing challenges of skill shortages and increasing complexity in industrial automation. This AI-powered solution is a game-changer for our industry with over 50 customers already using it to boost efficiency and tackle labor shortages.”

— Boris Scharinger, AI Strategist at Siemens Digital Industries

#3 Generative AI adoption and value is growing across industries. Even though it is relatively new to the market, generative AI adoption is rapidly expanding — 75% of respondents report current usage up from 55% in 2023. The ROI of generative AI is highest in Financial Services, followed by Media & Telco, Mobility, Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods, Energy, Manufacturing, Healthcare and Education. Overall, generative AI is generating higher ROI across industries.

Customer snapshot:

Providence has leveraged AI to extend and enhance patient care, streamline processes and workflows and improve the effectiveness of caregivers.

“Whether we’re partnering with organizations on the leading edge of this technology — like Microsoft — and building bespoke solutions through Azure OpenAI Service, advancing clinical research to help cancer patients receive personalized and precise treatments faster, or ‘hitting the easy button’ and adopting established technologies like Microsoft 365 Copilot or DAX Copilot, we have successfully stayed on the forefront of this tech revolution. For example, physicians who use DAX Copilot save an average of 5.33 minutes per visit, and 80% of physicians have reported lower cognitive burden after using DAX Copilot.”

— Sarah Vaezy, EVP, Chief Strategy and Digital Officer at Providence

#4 AI leaders are seeing greater returns and accelerated innovation. While companies using generative AI are averaging $3.7x ROI, the top leaders using generative AI are realizing significantly higher returns, with an average ROI of $10.3. In addition to the enhanced business value, leaders are also on an accelerated path to build and implement new solutions — 29% of leaders implement AI in less than 3 months versus 6% of companies in the laggard category.

Customer snapshot:

Södra is an international forest industry group that processes forest products from 52,000 owners into renewable, climate-smart products for international market. Every day Södra collects and interprets climate impact data to make thousands of decisions for every part of the value chain.

“With innovative AI technology from Microsoft, our business experts and data scientists have been able to help make us more sustainable while also improving revenue significantly.”

— Cristian Brolin, Chief Digital Officer at Södra

#5 Looking ahead: Skilling remains a top challenge. Thirty percent of respondents indicated a lack of specialized AI skills in-house, and 26 percent say they lack employees with the skills needed to learn and work with AI. This dovetails with findings from the Microsoft and LinkedIn 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, which found that 55 percent of business leaders are concerned about having enough skilled talent to fill roles.

That is why over the past year we have helped train and certify over 14 million people in more than 200 countries in digital skills. And we are committed to working in partnership with governments, educational institutions, industry and civil society to help millions more learn to use AI.

Customer snapshot:

The University of South Florida (USF) is partnering with Microsoft to streamline processes and enhance innovation for all aspects of university operations with AI.

“We’re giving students a leg up to do amazing things with AI as part of tomorrow’s workforce. Our focus on generative AI not only drives operational efficiency but also empowers our community to unlock new levels of creativity and impact, further positioning USF as a leader in AI adoption, which includes being among the first universities in the nation to form a college dedicated to AI, cybersecurity and computing.”

— Sidney Fernandes, CIO & VP of Digital Experiences at University of South Florida

AI’s growing economic impact

While companies today are largely implementing out-of-the-box generative AI solutions and seeing significant ROI, more than half of those surveyed expect to build custom industry and line-of-business applications in the next 24 months — demonstrating that today’s ROI is quickly becoming tomorrow’s competitive edge.

“We are at an inflection point of autonomous agent development and are beginning an evolution from using just off-the-shelf assistants and copilots that support knowledge discovery and content generation to custom AI agents to execute complex, multistep workflows across a digital world,” says Ritu Jyoti, GVP/GM, AI and Data Research at IDC. “With responsible technology usage and workplace transformation, IDC predicts that business spending to adopt AI will have a cumulative global economic impact of $19.9 trillion through 2030 and drive 3.5% of global GDP in 2030.”

