On his first day at Microsoft, Phillip was taken to lunch by his manager. Bussing his table after the meal, he approached three bins labeled compost, recycle, and trash. He’d never been exposed to compost, much less this kind of container array for waste.
Phillip: “This is just for food? I’m going to need a second.”
Manager: “No worries, everyone has a difficult time sorting their waste.”
This got some sprockets spinning in Phillip’s head.
Phillip also began seeing signs for Microsoft’s 2018 Hackathon, held in July. The company-wide event encourages employees to work on new ideas they have to change the world. Phillip was one of more than 23,500 global participants that year. Phillip had an idea for an artificial intelligence solution to help people sort their waste. The project uses a camera to recognize waste items and cue the bearer, likely with an LED light, as to which bin each piece belongs.
Others who have attacked the problem have typically focused on automating the process. But it was important to Phillip to include an educational aspect—in essence, teaching a machine to teach humans how to sort waste.
Two Rubik’s Cubes sit on Phillip’s desk at Microsoft. One is the traditional shape, and the other is shaped kind of like the Death Star in “Star Wars.” A blueprint of the first one—the original cube—hangs on his wall. He has solved the rotating brain teasers so many times since middle school that they now offer a kind of automated mindlessness.
He says he uses that state to unleash his creativity, something experts say otherwise cannot be summoned on demand.
“It’s a way of broadening the current range of sense experience,” he says. “Specifically, for me, it activates other creative ideas when I’m stuck on a challenge. “
The first real puzzle Phillip tackled, so to speak, was his inability to earn a way onto the North Dallas Cowboys select football team in fifth grade.
“Getting rejected took an interesting toll on me,” he says.
This week, hospitality industry leaders are gathering in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the world’s largest hospitality technology show, HITEC. It’s an exciting time for the tourism industry as technology transforms the way companies compete, operate, empower their employees, and serve their guests.
I’m especially energized by Microsoft’s opportunity to empower the people who are in the best position to represent hotel and travel brands with their customers—Firstline Workers. These are the employees behind the front desk, from the concierge who delivers a knowledgeable recommendation, to the committed staff working behind the scenes from check-in to check-out.
Transforming the Firstline Worker experience
By giving Firstline Workers modern tools that enable them to access information, stay connected, and communicate with coworkers in real-time, hospitality companies can create a more connected organization, and address guest needs on the spot.
Here are just a few ways hotels are integrating Microsoft solutions to improve the employee experience:
Using Microsoft Teams’ mobile-first capabilities, Firstline Workers can easily communicate, collaborate, and share best practices across the organization. Earlier this year, we announced new capabilities—including urgent messaging, location sharing, and image annotations—which enable hotels to act with agility, leading to a superior guest experience.
Using PowerApps and Shifts, organizations can digitize everyday activities—from repetitive and administrative to more personalized and role-specific tasks. For example, housekeepers use it to keep track of room tasks, helping reduce costs and freeing up time to focus on delighting guests.
Using Microsoft Stream hotels can deliver dynamic, role-based content to increase engagement and retention of training programs—as well as support peer-to-peer information sharing.
Helping our customers succeed
Leading hotel brands, including Marriott International and Red Lions Hotel Corporation (RLH), are at the forefront of empowering their Firstline employees with digital communication and collaboration. In doing so, they’re building cultures of employee engagement, and meeting the needs of their guests in new ways.
Marriott recently selected Microsoft 365 to enhance productivity, collaboration, and workflows. Sales specialist Peter McDermott says, “In a world where guests demand answers, it’s more important than ever to connect with your teams… With Teams, whether my coworkers are across the hall or across the country, we can always stay connected to exceed customer expectations.”
RLH is also using Microsoft 365 to help accelerate innovation and enable new capabilities inside the company. The company has rolled out Teams to its entire workforce to make it easier for employees to connect with coworkers in other departments and streamline processes.
“The persistence of communication is what distinguishes the Teams solution. The style is somewhere in between, where IM might be too loose, and email, which is much more formal. It’s much more of a conversation; it’s much more efficient. We don’t have people saying where’s this or where’s that because they haven’t lost it in the noise of email,” says John Edwards, CIO for RLH Corporation.
Join us at the HITEC conference
This week, members of the Microsoft team will be at HITEC, the annual hospitality tech conference. Visit us at the Microsoft booth (#1634) and learn how Microsoft is enabling intelligent hospitality.
Today, we’d like to announce the arrival of a new family member—that’s right, the moment many of you have been waiting for is here—say hello to the Mac app. Can’t wait to get started? Download it from the Mac App Storenow, and then read on to find out more.
The Mac app joins iOS, Android, Windows and web.
The To-Do app you know and love
If you’ve already been using our app on Android, iOS, Windows, or web, then the Mac app will feel very familiar. Sign in and all your tasks will be waiting for you, ready to be checked off. You can work offline, add tasks to My Day, see your flagged email in your Flagged email list, and share your lists with colleagues or friends and family. The Planner integration isn’t available yet, but we’re already working on bringing the Assigned to Me list to you.
Keep your tasks in focus while you work with minimized view
It’s all in the details
Let’s get to the fun bits. Press ⌘2 and To-Do will move into the minimizedview so that all you see is the list view. Keep it on My Day to always have your tasks for the day on view. With To-Do on the side of the screen you can work on that budget in Excel or that essay in Word while checkingoff each step you complete. Turn the sound up loud, because of course that oh-so-satisfying ding is also in our Mac app. Want to go back to seeing all your lists? ⌘1 will get you there.
