Microsoft Looks to Speed Up Materials Science Research with Quantum-Compatible System

 Microsoft Looks to Speed Up Materials Science Research with Quantum-Compatible System

Nextgov

Alexandra Kelley, June 21, 2023

Microsoft's newly announced Azure Quantum Elements system aims to support and emulate properties of future quantum computing technologies so researchers can sift through molecules' constituent atom combinations to accelerate materials discovery. The system is designed to interoperate with a future scaled quantum computer and engineered to coordinate with a quantum computer to run accurate models for testing atom combinations. Microsoft said the system would help scientists refine which combinations yield useful molecules via artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms trained on large datasets. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, "Our goal is to compress the next 250 years of chemistry and materials science progress into the next 25."

ChatGPT in Cars?

 MS Chat Virtual Assistants in cars?

ChatGPT could power voice assistants in General Motors vehicles

The automaker is reportedly using Microsoft’s Azure cloud service and OpenAI’s tech to develop a new virtual vehicle assistant.

By JESS WEATHERBED, Mar 13, 2023 b  in TheVerge

GM is reportedly using Microsoft’s Azure cloud service — which includes a ChatGPT API — to develop a virtual personal assistant for its vehicles. Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The AI language models behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT could soon be powering virtual assistants in General Motors vehicles. As reported by Reuters on Friday, an executive for GM has revealed that the American automaker is exploring potential uses for ChatGPT as part of a broader collaboration with Microsoft. Semafor similarly reported last week that “people with knowledge of the product” had specified GM was using Microsoft’s Azure cloud service — which includes a ChatGPT API — to develop a virtual personal assistant for its vehicles. 

GM Vice President Scott Miller provided some details for the project in an interview with Reuters last week, saying that “ChatGPT is going to be in everything.” Miller claimed that the chatbot could push things beyond voice commands currently used in vehicles by providing drivers with information about their vehicle’s features, such as advising the driver on what action to take when a diagnostic light appears on the dashboard or instructing the user on how to change a flat tire by displaying a video demonstration on the vehicle’s infotainment system.

GM’s voice assistant likely won’t behave exactly like ChatGPT as OpenAI’s technology will be adjusted specifically for vehicles.

Ford’s as-yet-unnamed assistant could also program functions like garage door codes, or integrating user schedules from a calendar to remind the driver of any upcoming meetings and tasks. According to Semafor, GM’s voice assistant won’t necessarily behave like ChatGPT or Bing Chat as the company plans to apply a “car-specific layer” to OpenAI’s tech.

“This shift is not just about one single capability like the evolution of voice commands, but instead means that customers can expect their future vehicles to be far more capable and fresh overall when it comes to emerging technologies,” a GM spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

Microsoft already has a “long-term strategic relationship” with General Motors, having partnered with the automaker’s self-driving subsidiary Cruise in 2021 to use Microsoft’s Azure platform to develop GM’s autonomous vehicles. There’s no release timeline or even a formal announcement for General Motor’s ChatGPT integration plans as yet, and with details being so slim, it could be a while before we’re recreating scenes from Knight Rider in a new Chevrolet.   ... ' 

UC Berkely Does Skypilot

 Interesting direction, 

UC Berkeley Launches SkyPilot to Help Navigate Soaring Cloud Costs

By Jaime Hampton, Datanami

Runaway cloud computing costs can stifle machine learning and data science projects, and many organizations are using multiple public clouds for different purposes to save money. However, a multi-cloud approach can add significant complexity, since not everyone is a cloud infrastructure expert.

To address this, researchers at U.C. Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab have launched SkyPilot, an open source framework for running ML and Data Science batch jobs on any cloud, or multiple clouds, with a single cloud-agnostic interface.

SkyPilot uses an algorithm to determine which cloud zone or service provider is the most cost-effective for a given project. The program considers a workload’s resource requirements (whether it needs CPUs, GPUs, or TPUs) and then automatically determines which locations (zone/region/cloud) have available compute resources to complete the job before sending it to the least expensive option to execute.