Key findings from IDC’s The Business Opportunity of AI study include:

• Generative AI usage jumped from 55% in 2023 to 75% in 2024.
• For every $1 a company invests in generative AI, the ROI is $3.7x.
• The top leaders using generative AI are realizing an ROI of $10.3.
• On average, AI deployments are taking less than 8 months and organizations are realizing value within 13 months.
• Within 24 months, most organizations plan to expand beyond pre-built AI solutions to advanced AI workloads that are customized or custom-built.
• The ROI of generative AI is highest in Financial Services, followed by Media & Telco, Mobility, Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods, Energy, Manufacturing, Healthcare and Education.
• 43% say productivity use cases have provided the greatest ROI.
• The primary way that organizations are monetizing AI today is through productivity use cases. In the next 24 months, a greater focus will be placed on functional and industry use cases.
• The top barrier when implementing AI is the lack of both technical and day-to-day AI skills.

Learn how to fuel your AI journey

IDC’s study, which included more than 4,000 business leaders and AI decision-makers around the world, also identifies the top barriers organizations face when implementing AI. As businesses integrate new solutions, they navigate important considerations such as data privacy, responsible use and the need for investment in both technology and skills.

No matter where you are in your cloud and AI transformation journey, Microsoft can help. To learn more about how customers across industries are shaping their AI transformation with Microsoft, please visit Microsoft’s AI in Action page. For more on how to get started in your AI transformation journey, visit Microsoft AI.

The post IDC’s 2024 AI opportunity study: Top five AI trends to watch appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

For years, we’ve understood that the industry trusts Gartner Magic Quadrant reports to provide a holistic review of cloud providers’ capabilities. We’re pleased by this placement in the Gartner report as we continue to prioritize investments to make Azure the global cloud computing platform powering transformation and growth—enabling new possibilities for organizations to embrace the latest technologies and to advance at a rapid pace. With highly secure, state-of-the-art Azure datacenters designed with data residency in mind, Azure hosts one of the most advanced supercomputers in the world.

The Gartner report validates our commitment to empowering customers to reach new heights. We are proud of our purpose-built cloud infrastructure for the era of AI, one that is adaptive across on-prem, multicloud and edge environments, for our complete development platform with advanced tools to accelerate developer productivity, for our AI services and tools to empower innovation, and for our extensive partnerships across a wide range of industry leaders to give customers the choices they desire.

We are honored for this recognition and will continue to build the future together with our customers, no matter where they are in the cloud journey.

Purpose-built cloud infrastructure for the era of AI

We continue to build our AI infrastructure in close collaboration with silicon providers and industry leaders, incorporating the latest innovations in software, power, models, and silicon. Azure works closely with NVIDIA to provide NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core (GPU) graphics processing unit-based virtual machines (VMs) for mid to large-scale AI workloads. We’ve also expanded our partnership with AMD, enabling our customers with choices to meet their unique business needs. These investments have allowed Azure to pioneer performance for AI supercomputing in the cloud and have consistently ranked us as the number one cloud in the top 500 of the world’s supercomputers.

With these additions to the Azure infrastructure hardware portfolio, our platform enables us to deliver the best performance and efficiency across all workloads.

An adaptive cloud across on-prem, multicloud and edge environments

The cloud is evolving to support customer workloads wherever they’re needed. We realize cloud migration is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and that’s why we’re committed to meeting customers where they are in their cloud journey. With Azure you have an adaptive cloud that enables you to thrive in dynamic environments by unifying siloed teams, distributed sites, and sprawling systems into single operations, application, and data model in Azure. 

Azure Arc helps customers implement their adaptive cloud strategies, providing a bridge that extends the Azure platform and enables them to build applications and services across datacenters, at the edge, and in multicloud environments. Through a portfolio of services, tools, and infrastructure, organizations can take advantage of Azure services within a single control plane. And with the recent general availability of VMware vSphere enabled by Azure Arc that brings together Azure and the VMware vSphere infrastructure, VMware administrators can empower their developers to use Azure technologies with their existing server-based workloads and new Kubernetes workloads all from Azure.

Every day, cloud administrators and IT professionals are being asked to do more. We consistently hear from customers they’re tasked with a wider range of operations; they are required to collaborate with more users, and support more complex needs to deliver on increasing customer demand—all while integrating more workloads into their cloud environment. To support our customers, we recently launched the public preview of Microsoft Copilot for Azure, a new solution built into Azure that will help simplify how they design, operate, or troubleshoot apps and infrastructure from cloud to edge.

One location to build, test, and deploy AI innovations securely

We’re only just starting to understand the potential of generative AI and how it will transform the way we live and work. Developers are at the heart of this new wave of innovation, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. With a cloud-first approach developers spend less time on maintaining apps and infrastructure and more time on innovating and ideating, reducing the time to market. What’s more, developers can build with confidence, knowing that Azure has built-in tools and technologies to help ensure a secure and responsible approach from development to deployment.

