This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Microsoft ispartnering with leading industrial connectivity partners Advantech, PTC, and Softing to unlock industrial data for AI and accelerate digital transformation for industrial customers leveraging Azure IoT Operations through Azure’s adaptive cloud approach.
We are committed to empowering customers to achieve more with their data and unlocking new insights and opportunities across the industrial ecosystem. This includes overcoming the challenges of proprietary interfaces and data models from an array of industrial assets on the factory floor. We believe that the key to addressing those challenges is enabling data to flow consistently and securely to the people and places where it’s needed to drive collaboration and better decision-making, leveraging open standards like OPC UA and MQTT. This is why we are working closely with our connectivity partners, who play a vital role in bridging the gap between legacy or proprietary assets and our standardized edge interfaces. They provide data translation and normalization to open, standardized data models across heterogeneous environments.
The adaptive cloud approach brings just enough Azure and its capabilities to any environment, from the factory floor to both 1st party and 3rd party cloud infrastructure, using Kubernetes and other open technologies. We enable interoperability and integration across diverse edge devices and applications, providing a single control and management plane using Azure IoT Operations (Preview), enabled by Azure Arc. We aim to unify siloed teams, distributed sites, and sprawling systems and to provide our customers with an open, interoperable, and secure Industrial IoT platform that can scale to meet their current and future needs quickly.
We are leveraging leading solutions from our connectivity partners Advantech, PTC, and Softing to achieve the necessary frictionless data flow that our customers need. Each connectivity partner is integrated with Azure IoT Operations to enable data interoperability and management across the industrial edge and cloud.
Advantech is a leader in Industrial IoT, providing comprehensive system integration, hardware, software, and customer-centric design services. Their iFactory solution offers device-to-cloud visibility and a strong hardware-led connectivity story. Advantech has integrated their iFactory solution with Azure IoT Operations, enabling data flow from their edge devices and applications to Azure. They are also exploring to build an Akri connector for LoRaWAN, enabling an integration with Azure Resource Manager and benefiting from Azure’s security, monitoring, and management features.
“Azure IoT Operations offers a highly flexible approach to swiftly onboard IoT assets within the same network hierarchy. Data from devices can be easily captured using Akri discovery plugins and visualized in Grafana for user consumption. With the Azure AIO solution stack, our customers can seamlessly transition to a digital operational environment with success.”
– Ihen Tsai, Product Manager of WISE-iFactory, Advantech
PTC Kepware is a premier provider of industrial connectivity software, and their solutions access data from virtually any device – legacy or modern – and seamlessly and securely move the data to other OT and IT software applications. Their flagship product, Kepware+, enables secure and reliable data transfer between industrial assets and Azure IoT Operations, leveraging MQTT and OPC UA. Customers can ingest, process, and publish OPC UA data to services such as Azure Data Explorer or Microsoft Fabric, and can leverage Microsoft’s AI capabilities.
“PTC is proud of our long collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate digital transformation for industrial companies with our portfolio of manufacturing solutions. The announcement of Azure IoT Operations marks a significant milestone in empowering companies to leverage data for innovation and heightened efficiency. Together, PTC Kepware+ and Azure IoT Operations seamlessly and securely integrate to access, normalize, and process asset data at the edge and derive insights in the cloud.”
– Ted Kerkam, Senior Director of Product Strategy, PTC Kepware
Softing is a leading provider of industrial connectivity. Their edgeConnector, edgeAggregator and dataFEED OPC Suite family of products offer access to process and machine data in PLCs from various vendors such as Siemens, Rockwell, Schneider, Beckhoff, Mitsubishi, Fanuc, Omron, and more. Softing has integrated their connectivity product portfolio with Azure IoT Operations, enabling data flow from OT assets via open standards OPC UA and MQTT. This allows customers to send their asset data to services such as Azure Data Explorer or Microsoft Fabric, and they can leverage Microsoft’s AI capabilities.
“Our customers require standards-based and scalable machine connectivity for their Industrial IoT solutions. Microsoft’s adaptive cloud approach supports Kubernetes, MQTT and OPC UA on edge level, so we can offer a seamless integration of our dataFEED products into the Azure platform meeting our customers’ critical requirements regarding connectivity and efficient operation.”