The solution automates some of the more challenging aspects of running workloads on the cloud. SkyPilot’s makers say the program can reliably provision a cluster with automatic failover to other locations if capacity or quota errors occur, it can sync user code and files from local or cloud buckets to the cluster, and it can manage job queueing and execution. The researchers claim this comes with substantially reduced costs, sometimes by more than 3x.

SkyPilot developer and postdoctoral researcher Zongheng Yang said in a blog post that the growing trend of multi-cloud and multi-region strategies led the team to build SkyPilot, calling it an “intercloud broker.” He notes that organizations are strategically choosing a multi-cloud approach for higher reliability, avoiding cloud vendor lock-in, and stronger negotiation leverage, to name a few reasons.

To save costs, SkyPilot leverages the large price differences between cloud providers for similar hardware resources. Yang gives the example of Nvidia A100 GPUs, and how Azure currently offers the cheapest A100 instances, but Google Cloud and AWS charge a premium of 8% and 20% for the same computing power. For CPUs, some price differences can be over 50%.

Specialized hardware is also a reason to shop around, as many cloud providers are now offering custom options for different workloads. For example, Google Cloud offers TPUs for ML training, AWS has Inferentia for ML inference and Graviton processors for CPU workloads, and Azure provides Intel SGX codes for confidential computing. Scarcity of these specialized resources is also a reason for using multiple clouds, as high-end GPUs are frequently unavailable with long wait times.  ... 

P&G and Microsoft Collaborate for Advanced Digital Manufacturing

My former employer goes for advanced digital manufacturing with Microsoft.

P&G and Microsoft co-innovate to build the future of digital manufacturing

Microsoft company logo.  (PRNewsFoto/Microsoft Corp.) (PRNewsfoto/Microsoft Corp.)

NEWS PROVIDED BY  Microsoft Corp.   Vis Cision

Microsoft technology empowers scalability for consumer products leader

CINCINNATI and REDMOND, Wash., June 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG) (P&G) and Microsoft Corp. announced a new multiyear collaboration that will leverage the Microsoft Cloud to help create the future of digital manufacturing at P&G. ... 

A multiyear collaboration that will leverage the Microsoft Cloud to help create the future of digital manufacturing at P&G

The two companies will co-innovate to accelerate and expand P&G's digital manufacturing platform and leverage the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to bring products to consumers faster, increase customer satisfaction and improve productivity to reduce costs. 

"Together with Microsoft, P&G intends to make manufacturing smarter by enabling scalable predictive quality, predictive maintenance, controlled release, touchless operations and manufacturing sustainability optimization — which has not been done at this scale in the manufacturing space to date," said P&G CIO Vittorio Cretella. "At P&G, data and technology are at the heart of our business strategy and are helping create superior consumer experiences. This first-of-its-kind co-innovation agreement will digitize and integrate data to increase quality, efficiency and sustainable use of resources to help deliver those superior experiences."

With Microsoft Azure as the foundation, the new collaboration marks the first time that P&G can digitize and integrate data from more than 100 manufacturing sites around the world and enhance its AI, machine learning and edge computing services for real-time visibility. This will enable P&G employees to analyze production data and leverage artificial intelligence to immediately make decisions that drive improvement and exponential impact. Accessing this level of data, at scale, is rare within the consumer goods industry.

P&G selected Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider to build the future of digital manufacturing based on a four-year history of successfully working together on data and AI. The new collaborative effort will:

Allow for better utilization of data, AI capabilities and digital twins technology.

Optimize manufacturing environmental sustainability efforts.

Increase workforce efficiency and productivity.

"We are excited to help P&G accelerate its digital manufacturing platform using Microsoft Azure, AI and IIoT to accommodate volatility in the consumer products industry with innovative, agile solutions that can easily scale based on market conditions," said Judson Althoff, Microsoft's chief commercial officer. "Our partnership will further P&G's growth and business transformation through digital technology that seamlessly connects people, assets, workflow and business processes that promote resiliency."

Empowering technicians and advancing operations with IIoT

P&G is already innovating and using Azure IoT Hub and IoT Edge to help manufacturing technicians analyze insights with greater speed and efficiency, creating improvements in the production of its baby care and paper products with pilot projects happening in Egypt, India, Japan and the United States.  .... 