The public preview of Azure AI Studio gives developers everything they need to build, test, and deploy AI innovations in one convenient location: cutting-edge models, data integration for retrieval augmented generation (RAG), intelligent search capabilities, full-lifecycle model management, and content safety. Azure AI Content Safety is available in Azure AI Studio so developers can easily evaluate model responses all in one unified development platform to quickly and efficiently detect offensive or inappropriate content in text and images, Customers like Heineken, Thread, Moveworks, Manulife , and so many more are putting Azure AI technologies to work for their businesses and their own customers and employees.

Integrated, AI-based tools to help developers innovate efficiently

The integration of AI-based tools in the development cycle is not just accelerating innovation, but also enabling developers to spend more time on strategic, meaningful work, and less time on tasks like debugging and infrastructure management. With Microsoft DevBox, developers can streamline development with secure, ready-to-code workstations in the cloud, leveraging self-service access to high-performance, cloud-based workstations preconfigured and ready-to-code for specific projects. GitHub Copilot uses AI technology to suggest code in the editor maximizing time spent on business logic over boilerplate, with developers reporting they can complete tasks up to 55% faster and feel up to 88% more productive.

With tools that are designed to work seamlessly together, Microsoft’s complete development platform stack empowers developers with flexible solutions, so they can build next-gen apps productively and securely, where they want. GitHub integrates with Azure to provide a continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipeline for developers, and with GitHub Enterprise they can be more efficient with up to 75% improvement in time spent managing tools and code infrastructure. Customers like GM are collaborating with Microsoft to help speed up innovation within their organization, test and learn, and create agile environments using Microsoft development platforms such as GitHub, Visual Studio and Microsoft DevBox. 

Create differentiated AI experiences with cloud-native apps

Azure’s cloud-native platform is the best place to run and scale applications while seamlessly embedding Azure’s native AI services. Azure gives developers the choice between control and flexibility, with complete focus on productivity regardless of what option is chosen. Azure App Service allows developers to host .NET, Java, Node.js, and Python web apps and APIs in a fully managed Azure service. Azure takes care of all the infrastructure management like high availability, load balancing, and autoscaling enabling developers to accelerate app development to production up to 50 percent with fully-managed Azure App Service. Developers can further streamline the development process for faster time to market with cloud-based tools and services including Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), GitHub Enterprise and Advanced Security, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Cognitive Services. And with Microsoft Copilot for Azure, developers have an AI companion to help them design, operate, optimize, and troubleshoot everyday tasks with AKS and Kubernetes. Customers such as Sapiens have leveraged the synergy between cloud-native technologies and AI to accelerate their digital transformation and deliver more value to their end users with intelligent apps.

Building the future together

We are dedicated to empowering our customers with technology that unlocks limitless innovation, helping them wherever they are on their technology journey. We use the decades of experience we have in migrating Microsoft’s on-premises workloads to the cloud, to inform how we make it easier for customers and partners to use the cloud—from how we build products, to the real-world migration guidance we provide. It’s why 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies trust Azure with their business on Azure. Customers like AT&T rely on Azure AI for Enterprise Chat GPT and better knowledge mining and the World Bank who is using Azure cloud-based solution to centralized monitoring, performance, resource consumption, and security management across clouds, all in a single package.

And we are not doing this alone. We have a vast global partner network and a growing number of technology partnerships across a wide range of industry leaders such as, Databricks, Netapp, NVIDIA, Oracle, OpenAI, SAP, Snowflake, VMware, and others. We recently announced a partnership to bring Oracle Database Services into Azure to help maximize efficiency and resiliency for our mutual customers’ businesses. Our investments with SAP continue to grow, enhancing performance and resilience for mission critical workloads with new powerful infrastructure options for our SAP customers such as the Azure M-series Mv3 family, the next generation of memory optimized virtual machines (VMs). As we expand partnerships with OpenAI, Meta and Hugging Face, we create more opportunities for organizations and developers to build generative AI experiences, offering the most comprehensive selection of frontier, open and commercial models.