– Thomas Hilz, Managing Director at Softing Industrial Automation GmbH
Engage with Microsoft on our adaptive cloud approach and data connectivity
We believe when working together across a robust partner ecosystem, Microsoft can deliver the best possible solutions to our customers and help them realize the full potential of their data across the industrial edge and cloud. We are also committed to supporting open standards and protocols and providing a single management and control plane, to enable a seamless and secure data flow from assets to the cloud.
To learn more, visit the Microsoft booth at Hannover Messe (Hall 17, Stand G06) from April 22-26. We invite you to come see us and our partners, and we will be showcasing our connectivity partner solutions. You can learn more about our adaptive cloud approach and discuss your Industrial IoT opportunities with our experts.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In this extraordinary age of AI, we find ourselves on the brink of a profound revolution. Companies are looking for generative AI to solve longstanding problems around customer connection, loyalty, and seller productivity. Businesses are on a journey to become a digital-first business, not only to connect with customers, but to benefit from the advances in AI.
Both winning and retaining customers requires a unified customer understanding and ability to orchestrate experiences across sales, marketing, and service. To deliver exceptional experiences, businesses need a solution that breaks down data silos between applications and departments so sellers, marketers, and service agents can get the right information in the right interface at the right time.
Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 1
Release wave 1 brings new innovations and capabilities to transform your business.
Imagine if your sellers could effortlessly collaborate with contributing stakeholders and had the exact right information at the exact right time to make a persuasive sales pitch that speaks to the needs and wants of each individual customer to cement the sale.
Imagine if your marketing team could create the perfect end-to-end campaign, one that aligns input across departments, that pulls in the perfect target audiences, that includes campaign assets aligned with your brand identity. And instead of doing so in months, being able to create a good draft…in minutes.
Imagine if each time customers interacted with your company, no matter what department or touchpoint they engage with, they felt known, and each interaction built on the last.
With generative AI and our Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer experience solutions, these “imagine ifs” are reality.
The innovative capabilities that are coming to you in Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will help you elevate the seller experience through AI-driven process transformation, optimize the buying journey with the power of data, and personalize every customer interaction.
Elevate the seller experience through AI-driven process transformation
A recent study of sales professionals showed that up to 70% of their time is used for administrative and non-selling tasks that reduce the quality of their interactions with customers.
With Copilot for Sales and Dynamics 365 Sales, we enable innovative AI-enriched experiences to support sellers as they move through the sales process. We help transform sales teams from just following leads and opportunities into being trusted advisors who can predict and support customer needs.
Copilot for Sales is designed to be an invaluable assistant helping drive productivity and improve sales efficiency. It combines all the unique role-based sales capabilities with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 to deliver a unified and highly relevant seller experience right within the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, keeping the seller in their flow of work. Sellers can use chat to identify answers to top sales questions, whether it’s to find out more about an account or opportunity, or to view the sales pipeline. We deliver relevant sales context using natural language and prompt-based actions.
Let’s look at some of the newest features within Copilot for Sales, an application for sellers who use either Dynamic 365 Sales or Salesforce but prefer to work within their Microsoft 365 productivity apps to manage their day:
Enhance email summaries and replies to minimize app switching and provide a response that’s aware of the customer context. Insight related to sales such as buying intent is emphasized, and suggested changes such as updates to sales stages, opportunity budgets, or estimated close dates appear in the side panel allowing instant updates.
Easily create meeting preparation reports that give you the information you need to engage your customers confidently. You can share the meeting prep with your team members so everyone can be on the same page with knowledge about the customer and the account. Using the power of Copilot in Word combined with Sales insight from your customer relationship management (CRM) application.
Get immediate AI-generated tips, suggestions, and advice in Microsoft Teams meetings to help sellers concentrate on the meeting dialogue and ensure they can respond quickly to requests and possible challenges, such as competitor references, by surfacing relevant information when and where they need it.
Generate post-meeting follow-up quickly and easily allowing sellers to follow-up with tasks and notifications that are generated from the Teams intelligent recap screens and review the key questions that need to be answered. Follow-up work with their team members can be managed using deal rooms and planner activities to review task suggestions and assignments ensuring no follow-up is missed.
Keep systems up to date without the pain of manual effort. Copilot for Sales allows for quick creation of records, such as leads and opportunities, right in the Microsoft 365 surface area. In the Copilot side panel, create new records and update fields using pre-filled suggestions without leaving the screen.