Details on Microsoft Singularity for AI Workflow

Worth a look, I will.  Note indication of scheduling AI workloads.

Microsoft goes public with details on its 'Singularity' AI infrastructure service

Microsoft's Azure and Research teams are working together on the 'Singularity' AI infrastructure service.

By Mary Jo Foley

Posted in All About Microsoft on February 21, 2022 | Topic: AI & Robotics

Microsoft's Azure and Research teams are working together to build a new AI infrastructure service, codenamed "Singularity." The Singularity team is working to build what Microsoft describes in some of its job postings for the group as "a new AI platform service ground-up from scratch that will become a major driver for AI, both inside Microsoft and outside."

A group of those working on the project have published a paper entitled "Singularity: Planet-Scale, Preemptible and Elastic Scheduling of AI Workloads,"  which provides technical details about the Singularity effort. The Singularity service is about providing data scientists and AI practitioners with a way to build, scale, experiment and iterate on their models on a Microsoft-provided distributed infrastructure service built specifically for AI.

Authors listed on the newly published paper include Azure Chief Technical Officer Mark Russinovich; Partner Architect Rimma Nehme, who worked on Azure Cosmos DB until moving to Azure to work on AI and deep learning in 2019; and Technical Fellow Dharma Shukla. From that paper:

"At the heart of Singularity is a novel, workload-aware scheduler that can transparently preempt and elastically scale deep learning workloads to drive high utilization without impacting their correctness or performance, across a global fleet of accelerators (e.g., GPUs, FPGAs)."  (Details at her ZDnet site linked to above) .... ' 

Healthcare AI Models from Microsoft

Healthcare AI innovation with Zero Trust technology

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Posted on October 26, 2021

John Doyle Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Health & Life Sciences

From research to diagnosis to treatment, AI has the potential to improve outcomes for some treatments by 30 to 40 percent and reduce costs by up to 50 percent. Although healthcare algorithms are predicted to represent a $42.5B market by 2026, less than 35 algorithms have been approved by the FDA, and only two of those are classified as truly novel.1 Obtaining the large data sets necessary for generalizability, transparency, and reducing bias has historically been difficult and time-consuming, due in large part to regulatory restrictions enacted to protect patient data privacy. That’s why the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) collaborated with Microsoft, Fortanix, and Intel to create BeeKeeperAI. It enables secure collaboration between algorithm owners and data stewards (for example, healthy systems, etc.) in a Zero Trust environment (enabled by Azure Confidential Computing), protecting the algorithm intellectual property (IP) and the data in ways that eliminate the need to de-identify or anonymize Protected Health Information (PHI)—because the data is never visible or exposed.

Enabling better healthcare with AI

By uncovering powerful insights in vast amounts of information, AI and machine learning can help healthcare providers to improve care, increase efficiency, and reduce costs. For example:

AI analysis of chest x-rays predicted the progression of critical illness in COVID-19 patients with a high degree of accuracy.2

An image-based deep learning model developed at MIT can predict breast cancer up to five years in advance.3

An algorithm developed at the University of California, San Francisco can detect pneumothorax (collapsed lung) from CT scans, helping prioritize and treat patients with this life-threatening condition—the first algorithm embedded in a medical device to achieve FDA approval.4

At the same time, the adoption of clinical AI has been slow. More than 12,000 life-science papers described AI and machine learning in 2019 alone.5 Yet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has only approved a little over 30 AI- and machine learning-based medical technologies to date.6 Data access is a major barrier to clinical approval. The FDA requires proof that a model is generalizable, which means that it will perform consistently regardless of patients, environments, or equipment. This standard requires access to highly diverse, real-world data so that the algorithm can train against all the variables it will face in the real world. However, privacy protections and security concerns make such data difficult to access.

