Microsoft’s Big AI Investments for 2023

Earlier this spring, a couple of our Punchcard team went to Seattle to attend Build, Microsoft’s annual developer conference. Microsoft uses this conference as a platform to set their direction for the next year.

Build typically focuses on .NET and Azure updates, which are two very important pieces of our development framework, as well as the technical roadmaps for SharePoint and Teams, which are becoming increasingly important for our clients. In order for us to help our clients win, we need to make sure that we are always looking a few years into the future so that we (and our clients) can be ready for it.

AI is this year’s hot topic.

It should come as no surprise that the resounding emphasis of this year’s Build conference was on AI, particularly on Microsoft’s investments in making large language models available to developers and integrating the models into Microsoft’s suite of products.

Of everything we heard at the conference, there were a couple of key developments that really piqued my interest for our clients.

CoPilot will give every business the ability to be an innovation business.

Microsoft announced the release of CoPilot, the AI assistant that they are building into all of their products, ranging from Windows 10 to Office to Teams. This will have a huge impact on any company that has knowledge workers. Some of the ways in which CoPilot could be transformative for teams is in terms of creativity—using Generative AI to help you jumpstart a document or a presentation; productivity—using CoPilot to summarize meeting notes, synthesize conversations, set action items and reminders; and most exciting, it will jumpstart innovation within organizations—using Power Platforms to give teams the ability to create their own chatbots, automate repetitive tasks more easily, and even start experimenting with apps. This will truly turn every company into an innovation company, and it is extremely exciting!

AI Studio gives product teams more tools to build AI effectively.

AI Studio is a suite of developer tools that promote AI-enabled development. AI Studio will allow us to quickly integrate AI features into our products with built in testing and prompt engineering. With Azure AI Content Safety, we can scan our products for unsafe images and text, or anything that might conflict with a business’ policies. This will give businesses confidence to release updates and new features more quickly, speeding up their pace of innovation.

You don’t need to know the technicalities of AI to harness its power. That’s why you have us.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the AI information out there, and to think you’re falling behind because you don’t know enough about AI. But the truth of the matter is, technology is changing so quickly that it is nearly impossible for anyone to keep up.

What’s important is for business leaders to be domain experts in their own businesses—to really understand the problems their customers have and how they aim to solve those. But then it is equally, if not more important, for leaders to start thinking about how they could be better or could change the game completely, if they had the right tools and capabilities.

Let Punchcard be your trusted advisor in AI.

Like many technology companies, Microsoft continues to make large investments in AI, and this will be a big area of opportunity or a risk of getting left behind. If business leaders are unsure of how to think about AI and incorporate it into their business, connect with Punchcard and we can help you through it.

For the past few months, we have been talking to business leaders about AI—helping them navigate the influx of information out there, and really digging into how AI can improve their competitiveness either within their product or their organization’s productivity (or both!)

If you want to figure out how AI can benefit your business, here’s how we can help:

1. Book a call with one of our product experts to answer some of your high-level questions.
2. Work with us to schedule an Executive Briefing, where we’ll dive into the different types of AI technology and what that means for enterprises like yours.
3. Build a customized AI Action Plan for your business, which might be eligible for up to $15,000 in funding from the Canadian Digital Adoption Program (CDAP), for which Punchcard is an official partner.
4. If you already have an idea for an AI-enabled project, let’s talk about what that looks like and how we can work with you to make it a reality.

You might also like