{"id":16314,"date":"2024-08-29T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=16314"},"modified":"2024-09-19T11:58:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-19T18:58:32","slug":"rethinking-device-management-internally-at-microsoft-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/rethinking-device-management-internally-at-microsoft-with-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking device management internally at Microsoft with AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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At Microsoft, we\u2019re leaning on AI to enhance our internal device management strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI is helping us to simplify and improve the experience our employees have with their devices by predicting and auto-remediating issues, supporting proactive solutions, and enhancing the operating system\u2019s look and feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As hybrid work becomes the norm\u2014and the expectation\u2014for our employees, how we in Microsoft Digital, the company\u2019s IT organization, give them access to the tools they need to successfully innovate, create, and collaborate has evolved. Employees want a dynamic, device-agnostic experience that focuses on providing them with the data and tools that they need from almost any location, using a wide variety of devices, including PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re investing in AI-powered predictive maintenance and intelligent troubleshooting to reduce friction in device management,\u201d says Daniel Manalo, a principal service engineer at Microsoft Digital. \u201cWe\u2019re using AI and machine learning to help us schedule essential maintenance tasks and fix errors and performance issues autonomously.\u201d \u201cThis is reducing downtime, prolonging device lifespans, and ensuring our employees have a consistent and productive experience by avoiding problems and errors.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Manalo and his team are investigating ways to use AI to analyze device settings, network activity, vulnerabilities, and user behavior, enhanced with demographic data and location metadata to offer relevant solutions for common and emerging device problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While device management focuses on the employee experience, Manalo reminds us that Microsoft Digital support teams can benefit greatly as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to help our support team be more productive through quicker decisions about device replacement, software updates, capacity increases, and other common support scenarios,\u201d Manalo says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using AI to reduce friction in device management<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Digumarthi,
Harshitha Digumarthi (left to right), Senthil Selvaraj, Dave Rodriguez, Daniel Manalo (not pictured), and Pandurang Savagur (not pictured) are part of the team at Microsoft Digital that\u2019s using AI to rethink device management at Microsoft.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our employees use a wide variety of devices as their primary productivity tools to access their work and succeed in their roles. Our responsibility at Microsoft Digital is to ensure that each of our employees can be productive and connected to Microsoft tools and corporate data, regardless of the device they use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are more than 750,000 devices in use at Microsoft including Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux devices. Approximately 60% of these are Windows devices, while iOS, Android, and macOS account for the rest. Of these devices, approximately 45% are personally owned employee devices, including phones and tablets. Microsoft empowers employees to use the managed devices that enable them to be their most productive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft Intune supports the modern management model at Microsoft. Intune provides cloud-based device management capabilities across Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux devices. Devices are registered in and authenticated by Microsoft Entra ID. Because it\u2019s cloud-based, Intune removes the dependency on the local network, and managed devices can connect across the internet from anywhere. Modern management includes and supports both corporate and personally owned devices, including mobile devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, even with the benefits of modern management, we recognize that there\u2019s room for improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employee productivity and sentiment are directly affected when the condition of their device and the underlying infrastructure deteriorates. Unexpected reboots, application crashes, emerging vulnerabilities, and compatibility problems all negatively affect the employee experience. The situation is further aggravated by potentially long wait times with Helpdesk to resolve support tickets. And not all issues are reported by employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our support teams spend large amounts of time manually pulling together data and insights to make long-term preventative decisions about device replacement, software upgrades, capacity increases, and more. They don\u2019t have aggregated views with device health insights and the toolsets to analyze patterns and trends to reduce their decision-making time or increase their confidence that they made the right choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put simply, we understand that our modern management processes have gaps, and we\u2019re filling those gaps with AI-powered tools and services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe goal is to make the device smarter,\u201d says Senthil Selvaraj, a principal product manager at Microsoft Digital. \u201cWe want the device\u2014and the services that support it\u2014to be intelligent and able to predict or detect issues on the device and self-remediate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Selvaraj\u2019s team is focusing on using AI to provide detection and remediation in a way that prioritizes and respects the employee experience. \u201cWe don\u2019t want our tools to consume a lot of local resources when the employee might need those resources for other tasks,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Selvaraj says the focus is on creating a productive and frictionless device experience at all times. \u201cWe don\u2019t want additional load on the device, so we want to make sure we\u2019re running automated remediations at the right time without any impact to users,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Integrating AI for proactive maintenance and issue resolution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Disruptions in our enterprise device and infrastructure environment increase support costs and reduce employee productivity. When employees encounter an issue, they must stop whatever they\u2019re doing and either fix the issue or report it to the IT helpdesk. Long resolution times for support tickets and lack of detailed insights for IT administrators further impact employee productivity and increase our support costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Customer Zero for Microsoft, we\u2019re developing and implementing AI-powered solutions that will simplify and improve the employee device experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re developing an AI and automation solution that monitors, predicts, and resolves device and infrastructure issues for employees and IT admins,\u201d says Dave Rodriguez, a principal product manager on the Frictionless Devices team in Microsoft Digital. \u201cThe solution uses data from our enterprise devices, such as laptops, network devices, sensors, and meeting room equipment to find and fix problems before they impact the users.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The team is building capabilities that will actively solve IT challenges and lighten our employees\u2019 cognitive load by proactively delivering solution-focused notifications and recommendations, while also addressing their queries about their device experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cUsing generative AI and natural language understanding, we\u2019re providing IT administrators with a conversational AI experience,\u201d says Pandurang Kamath Savagur, a senior program manager with Microsoft Digital. \u201cThis is enabling them to query patterns, observe analytics, and get recommendations across the device and infrastructure environment to manage and prevent disruptions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Specifically, our new solution provides an automated, AI-driven device experience by:<\/p>\n\n\n\n