Breaking through barriers to model approval

As both an AI innovator and a healthcare data steward, UCSF wanted to break through these challenges. “We needed to find a way that allowed data owners and algorithm developers to share so we could develop bigger data sets, more representative data sets, as well as allowing [data owners] to get exposed to algorithm developers without risking the privacy of the data,” says Dr. Michael Blum, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI) at UCSF.7

With support from Microsoft, Intel, and Fortanix, UCSF created a platform called BeeKeeperAI. It allows data stewards and algorithm developers to securely collaborate in ways that provide access to real-world, highly diverse data sets from multiple institutions, where AI models are validated and tested without moving or sharing the data or revealing the algorithm. The result is a Zero Trust environment that can dramatically accelerate the development and approval of clinical AI.  ..... ' 

Procter & Gamble and Microsoft: Data and Digital Transformation

Microsoft talks about how they work with key customers.   Notably with my former employer, where I worked on many related problems, and can agree that using data effectively was well understood to be key.  Fairly good detail here about using Microsoft Azure.

For Procter & Gamble, data is at the heart of digital transformation

August 17, 2021   Microsoft

For more than 180 years, Procter & Gamble (P&G) has built a thriving business by challenging norms and delighting consumers. Its range of household products, from toothpaste and soap to paper towels and laundry detergent, can be found in millions of homes—in nearly every country on Earth.

True to its innovative nature, P&G sees data and algorithms as a way to constructively disrupt how it operates, leading to growth. P&G developed a multicloud-driven data strategy—and data culture—that informs every decision the business makes to fuel its future success.

In order for P&G to understand and best serve consumers, we need to drive a data-enabled culture and operationalize algorithms into every major business decision. 

Guy Peri: Chief Data & Analytics Officer, P&G

“The way we approach excellence as a company is to get the right product, the right package, the right communication, and the right in-store execution,” says Guy Peri, Chief Data & Analytics Officer for P&G. “Pretty much everything about how we do that with our customers and the consumers who buy our products is changing—and data and algorithms are central to staying ahead of that change.”

Lots of data, but out of reach

Given its broad scope and long history, P&G had numerous data points about its business, including what drives sales and product preferences. But the data resided in geographically dispersed silos, and P&G’s legacy systems couldn’t link the hundreds of disparate data types to gain collective insights.

P&G sought a platform that could unlock those silos and provide a single view for business users. At the same time, company leaders realized that they needed to foster a data-driven culture—a growth mindset that put data and analytics at the forefront. AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics were all seen as crucial to becoming a true digital leader.

P&G found what it needed with the powerful suite of Microsoft Azure data and AI solutions, such as Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Lake Storage, and Power BI. “Azure is helping optimize the impact of digitization across Procter & Gamble, from democratizing AI with no-code features to embedded capabilities in Power BI,” says Peri. “We appreciated the scale, flexibility, and analytical muscle of Azure. The stack can go up and down depending on our business needs. It also gives us leading data and algorithm capabilities with both the Azure Synapse back-end and front-end Power BI tools.”

For us, only two variables are important: performance and scale. Can we scale at a cost-effective rate? With Azure and the co-innovation we did together, we’re able to get positive outcomes on both fronts. 

Guy Peri: Chief Data & Analytics Officer, P&G

With these scalable, dynamic data solutions, P&G is bringing the power of data to bear on three key challenges: creating a resilient supply chain, improving retail execution, and delivering superior products and packaging.

A more resilient supply chain

P&G data scientists and business analysts combine information from existing and new data sources inside the data lake to create predictions that help ensure consumers can get the products they need, when they need them.

Better retail execution

P&G is using granular analytics capabilities to ensure that retail partners are putting the right products and right in-store displays in front of consumers. 

Superior products and packaging

P&G is using data and analytics in its products and packages to shift from a point-in-time assessment to a real-time, sense-and-respond approach. A key component of this shift is a global architecture with automated collection of data to fuel analysis that uncovers insights, speeds the innovation process, and determines manufacturability and cost optimization.

“We need to act with agility to be competitive with the fast startups in the world,” says Peri. “But we also need to act with precision to leverage our scale for competitive advantage. Data algorithms help us do both. So, the faster we can bring data insights to our decision makers, the more competitive we’ll be.”

Neighborhood analytics and smart selling

In addition to gaining important insights at a global level, P&G has been able to do the same at a local level. One initiative, called “Neighborhood Analytics,” helps P&G understand at a local level how consumers shop and what they need. By combining external and internal data sources, the company can more effectively partner with retail customers to expand specific categories for consumers.

