Microsoft Unveils

Microsoft unveiled its "Frontier Transformation" strategy on the 29th. The strategy does not view the use of AI as a simple adoption phase, but instead focuses on business outcomes and changes in how organizations operate, rather than AI adoption itself. Microsoft defined Frontier Transformation as extending an organization’s ideas and expertise with AI and linking that to new ways of working and business competitiveness.

Microsoft said it does not favor simply adding AI tools. Instead, it said it aims to build a structure in which human judgment, organizational data, and AI agents work together.

Microsoft identified three key elements for this approach: Human Ambition, Intelligence, and Trust. It also put Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft IQ, and Agent 365 at the center of implementation.

The enterprise AI framework is divided into the roles of Copilot, Microsoft IQ, and Agent 365. Copilot is the interface where employees interact with and use AI for work. Microsoft IQ connects and expands organizational data and accumulated work knowledge. Agent 365 focuses on managing the status, permissions, and data access scope of AI agents that are increasing inside companies, while applying security controls.

The scope of Copilot is also expanding. Beyond document writing and search, Copilot is being extended to decision-making and system integration that reflect corporate work contexts.

As an example, Volkswagen expanded Copilot access to more than 330,000 employees. Volkswagen’s Copilot Chat has more than 300,000 monthly active users. Volkswagen employees are using Copilot with Work IQ to search and leverage work context and data within the organization. Volkswagen is also expanding a Microsoft Fabric-based data environment to use data across the company.

Fujitsu said it automated about 75% of initial response and inquiry classification work at its service desk, while annual inquiry volume reaches about 300,000. Fujitsu also expanded Copilot to about 100,000 employees worldwide. In addition, Fujitsu has broadened the use of AI agents to sales, systems engineering, procurement, finance, and accounting.

Kohler said that, in one development organization, using GitHub Copilot improved code release efficiency by 25% and reduced errors by 75%. Kohler also developed more than 3,000 in-house agents, of which hundreds are used every day.

In South Korea, Krafton applied AI to security work. Krafton connected Microsoft Security Copilot and Defender XDR with its own systems and data, and as a result, the time needed to recognize security alerts fell by about 95%, to under one minute. According to the company, the time spent on investigations also dropped from dozens of minutes to about 3 minutes, and about 95% of report writing was automated.

The scope of Copilot is expanding into research and field work. NASA is using it for natural-language search and analysis of decades of accumulated Earth science data, while Williams is using it to help field employees check operating procedures and regulatory requirements and to prepare safety reports. In this way, Copilot use is increasing at the user interface layer.

At the same time, companies are also working to connect AI with internal corporate data and work knowledge. Microsoft is positioning Microsoft IQ as the core of that effort.

Amid this trend, BNY built its own AI platform, Eliza. Eliza is based on Azure, Microsoft Foundry, Copilot, and GitHub Copilot. On that foundation, BNY is operating more than 300 solutions, including customer inquiries and onboarding, and the time required to resolve transaction-related inquiries has fallen by 80% from previous levels, while customer onboarding time has declined by an average of 20%.

DocuSign applied AI to contract document processing. DocuSign applied Microsoft Foundry to its Azure-based contract management platform, turning general-purpose models into task-specific models. Through this, DocuSign cut processing costs by 90%, expanded document processing volume by up to 8 times, and built an environment that handles more than 1 million contract documents a day.

In manufacturing settings, cases are emerging in which AI links expert experience with equipment data. Rockwell Automation applied a maintenance Copilot based on Microsoft Foundry to its Singapore plant. The maintenance Copilot is based on the experience of veteran engineers, manufacturing data, and machine manuals.

The maintenance Copilot guides users on the causes of equipment problems and how to respond to them. As a result, Rockwell Automation reduced machine downtime by 33% and cut maintenance costs and spare parts costs by about 25%. The time needed for new employees to become proficient with hundreds of machines was also shortened from 9 months to 3 months.

TK Elevator built an AI agent for on-site technician support using 10 years of equipment data stored in Azure. The AI agent tells technicians the equipment location, the problem, and the tools needed before they visit the site. After the work is done, it records the technician’s explanation as voice data. As a result of this voice recording, the work experience of 25,000 technicians worldwide is accumulated as organizational knowledge.

As AI becomes more directly connected to corporate data and systems, the issue of managing agent permissions and activities is also growing. In response, Microsoft is offering Agent 365. Agent 365 supports integrated management of the status, responsible owners, data access permissions, and activity history of AI agents within an organization.

Insight Enterprises is using Agent 365. The company has identified 9,734 AI agents within the organization. It is also managing each agent’s active status, data access scope, and activity history.

KPMG has expanded Copilot access to more than 276,000 employees worldwide. KPMG has also adopted Agent 365. The areas of application are AI agents for audit, tax, and advisory work, and KPMG is centrally managing those AI agents. "KPMG Workbench," a multi-agent platform based on Microsoft Foundry, is expected to be linked with Agent 365.

In the finance and insurance industries, large-scale AI agent operations are emerging. Truist Financial is managing more than 13,000 AI agents in a tightly regulated financial environment, and it assigns a responsible owner to each AI agent. At Truist Financial, more than 8,000 agents are being used in operations every month.

Manulife is applying Agent 365 to manage AI agents across the company. It is also supporting more than 110 million customer calls a year with generative AI solutions, and is expanding Copilot use to more than 30,000 employees.

Microsoft presented Frontier Transformation as the operating model underpinning these cases. Microsoft said the focus of Frontier Transformation goes beyond deploying AI tools and is about connecting people’s work, organizational data, and AI agents into a single operating system. In this structure, Copilot is the user interface, Microsoft IQ handles the connection to organizational data, and Agent 365 manages agent permissions and security.

Source: TECHWORLD · Kim Seung-gi
Original: https://www.epnc.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=408975

References

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