As Microsoft continues to innovate at the speed of AI, Azure is at the foundation of all our innovation, powering all aspects of the Microsoft Cloud and our copilots. Azure makes it possible for organizations to securely embrace the latest technologies and leverage them to create new ones. We endlessly optimize our infrastructure to bring faster, secure, reliable, and more sustainable computing power, so that our customers and partners can build with confidence. Linked by one of the largest interconnected networks on the planet, we’re providing unprecedented scalability, low latency, data residency, and high availability to our customers around the world. Azure provides the cloud platform wherever you are with highly secure, state-of the art Azure datacenters, offering 60+ regions—more than any other cloud provider.

With Azure, customers can trust they are on a secure and well-managed foundation to utilize the latest advancements in AI and cloud-native services, safely and responsibly, to create today’s solutions and tomorrow’s breakthroughs. We are dedicated to the success of our customers and partners, and continue to invest in ways that ensure Azure is the leading choice for customers, big and small around the globe.

Discover resources for your cloud journey

• Learn more about Azure Migrate and Modernize and Azure Innovate and how they can help you from migration to AI innovation.
• Check out the new and free Azure Migrate application and code assessment feature to save on application migrations.
• Find out how to take your AI ambitions from ideation to reality with Azure. 
• For the latest Azure innovations watch our Ignite 2023 sessions on demand.

Disclaimer: 

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services, David Wright, Dennis Smith, and 4 more, 4 December 2023.

The report was previously known as Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services (2020-2022) and Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service till 2019. 

Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request here.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 

The post Microsoft named a Leader in 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Strategic Cloud Platform Services (SCPS) appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

To help companies understand the opportunities AI can unlock, Microsoft commissioned a study through IDC that provides unique insights into how AI is being used to drive economic impact for organizations. IDC surveyed over 2,000 business leaders and decision makers from around the world who are responsible for bringing AI transformation to life within their organizations. The study, which builds on the results from Microsoft’s Work Trend Index focused on workplace productivity, examines how companies are monetizing their AI investments, from generating new revenue streams to delivering differentiated customer experiences, to modernizing internal processes. Key findings from this study show*: 

• 71% of respondents say their companies are already using AI 
• 92% of AI deployments are taking 12 months or less 
• Organizations are realizing a return on their AI investments within 14 months 
• For every $1 a company invests in AI, it is realizing an average return of $3.5X  
• 52% report that a lack of skilled workers is their biggest barrier to implement and scale AI   

The study illustrates that AI has demonstrable business value, and we are seeing this surface in core use cases within areas like employee experience, customer engagement and internal business processes, and how AI can help bend the curve on innovation. With generative AI, that value gets exponentially greater, as we’ve seen in the past year with generative AI technologies from OpenAI such as ChatGPT.  

“IDC is projecting that generative AI will add nearly $10 trillion to global GDP over the next 10 years.** Calculating the value of new investments in GenAI requires building the business case by simulating potential cost and responsible value realization,” said Ritu Jyoti, Group Vice President AI and Automation for IDC.    

This wave of innovation has accelerated the pace of AI adoption in ways that are changing and augmenting how we work and live, and Microsoft customers are increasingly embracing AI opportunities for business transformation. 

Enrich employee experiences: Employees in every industry are dealing with an increasing volume of digital debt and administrative burdens that slow down productivity and get in the way of meaningful work. To address this challenge, AI is being used to bring together unstructured data like social media, product details and customer engagement to better tailor communications, enable more intelligent insights and solve problems faster. Additionally, employees are using Azure OpenAI and Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft 365 to augment their copywriting capabilities for things like presentations, website content, case studies, blogs, press releases, search engine optimization and digital art.  

Reinvent customer engagement: With the heavy competition for customer acquisitions and retention, organizations have struggled to keep pace with the increasing amount of customer signals, and to deliver personalized service to customers in real-time. To drive greater customer loyalty, organizations are applying the AI capabilities of Dynamics 365 in contact centers for real-time assistance and guidance on suggested responses. Employees are also using AI to summarize conversations, guide on next steps, and get coaching feedback. Azure-powered virtual assistants are being used to deliver all kinds of hyper-personalized experiences across different verticals like healthcare for processing claims and entertainment for sports fans. Salespeople are using Viva Sales to help nurture leads and close deals. 

Reshape business processes: Companies have pockets of valuable information scattered throughout their organization that can be difficult for employees to locate and use holistically. By finding and making connections across this information, AI can surface integrated insights that help to predict and accelerate workloads. This is particularly evident in cybersecurity, where employees are using AI insights to identify bad actors more quickly and better protect both employees and intellectual property. AI is also being used in manufacturing and operations, to create digital replicas of their supply chain environments so they can run simulations and optimize workflow management, resulting in enhanced supply chain efficiency.  