A second initiative, called “Smart Selling,” gives P&G insight into what its distributors are doing in developing markets. By using big data and AI, the company can help distributors be precise when ordering products. “COVID-19 is a great example of where we’ve been able to use these tools to be much more precise,” says Peri. “We overlaid our Azure analytics capability with COVID-19 data and then understood exactly where we had the biggest risk of out-of-stock opportunities to address or where we anticipated the need for inventory.”

Creating a data-driven culture

Beyond specific use cases, P&G is also using Azure to create a strong data culture that makes employees aware of the power of data and how to use it every day.

The ease of use with Azure fosters P&G’s data culture from the technology side, making it easy for employees to understand data, manipulate it, and use it to inform major decisions. These decisions, in turn, positively affect P&G’s ability to better serve consumers and constructively disrupt how the company operates.

“Our data culture is a combination of data technology, work processes, and reward systems,” says Peri. “If we have only one or two of those things, we’re not going to deliver the outcomes we want. We have partnered closely with our line business leadership and our function leadership to really transform in a way that constructively disrupts how we operate.”

A foundation for the future

Looking ahead, P&G will connect more data types and find new ways to delight its customers—and the consumers who fill their homes with P&G products. And it will continue to strengthen its data culture, operationalizing algorithms into key decision processes across the company. Procter & Gamble may be 183 years old, but its future has never been brighter. ...

Very few vendors can serve our needs at scale, given how much data we’re processing. Azure Synapse Analytics can, and Microsoft’s vision on how to scale is among the best in the industry. 

Guy Peri: Chief Data & Analytics Officer ....

On the SAS and Microsoft Partnership

They write:

One year in: Six reasons you should pay attention to the SAS and Microsoft partnership  by NICK JOHNSON

Just over a year ago, SAS and Microsoft announced their strategic partnership. Since then we have been working together to provide the best experience and value to our customers as they migrate to the cloud. 

Here are six milestones you should know about; each highlights the early success of the two industry giants.  

The start of something big  

In February of 2021, SAS Viya – SAS’s cloud-native end-to-end analytics platform – launched on Microsoft Azure. This latest release of SAS is built to run seamlessly on SAS Cloud and Azure, making it easier to design, run, and manage analytics and data processing workloads in the cloud. 

A shared vision for a data-led future  

Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft and Jim Goodnight CEO of SAS discussed the partnership in a webcast for SAS Global Forum 2021. The two discussed the potential for the SAS and Microsoft Partnership to shape the future of AI and analytics in the cloud.    ... ' 

Microsoft Shuts Down its Blockchain Service

 Microsoft/Azure shuts down its Blockchain service after six years.   Offers some alternate migration paths.    Surprising after continued heat in this area.

Migrate Azure Blockchain Service

You can migrate ledger data from Azure Blockchain Service to an alternate offering.

On September 10, 2021, Azure Blockchain will be retired. Please migrate ledger data from Azure Blockchain Service to an alternative offering based on your development status in production or evaluation.

Evaluate alternatives

The first step when planning a migration is to evaluate alternative offerings. Evaluate the following alternatives based on your development status of being in production or evaluation.... "

Microsoft Releases Counterfit. A Tool for Security Testing AI Systems

Below an outline of purpose, worth a look.

AI Security risk Assessment using Counterfit

Will Pearce AI Red Team Lead, Azure Trustworthy ML, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar Data Cowboy, Azure Trustworthy ML

Today, we are releasing Counterfit , an automation tool for security testing AI systems as an open-source project. Counterfit helps organizations conduct AI security risk assessments to ensure that the algorithms used in their businesses are robust, reliable, and trustworthy.

AI systems are increasingly used in critical areas such as healthcare, finance, and defense. Consumers must have confidence that the AI systems powering these important domains are secure from adversarial manipulation. For instance, one of the recommendations from Gartner’s Top 5 Priorities for Managing AI Risk Within Gartner’s MOST Framework published in Jan 20211 is that organizations “Adopt specific AI security measures against adversarial attacks to ensure resistance and resilience,” noting that “By 2024, organizations that implement dedicated AI risk management controls will successfully avoid negative AI outcomes twice as often as those that do not.”