Dynamics 365 Sales continues to be our market-leading CRM solution designed to streamline sales processes, cultivate customer relationships, and expedite deal closures for businesses of all sizes. We bring the power of generative AI right inside this surface area and help sellers transform their CRM interactions to support customer conversations and land deals. With the latest release we’re helping sellers to:
Transform the CRM sales experience by using the immersive full-screen Copilot view right in Dynamics 365 Sales. Get all key information in one place including pipeline, suggested actions, deals in progress, and real-time insights on key accounts. Sellers can query that information to get further details and insights using natural language and suggested prompts. Use it to get started every day as a homepage for all sellers using Dynamics 365.
Make the best use of prospecting time with intelligent lead management to make sure that sales development teams are using their time wisely and focusing on leads that have a higher chance of closing quickly. In this release, we’re adding qualification criteria that incorporate signals to help show how interested the customer is. The distribution of those leads is then improved based on seller capacity and our new notification alerts make sure that sellers don’t lose the opportunity to interact when the timing is right.
Optimize the buying journey with the power of data
It all starts with data. Generative AI takes what used to be specialized and trained roles and democratizes them so customer experience (CX) professionals can use and take advantage of the data, insights, and workflows from their CRM system. Generative AI will autonomously assist customers and sellers in their day-to-day experiences to:
Elevate customer experiences in real time: With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, CX professionals can now ensure customer profiles and associated insights are updated in real time based on data signals, allowing them to provide the most targeted and personalized experience as they engage with your website or mobile app, which will foster loyalty, increase engagement, enhance satisfaction, and drive higher conversion rates.
Know your account better with AI-generated account summaries in Dynamics 365 Sales: With integrated data from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, sellers can now quickly access a comprehensive overview of each account, enabling them to prioritize their work effectively and engage with customers in a more personalized and targeted manner.
Maximize sales success with AI-suggested past successful deals: In Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers now have the ability to use the collective intelligence from past successful deals to identify and pursue similar opportunities effectively. This AI-driven feature simplifies the decision-making process and increases the likelihood of closing deals quickly. By analyzing personal success stories and industry-specific data, sellers can make well-informed decisions that enhance sales effectiveness. The strategic use of AI suggestions not only improves efficiency but also significantly raises the chances of winning deals, thereby boosting overall sales performance.
Personalize every customer interaction
Marketers and CX professionals are being empowered to go beyond automated spam to creating cross-channel cohesive, conversational experiences that drive loyalty and retention. The innovative capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights that are releasing in this wave enable CX professionals to:
Generate unique on-brand creative assets in minutes: No more scouring media libraries or resorting to use of stock images. You can ensure images are on brand and personalized for each audience, generated by Copilot using the new Typeface integration. Copilot allows you to generate variations that then can be used for personalization—no special photo editing abilities required.
Personalize omnichannel experiences with no code using Optimizely: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Optimizely now unlock omnichannel personalization and experimentation capabilities, enabling marketers and citizen developers to personalize every customer touchpoint with no code or prior expertise required. By combining insights and segments from Customer Insights with Optimizely audiences, you can create experiences that are tailored to your customer’s browsing activity, their loyalty, past engagement history, and other real-time signals. Moreover, you can continue the conversation or re-target your visitors by delivering the same consistent experience through customer journeys, based on which Optimizely treatment cohort the customer was part of.
With generative AI and Copilot, we’re revolutionizing the workflow for sellers and CX professionals. First, sending personalized content at every stage of the marketing campaign, improving the quality of sales leads, and next, optimizing the productivity of sellers and enhancing every single engagement with their customers, helping them to close deals faster, all thanks to Copilot. There has never been a more exciting and productive time to be a seller or marketer. We can’t wait for you to experience it.
Learn more about 2024 release wave 1 capabilities
The future of customer experience is here, and it’s driven by cutting-edge AI technology that empowers businesses to better connect with their customers, drive sales, and improve overall satisfaction for both customers and employees. This release wave is truly driving transformative change for customer-facing roles, so get your organization set up today.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Today marks a pivotal moment in the 2024 Imagine Cup as we reveal the top three teams selected to progress from the semifinals to the highly anticipated Imagine Cup World Championship, live at Microsoft Build!