Bend the curve on innovation: This is an exciting concept as companies in every industry look to regain an edge. Organizations can deploy AI to stay ahead of changing business dynamics, and to exceed customer expectations. By not having to modernize every underlying system to achieve these results, and by putting AI directly in the hands of developers with GitHub Copilot, organizations can operate with agility and accelerate innovation.  Teams can leverage AI to help scale production and speed to market while being able to focus on higher-value activities.  

IDC survey data confirms that businesses are eager to adopt AI technology, with 71% of survey respondents currently using AI tools in their organizations, and 22% planning to do so within the next 12 months. However, even with this momentum and positive outlook for what AI can help them achieve, organizations are facing challenges when it comes to implementation. A shortage of skilled employees is holding companies back from accelerating their AI-based innovations, with 52 percent of those surveyed reporting a lack of skilled workers needed to implement and scale AI initiatives across business functions as the top blocker.  

To help address the skilling gap, Microsoft has already engaged over 6 million people globally in learning activities in the last 12 months and has ambitions to provide skills to everyone using our AI technology. We have also empowered our ecosystem of more than 400,000 partners worldwide with the skills needed to implement AI technology responsibly and to deliver greater customer value.    

No matter where you are in your cloud and AI transformation journey, Microsoft can help. To learn more about how customers across industries are shaping their AI transformation with Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Cloud blog which shares real-world examples of business impact being driven by AI, as well as resources and skilling opportunities you can use to build your readiness to lead the era of AI.  

About the study
The IDC study, commissioned by Microsoft, is based on results from 2,109 enterprise organizations totaling more than 13 million employees worldwide across 16 countries globally. Through the questionnaire, respondents were identified as the decision maker for AI within their organization.   

Source: *IDC Infographic, sponsored by Microsoft, The Business Opportunity of AI, IDC #US51315823, November 2023. **Generative Artificial Intelligence: A New Chapter for Enterprise Business Applications, IDC Perspective #US50471523, March 2023. 

The post New study validates the business value and opportunity of AI appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Throughout history, the right tool, in the right hands has always sparked transformation. From moving water across hundreds of miles via ancient aqueducts to putting the world’s knowledge at our fingertips with the advent of smartphones, these tools change our lives. And now we’re seeing the potential of the next great shift: the new era of AI.

This shift isn’t coming a few years down the road, or even in a few months. Your opportunity to lead in this new era of AI is right now. It’s one of the most exciting shifts of our generation, and we’re just starting to see the impact.

We believe leaders will see this impact take shape across three key dimensions—for individuals, for business functions, and for entire industries.

Transforming productivity for every individual

AI is fundamentally changing how we as individuals relate to and benefit from technology. Our own natural language is now the key to unlocking value—we think of it as having a copilot to navigate any task.

A copilot is an AI-driven partner guided by an individual to amplify creativity and accelerate results. As tasks get more complex, a copilot can deliver even greater value. But an individual is always in control—it’s a copilot, not an autopilot. Individuals determine, guide, and approve the output.

We recently announced our vision for Microsoft Copilot, a digital companion for your whole life. And to be your AI assistant at work, Microsoft 365 Copilot works across calendars, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more. It’s already being used by tens of thousands of enterprise users in our Early Access Program including customers at companies like Visa, General Motors, KPMG, and Lumen Technologies, and will be generally available on November 1, 2023.

And we know productivity looks different for specialized roles, like developers. With GitHub Copilot, developers can get guidance and suggested code right in line, simply by describing what they want using natural language. At General Motors, developers are using GitHub Copilot to get up to speed faster, so they can start collaborating with more seasoned peers right away. New developers don’t have to spend as much time on structure or formatting—instead, they can focus on adding value and contributing check-ins.

In today’s world, we have access to more data and information than ever before. But how do we make sense of it all? That’s where AI can help. When we don’t need to spend as much cognitive energy on figuring out what happened in that meeting, getting caught up on email, or finding that document from that chat last week, we can spend more time on the substance of our work.

Using AI effectively means augmenting human capability and accelerating everyone’s innate ingenuity. For individuals, AI clears the space for human creativity to flourish. 

Transforming work with Microsoft Copilot

Designed to help you be more productive, spark your creativity, and to meet the everyday needs of your business.