However, performing security assessments of production AI systems is nontrivial. Microsoft surveyed 28 organizations, spanning Fortune 500 companies, governments, non-profits, and small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), to understand the current processes in place to secure AI systems. We found that 25 out of 28 businesses indicated they don’t have the right tools in place to secure their AI systems and that security professionals are looking for specific guidance in this space.

This tool was born out of our own need to assess Microsoft’s AI systems for vulnerabilities with the goal of proactively securing AI services, in accordance with Microsoft’s responsible AI principles and Responsible AI Strategy in Engineering (RAISE) initiative. Counterfit started as a corpus of attack scripts written specifically to target individual AI models, and then morphed into a generic automation tool to attack multiple AI systems at scale.

Today, we routinely use Counterfit as part of our AI red team operations. We have found it helpful to automate techniques in MITRE’s Adversarial ML Threat Matrix and replay them against Microsoft’s own production AI services to proactively scan for AI-specific vulnerabilities. Counterfit is also being piloted in the AI development phase to catch vulnerabilities in AI systems before they hit production.... " 

Microsoft Releases Speech Services

Useful capability for speech production from Azure/AI

Microsoft opens limited access to its neural text-to-speech AI in Engadget

AT&T and Warner Bros. used the tech to create an interactive version of Bugs Bunny.

Microsoft is opening up limited access to a text-to-speech AI called Custom Neural Voice, which allows developers to create custom synthetic voices. The tech is part of an Azure AI service called Speech. Companies can use the tech for things like voice-powered smart assistants and devices, chatbots, online learning and reading audiobooks or news. They’ll have to apply for access and gain approval from Microsoft before they can harness Custom Neural Voice. ... 

Convert audio to text, perform speech translation and text-to-speech with the unified Speech services

Kris Holt, K. Holt|02.03.21  @krisholt in Engadget

Speech Services. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/speech-services/

SpaceX and Microsoft

Here Comes the Space Cloud.   Faster anywhere, even in space.

 Microsoft, SpaceX Team Up to Bring Cloud Computing to Space

Nextgov. Frank Konkel

Microsoft has partnered with SpaceX and others to make its Azure cloud technology available and accessible to people anywhere on Earth, and potentially those in space. Microsoft will use SpaceX's forthcoming Starlink satellite constellation to bring customers in remote regions high-speed, low-latency broadband; the satellites will function as a channel for data between Microsoft's conventional datacenters and matched ground stations, and the company's modular datacenters. Microsoft also announced an expansion of its Azure Orbital partnership with satellite telecommunications company SES to broaden connectivity between its cloud data centers and edge devices. ....'

SAS And Microsoft Azure

Intriguing to see the linking of Azure and SAS.  Some particularly novel sample problems.

3 world-changing examples of SAS® on Azure   by  Oliver SchabenBerger

Last week we announced a new strategic partnership with Microsoft to further shape the future of AI and analytics in the cloud. This commitment will make it easy for SAS customers to move their analytics workloads to the cloud. And it will introduce SAS technologies to millions of Azure customers through APIs and deeper integrations that can enhance existing applications with analytics.

To help illustrate how you can use SAS on Azure, I am sharing three inspiring examples from a recent SAS hackathon. Participants in this event were challenged to solve problems related to the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development using SAS® Viya®. Submissions ranged from optimizing resources at refugee camps to encouraging more sustainable consumer habits.

A technology team developed each application in partnership with a nonprofit to solve existing and immediate problems. The three revolutionary projects I am featuring here all use SAS Viya running on Microsoft Azure.

Analyzing honeybee dance moves leads more bees to food ....'

Azure Kinect DK for AI Sensors

Microsoft continues to expand from the developer direction.   Like I have said before was impressed by their capabilities for delivering in Azure from the basic knowledge structure level.

Azure Kinect DK
Developer kit with advanced AI sensors for building computer vision and speech models
Build your way with a versatile sensing device

Azure Kinect DK is a developer kit with advanced AI sensors for sophisticated computer vision and speech models. Designed for versatility, it combines an advanced depth sensor and spatial microphone array with a video camera and orientation sensor—with multiple modes, options, and SDKs.