The Imagine Cup, the premier student technology startup competition, has attracted thousands of visionary student entrepreneurs worldwide. Each team has developed an AI-driven solution to tackle pressing challenges including accessibility, sustainability, productivity, and healthcare.
This year’s semifinalists have demonstrated exceptional innovation with Azure AI services and OpenAI, showcasing their innovation, grit and ability make a positive impact through entrepreneurship. Congratulations to all the semifinalists for their remarkable achievements!
However, only three teams have been selected to progress to the World Championship where they will live on the global stage as they vie for the Imagine Cup Trophy, USD100,000, and a mentorship session with Microsoft Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella! You can watch these startups live at Microsoft Build on May 21 to see who wins.
Drumroll, please, as we unveil FROM YOUR EYES, JRE, and PlanRoadmap! These startups represent the pinnacle of creativity and resilience, embodying the spirit of innovation that defines Imagine Cup.
About: Using Azure Computer Vision and Text Translator, FROM YOUR EYES has built a mobile application that offers both fast and qualified visual explanations to visually impaired users.
In their own words…
Who/what inspires you?“After being selected as one of Microsoft’s leading women in technology in 2020, I was invited to join the experience team of Microsoft’s Seeing AI program. It was there that I took on responsibilities and crossed paths with visually impaired developers worldwide who held significant roles. They encouraged me to delve into coding. In addition, Onur Koç, Microsoft Turkey’s CTO, also greatly inspired us, he addressed all student ambassadors saying, ‘Software is magic. You can change the life of someone you’ve never met on the other side of the world.’ We were deeply moved by this, and with this motivation, we worked to reach people…with our developed technology, and we succeeded.”
How do you want to make an impact with AI? “The issue of blindness directly affects 330 million people worldwide and indirectly impacts over a billion individuals. For a visually impaired person, using image processing solutions means freedom. With the technology we have developed, our goal is to enable visually impaired individuals to live freely, remove barriers to their dreams, and solve the problem of blindness through technology. This competition will provide us with the opportunity to promote our technology to millions of visually impaired individuals worldwide. They do not have time to waste. We also want to quickly deliver our technology to those in need.”
About: Using Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft Fabric, and Copilot, JRE has built a slag detection system used in the continuous casting process of steel. Accurately detecting slag optimizes yield while improving quality.
In their own words…
Who/what inspires you?Jorge: “I learned how to code out of necessity. Even though I took courses as an undergrad, I never really liked the type of projects we did because they were primarily simulations about atomic interactions and molecular optimizations. I found these problems beautiful but very abstract. After college, many people wanted to create businesses around apps, and I learned how to code front and back-end applications to sell these apps. Later on, when I started working in the steel industry, I was frustrated by the lack of automation and unsafe and repetitive processes, so I started creating more complex integrated systems in this space.”
How do you want to make an impact with AI? “Our aim is to redefine manufacturing for the 21st century—making it smarter, more efficient, and sustainable. The Imagine Cup represents a unique opportunity to showcase our solution to a global audience, garnering support and resources necessary to scale our impact. We’re driven by the challenge of solving real-world problems and believe that through this competition, we can take a significant step towards achieving our vision.”
About: Using Azure OpenAI Service, PlanRoadmap has built an AI-powered productivity coach to help people with ADHD who are struggling with task paralysis get their tasks done. Their coach asks questions to identify the user’s obstacles, suggests strategies, and teaches the user about their work style.
In their own words…
Who/what inspires you?Aaliya: One of my biggest inspirations has been my father… as he helped guide my direction within computer science. He has always been an advocate for women in STEM, and at a young age, that was incredibly powerful to be supported on. It enabled me to overcome feelings of imposter syndrome and have confidence in myself. He has always painted a vision of who I could be before I really believed in myself, and he inspires me to be dedicated, passionate, and ambitious.”
Clay: “At a young age, I was diagnosed with dysgraphia, a condition that impairs writing ability and fine motor skills. Even if not explicitly stated, when everything in school is handwriting, you are at a pretty severe disadvantage when you struggle to even write a few sentences.”
Ever: “Some of my biggest inspiration in pursuing computer science and engineering has been from cinema. I didn’t really have many people in my life who were in the tech field growing up, so I got a lot of inspiration from seeing tech in movies. In cinema you can see tech exactly as the artist imagined it, without the restrictions of the real world.”