Explore AI solutions

Shifting what success looks like for every role and function 

Nearly every leader is looking to optimize their core business functions. They’re looking for cost savings, increased efficiency, modernized operations, topline revenue growth, or market growth. Today, AI is becoming the catalyst that can accelerate these outcomes across every business role and function.

Take sales, for example. Sales leaders have many highly specific priorities, including optimizing seller time with customers, ensuring data quality and pipeline hygiene, and shortening the sales cycle so they can deliver revenue faster. However, traditional sales technology often gets in the way. Sellers are juggling highly manual and disjoined processes spanning email, spreadsheets, and customer relationship management (CRM) software. It’s no wonder that 78 percent of sellers would be happy to have some help from AI to make everyday tasks easier.¹

With Microsoft Sales Copilot, we’re already seeing organizations like global security services provider Securitas empower their sellers to spend less time on data entry and focus more of their energy on customers. Philip Eklund, Vice President of Client Engagement Platform at Securitas, says, “Opportunity summary in Microsoft Sales Copilot is a huge and important leap in our direction to save more time for our sales personnel.”

Let’s consider another critical business function: security. For security professionals, AI is the game-changer we’ve been waiting for. It’s not just about defense, it’s about taking the initiative, learning from the environment, and adapting faster than the threats can evolve. Asset management firm Bridgewater, one of the organizations currently previewing Microsoft Security Copilot, claims that this leap forward is so momentous that security operations from 2021 may seem “prehistoric” by December 2024.

These core business functions are undergoing a fundamental shift, with AI redefining what success looks like and how organizations can deliver value.

Envisioning a new future for every industry

Every industry is facing unique challenges, opportunities, pressures, and constraints, and the effects of generative AI will be felt in radically different ways depending on whether you’re in the energy sector, financial services, manufacturing, or any other industry. But one thing is clear—the potential for impact is incredible.

This potential is perhaps most evident when we consider healthcare. AI can help reinvent care delivery with more personalized patient experiences, increase the productivity and efficiency of care practitioners to address industry challenges like clinician burnout, and unlock predictive insights that help to improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare services. We’re proud to partner with industry leaders like Epic to bring together Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare with Epic’s deep healthcare expertise. Capabilities like Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Nuance DAX Copilot, and our partnership with Epic are revolutionary for the healthcare industry—take a look at how our AI-powered solutions can help clinicians reduce administrative burden and enable them to spend more time focused on direct patient care.

Another industry in which AI will have an incredible impact is retail—in fact, McKinsey estimates that generative AI could deliver increased revenue of up to $660 billion each year for the retail and consumer packaged goods sectors through increased revenue, greater customer loyalty, or operational efficiencies.² We’ll see this transformation take shape with more personalized customer experiences, conversational commerce, analytics, customer service, more productive store associates, and new supply chain efficiencies, just to name a few.

One retail use case gaining traction is frictionless shopping. Facing narrow profit margins and a labor shortage impacting much of the world, retailers are looking for ways to drive down operational costs while continuing to delight their customers—and AI is putting autonomous, frictionless shopping experiences within reach for retailers large and small. Choice Market, a small but growing convenience chain, is using Microsoft Cloud for Retail to better understand its customers so they can offer the right product, at the right price, in the right place—including their best-selling breakfast burrito.

Our responsibility to shape the future together

As we transform productivity for every individual, shift the definition of success for every role and function, and envision new futures for radically different industries, considering AI safety is not an optional feature. It’s a requirement, and it can’t be an afterthought. 

That’s why Microsoft is committed to responsible AI, an approach to developing, assessing, deploying, and using AI systems in a way that aligns with human values and does not cause harm to individuals, communities, or society. We are committed to sharing our learnings around responsible AI as we’ve developed and deployed our own AI solutions, and offering tools and resources to help our customers approach AI responsibly for their own organizations.

And as you chart your path in this new era of AI, we are committed to supporting you with guidance, resources, and information you can use.

We’ve worked with customers, industry experts, and Microsoft leaders to identify five critical factors for AI success that you should consider as your organization looks to the future. You can also explore some of the top use cases we’ve seen deliver impact across industries, as inspiration for how you can get started.

The opportunity before all of us to shape this new era of AI is simply extraordinary, and it’s one of the most significant shifts of our generation. We’re excited to partner with you on this journey.  

Sources

¹ How Sellers Can Use AI to Better Engage with Customers

² The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier, McKinsey Digital

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