Explore documentation  ...

Microsoft Uses IOTs with Advanced Features

Impressive direction by Microsoft,with useful details.

Microsoft doubles down on Internet of Things with new features to simplify building connected devices       By  Nat Levy  

Microsoft today announced a series of new Internet of Things tools and features to make it easier for customers to build connected devices and run them on the tech giant’s cloud platform.

The uniting theme behind the new features is to make IoT, a futuristic but challenging technology, more accessible. IoT has reached a tipping point, with more mainstream customers flocking to the technology, Sam George, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Azure IoT, said in a briefing with reporters.

“You’ve seen a bunch of innovators and early adopters picking up IoT,” George said. “And what we see is that now many of the early majority customers are starting to show up. And the conversations that we have with the early majority customers are much different than we had with the innovators.”

George cited a recent IoT survey from Microsoft that found 88 percent of the business owners saw the technology as critical to their future success. However, nearly half of them cited a lack of skilled workers to build IoT solutions as a hurdle to embracing the technology. That’s a big reason why simplicity and accessibility has become a focal point of Microsoft’s IoT efforts.

Here’s a look at some of the key announcements from Microsoft this morning. George published a blog post with a full rundown of the new features. .... "

Microsoft Enters RPA Market

Just saw a hint of this earlier this week, and now more detail.   They should play well here, given what I saw developed using bots with Azure.    Microsoft, make sure it works well with real process in context, and look for extensions to machine learning and AI advances.   It makes lots of sense since MS has been gathering business data in Azure for some time.

Microsoft has entered the RPA market — what does that mean?
By Tom Shelton in Venturebeat
  
Microsoft officially entered the robotic process automation (RPA) marketplace this week with some major changes to its Power Platform. It’s not the first incumbent enterprise software vendors to feel the need to have a product in this category (SAP purchased French RPA vendor Contextor late last year), and it won’t be the last. We should expect to see a steady increase in RPA investment in from big enterprise vendors, with a mix of internally developed and acquired technologies. Watch this space for announcements over the next year from Salesforce, ServiceNow, and even perhaps Oracle, IBM, and others.

The fundamental challenge driving these investments is that RPA is the first step in a journey to reinvent how companies build the software they use to run their businesses (see my recent article on how UIPath is reinventing the RPA category). RPA lets companies record a series of computer-based processes done by a human so that the series can then be repeated automatically without human involvement. When companies change the way they use technology, incumbent enterprise software providers are often threatened. We’ve seen multiple waves of platform change over the past 25 years — web browsers, cloud computing, mobile. But this RPA wave may be even bigger than prior ones in that it changes the way we organize and manage work itself — introducing a hybrid workforce of people, rules-based automations, and increasingly smart algorithms (AI/machine learning).   .... " 

See previously on UiPath

Microsoft's Hybrid Strategies

Good piece which support Mary J Foley's recent appearance on Twit:

Microsoft's Hybrid 2.0 strategy: Azure Arc, Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack Edge explained
At Ignite 2019, Microsoft is announcing new branding and a new strategy meant to make Azure the place IT pros will manage their edge, on-premises and multi-cloud software and services. Here's my best attempt to demystify the new hybrid announcements.  ....

By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft | November 4, 2019 -.... " 

HoloLens2 Available and Shipping Now

Considerable overview piece from Microsoft.  They are now hooking it to a number of capabilities such as Dynamics and Azure driven Edge Computing.    Impressive. If significant mixed reality applications are out there, they could well be the leaders.

The making of the HoloLens 2: How advanced AI built Microsoft’s vision for ubiquitous computing  By John Roach

Video demonstrations at the link.
Business apps available now

Pilot and deploy quickly with a full suite of Dynamics 365 mixed reality applications  
Create spatially aware holograms.  Use the world as your canvas
Build cross-platform, spatially aware mixed reality experiences.
HoloLens 2   Learn more about the ultimate Intelligent edge device.
Azure   Explore services and devices for mixed reality development.
Dynamics 365 Get started on day one with business-ready applications.

