Satya Nadella makes new Cloud, AI announcements at Microsoft Inspire 2022

While the US economy is slipping into a potential downturn, with tech companies planning on hiring freeze and cutting down on expenses, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sees an opportunity amid the new challenges. At the tech giant’s partner-focused Inspire 2022 event on Tuesday, the CEO said that digital technologies such as cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) are “the only deflationary forces in the current inflationary environment”. 

Quoting industry reports, the Microsoft chief said that 95% of all new digital workloads will be deployed on the cloud by 2025. “Cloud is foundational to how organisations will be competitive going forward. Every customer I speak with is clear-eyed about aligning their IT investments to scale with demand. Moving to the cloud allows them to just do that — converting their spending from CapEx to OpEx,” he said during his keynote. 

On the Day-One of the event, Microsoft announced a slew of cloud and AI-based solutions to cater to its partners and customers. For example, the tech major has announced Cloud for Sovereignty, a solution designed for the government sector, was a key announcement at the event. The goal is to allow public sector customers to build and transform workloads in the Microsoft Cloud while meeting compliance, security and policy requirements. 

Also read: Microsoft delays policy that limits open-source developers from making profit

Speaking about AI’s potential, Nadella said, “We are in the age of the AI, where the core business logic is no longer being written by developers — it’s being taken on by software.”  

According to him, “by 2025, 10% of all data will be produced by generative AI models”. In other words, he said, “analytics is moving from backend processes to being critical part of the product experience. And it is up to us to use this intelligence” and generate greater business value. 

In this regard, Microsoft also came up with Digital Contact Centre — a new the platform that brings in AI to power self-service and live customer engagements to improve customer experiences. Say, Microsoft’s Context IQ feature to anticipate customer requests and predict intent and protects customers with integrated biometric identification, authentication and fraud prevention. 

Nadella also announced that Microsoft will add 10 new data centres in ten markets spanning four continents, to deliver faster access to services and help address data residency needs, without divulging more details.  

Besides, Microsoft’s updates to Teams and Viva were among the big announcements on the first day at Inspire 2022. The company launched Microsoft Viva Goals, a goal-setting and management solution that aligns teams to an organisation’s strategic priorities to drive results. Microsoft also introduced another new solution, Viva Engage, an app in Teams that helps build community and connection, along with providing tools for personal expression.  

Also read: Almost 95% of orgs concerned about public cloud security, says study

The company further unveiled Excel Live announced during Inspire has been designed to allow users of the Excel spreadsheets application to “collaborate on workbooks in real time in Teams meetings.” 

Another important announcement at Inspire 2022 is the Azure Space Partner Community that is aimed at driving benefits and incentives toward specialised cloud partners participating in the Azure Space program. Stephen Kitay, senior director of Microsoft’s Azure Space program, said, “There are 21 members of the program at launch, including HPE, Nokia and SpaceX, among others.  

According to him, these new partners will collaborate with space operators, manufacturers, systems integrators, data providers, etc., to cover a breadth of capabilities — such as connectivity, earth observation, virtualisation, data processing, analytics, and ground infrastructure — adding unique, value-added services on top of our Azure Space platform.