How do you want to make an impact with AI? Clay: “As I became increasingly proficient in programming, I realized that not only did I want to do something big, but that I had the potential to make it happen. We are unified under the mission to help people with ADHD achieve their dreams. Our customer discovery efforts have revealed that despite significant increases in technological tools, there are still millions of people facing barriers caused by their ADHD symptoms and related executive function deficits. We want to change that. The mentorship from Microsoft will help us with the technical innovation and provide that frictionless experience to provide a novel approach towards supporting neurodivergent people.”
Up Next…
These top three teams will be live on the global stage at Microsoft Build on May 21 for the Imagine Cup World Championship, showcasing the depth and promise of their startups. Follow the journey on Instagram and X to stay up to date with all the competition action – and join us live to find out who is crowned champion!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re excited to announce a new project onboarding feature is now available in the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal. The portal makes it easier to deploy Dynamics 365 projects successfully by guiding you from the start of your project to the end, giving you valuable insights and recommendations along the way. All you need to do to get started is create your implementation project in the portal, and the new onboarding wizard makes it easy. Here’s how:
User-friendly interface removes technical barriers. The onboarding wizard’s intuitive and user-friendly interface is designed to make the onboarding process accessible whatever your technical background. It acts as a virtual assistant, walking you through each step of project creation with clear instructions and prompts.
Projects are ready to use immediately. On completion of the onboarding process, your Dynamics 365 implementation project is instantly available, streamlining collaboration and ensuring that stakeholders have swift access to project resources.
Data is protected automatically. If the implementation project targets a tenant other than the one you’re signed in to, the onboarding wizard starts an approval flow. Two reviewers for the targeted tenant must both approve the request before information such as the customer name and telemetry insights are made available. This automatic review process ensures compliance with data protection regulations and builds trust with customers.
Successful Dynamics 365 implementations by design
The Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal is based on Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployment that was developed by Microsoft. Success by Design provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying your new Dynamics 365 solution. The onboarding wizard represents a pivotal advancement in the journey towards a successful Dynamics 365 implementation. By guiding you through the creation of your implementation projects, facilitating reviews, and offering relevant insights, the Implementation Portal and the onboarding wizard help your business harness the full potential of Dynamics 365 with confidence and efficiency.
Introducing the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal project onboarding wizard
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Seattle—April 17, 2024—Today, we are pleased to announce the release of document translation (preview) and transliteration features for Azure AI Translator containers. All Translator container customers will get these new features automatically as part of the update.
Translator containers provide users with the capability to host the Azure AI Translator API on their own infrastructure and include all libraries, tools, and dependencies needed to run the service in any private, public, or personal computing environment. They are isolated, lightweight, portable, and are great for implementing specific security or data governance requirements.
As of today’s release, the following operations are now supported when using Azure AI Translator containers:
Text translation: Translate the text phrases between supported source and target language(s) in real-time.
Text transliteration: Converts text in a language from one script to another script in real-time. E.g. converting Russian language text written in Cyrillic script to Latin script.
Document translation (Preview): Translate a document between supported source and target language while preserving the original document’s content structure and format.
When to consider using Azure AI Translator containers?
You may want to consider Azure AI Translator containers in cases where:
there are strict data residency requirements to ensure that sensitive information remains within the company’s security boundary.
you reside in industries such as government, military, banking, and security enforcement where the ability to translate data without exposing it to external networks is a must.
you require the ability to maintain continuous translation capabilities while operating in disconnected environments or with limited internet access.
optimization, cost management, and flexibility to run on-premises with existing infrastructure is a priority.
Getting started with Translator container.
Translator containers are a gated offering. You need to request container access and get approved. Refer to the prerequisites for a more detailed breakdown.
How do I get charged?
The document translation and transliteration features would be charged at different rates similar to the cloud offering.
Connected container: You’re billed monthly at the pricing tier of the Azure AI Translator resource, based on the usage and consumption. Below is an example of document translation billing metadata transmitted by Translator connected container to Azure for billing.
Disconnected container: As shown in the below usage records example, the aggregated value of ‘Billed Unit’ corresponding to the meters ‘One Document Translated Characters’ and ‘Translated Characters’ is counted towards the characters you licensed for your disconnected container usage.
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