Redmond, Washington – The first time people don the new HoloLens 2 on their heads, the device automatically gets to know them: It measures everything from the precise shape of their hands to the exact distance between their eyes.

The artificial intelligence research and development that enabled those capabilities “was astonishingly complicated” but essential to making the experience of using the device “instinctual,” said Jamie Shotton, a partner scientist who leads the HoloLens science team in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

“We want you to know how to use HoloLens without having to be taught how to use it,” he said. “We know how to interact with things in the real, physical world: We pick things up, we press buttons, we point to things. We aim, as far as possible, to translate that directly into mixed reality.”

Microsoft today announced the HoloLens 2 is now shipping to customers. The sensor-packed holographic computing headset uses AI to displace space and time, creating a mixed reality of people, places and things in order to facilitate one of our most basic human impulses: exchanging knowledge.

Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman said the headset defines the highest watermark of intelligent edge devices – AI-capable technologies that can collect and process data even without a reliable internet connection – and that can then share some or all of that data with the intelligent cloud when connected.

On a recent day, Kipman sketched a diagram of this ubiquitous computing fabric on a digital whiteboard in his office.

“HoloLens,” he said, “is the first native device to be invented from the ground up with this worldview in mind.”  .... "

Microsoft: How Hololens is used by Airbus

Good example of the use of Mixed/Augmented reality approaches in heavy industry.  Expect to see more of these to emerge. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxjC4Z05qh8  Video overview of use

Airbus drives innovation and accelerates production with Azure mixed reality and HoloLens 2

 Microsoft HoloLens

Airbus—a pioneer in aerospace technology and leading designer and manufacturer of commercial and military aircraft, satellites, and launch vehicles—has made a commitment to transform traditional industrial processes through use of mixed reality. The company has partnered with Microsoft to use Azure mixed reality and HoloLens 2 as a way to accelerate the design and manufacture of aircraft, while increasing safety and functionality and ensuring professional development opportunities for employees. Intelligent services like Azure Remote Rendering are changing the way complex ideas are communicated, and the ability to build multi-user, spatially aware applications with Azure Spatial Anchors promotes greater collaboration while increasing quality, safety, and security. Airbus is using Azure mixed reality to unlock the full potential of HoloLens 2 and, as a result, expects to reduce design validation time by 80 percent and accelerate complex tasks during assembly by 30 percent.  

Learn more: 
Azure Mixed Reality:    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/mixed-reality/
HoloLens 2: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens 
Azure Cognitive Services:  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/

BlueTalon Acquired

Microsoft has acquired BlueTalon, lots of new work underway regarding how data is managed and valued and protected.   Following that trend here and elsewhere.

Microsoft Acquires BlueTalon: Building the Next Generation of Cloud Data Governance Together

By Eric Tilenius  BlueTalon       BlueTalon Blog

Today I’m thrilled to announce that BlueTalon has been acquired by Microsoft Corporation. Our technology and team is now focused on building deep data privacy and governance solutions as part of Azure Data.

This acquisition is a huge force multiplier on BlueTalon’s mission to make data easily and safely accessible across the enterprise by providing high quality data governance and compliance solutions.
Our journey started many years ago when Pratik Verma, our Founder, raised seed capital to build a company to scale from an innovative technology he created with his father, Rakesh Verma. I had the honor to join Pratik to build and grow BlueTalon. We realized the technology could be used to help govern data in new data systems such as Hadoop. Our customers soon started asking for us to extend our coverage to other databases – they were building large data estates that had a heterogeneous mix of data platforms. With the help of an amazing and talented team, we were able to build the first truly Unified Data Access Control™ solution to govern on-premises data estates.

BlueTalon enterprise customers increasingly began to migrate more and more of their data to the cloud and asked us to support them in that process. As we began exploring partnership opportunities with various hyperscale cloud providers to better serve our customers, Microsoft deeply impressed us. The Azure Data team was uniquely thoughtful and visionary when it came to data governance. We found them to be the perfect fit for us in both mission and culture. So when Microsoft asked us to join forces, we jumped at the opportunity..... '