Want to edit a task? You don’t need to go into the detail view to do that in the Macapp—you can do it straight from your list view. Select the task you want to edit and then click on the text in order to edit the task name.
See all the tags that you’ve previously used
If you use tags then you’ll be very happy to know that we have a tag menu that will pop up whenever you type # in a list name. Using a productivity system like GTD (Getting Things Done)? You can add tags like #home #computer #work or #waiting to your task names and usethe menu to quickly add these tags to future tasks. Click on the tag and you’ll see all the tasks with that tag name across all your lists.
It’s all in the tech details
If, like us, you like to look under the hood of the app, then you might love to know that we built a native Mac app using 100% AppKit.
So, that’s it from us. We’ll leave you to get acquainted with our newest family member. We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below, or over on Twitter or Facebook. Have an issue? Send us a message in-app and our To-Do support team will be ready to help.
The 2019 Microsoft Business Applications Summit is over, but your learning and discovery is just getting started. Event content is now available on demand in the Dynamics 365 Community, giving you the opportunity to explore 200+ session recordings, download presentations, ask questions, and collaborate with the speakers and experts.
Get started by selecting one of four communities—Dynamics 365, PowerApps, Power BI, and Microsoft Flow—and then browse or search for content that interests you. As a supplement to the event content, be sure to browse the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform product roadmap.
Jumpstart what’s next for your business
Watch the visionary opening keynote for a first look at the new features and capabilities coming next for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. James Phillips, Corporate Vice President, Business Applications Group, and business leaders from across industries give you a preview of what’s next in the 2019 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
Build your skills at your own pace
Learn directly from the engineers behind Dynamics 365, Power BI, Excel, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, mixed reality, and more. Download presentations to review in-depth and connect with experts in community forums.
Get fresh ideas to solve your toughest challenges
Dig into game-changing technology like AI and mixed reality to amplify the impact of the tools you use every day. Collaborate with the community and share hints and hacks.
Here’s a sample of just some of the sessions available on demand, and be sure to check out the Dynamics 365 Community for the full rundown:
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central roadmap and overview Learn how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps you connect your business, make smarter decisions, and start and grow easily.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service: What’s new and roadmap From recent releases in the Field Service solution to evolution in universal resource scheduling, learn firsthand about new scheduling scenarios, enhanced productivity for onsite workers, better data integration for inventory, and easier connections to Connected Field Service for Azure IoT Central.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations: What’s new in financial management Get the tips, tricks, and tools to plan what’s next for your organization, from streamlined periodic processes to improved usability features and more.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing: Connect marketing and sales Discover new capabilities and pricing offers that can help you cultivate more sales-ready leads than ever before.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales: Get the most out of the Microsoft ecosystem with new capabilities and integrations Pick up best practices to get the most out of Dynamics 365 for Sales, including new forecasting capabilities, integrations with Microsoft Teams and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and in-app solution discovery for configure price quote (CPQ) and data augmentation partners.
Get inspired, boost your skills, and power major digital transformation at your organization. It’s just a click away — watch the on demand sessions now.
Mixed reality takes digital information beyond two-dimensional screens to a three-dimensional experience by using holograms, which are images made of light and sound.
Microsoft’s HoloLens headset is a culmination of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), hardware design and mixed reality development. It allows people to interact with holograms in physical space, meaning that they can view and manipulate holographic images on their own in the air or in combination with real physical objects.
The recent release of HoloLens 2 takes the mixed reality experience a step further, allowing users to manipulate holograms the same way they would handle physical objects. The headset also offers eye tracking that can sense when a user’s eyes land on a particular location and produce relevant digital information, as well as automatic scrolling as the user reads. Users can log in via iris recognition, making sharing among multiple people easy and secure.
Hololens 2 helps Airbus designers accelerate the validation process – when they determine whether their designs are fit for industrialization – by 80 percent.
Putting mixed reality to work
Airbus has seen impressive results in its trials and deployments of Microsoft’s mixed reality technology in training, design and manufacturing.
“Mixed reality can help us to increase quality, safety and security,” Dumont says. “The level of human error is significantly reduced, and in aerospace, increased quality is increased safety—and needless to say, security goes with that.”
Mixed reality allows aerospace trainees to learn in an immersive virtual environment without the need for an actual physical aircraft or parts. This 3D environment can offer features that real-life training cannot, such as the ability to view elements in three dimensions from any angle.
HoloLens helps Airbus designers virtually test their designs to see if they are ready for manufacture. Mixed reality speeds up the process substantially, decreasing the time spent by 80 percent.
Mixed reality technology can also help workers on the production line access crucial information while keeping their hands free. Digital information, such as instructions or diagrams, can be overlaid on a real piece of machinery to aid in complex or hard-to-reach tasks. These kinds of mixed-reality solutions have allowed Airbus to cut manufacturing time by a third while improving quality.
Mixed reality empowers employees to execute their jobs in the most efficient and ergonomic way possible, and this contributes directly to performance improvements, according to Barbara Bergmeier, who is head of operations at Airbus Defense and Space.
“By having the right information at the right time in hands free mode, not only does quality increase, but also safety, and this is what we are looking for. Quality without consideration of the well-being of our workers is not possible,” she says.
Mixed reality technology can be used to help Airbus production workers access information and instructions while their hands are occupied.
Working together to evolve mixed reality
Not only is Airbus creating solutions for its workforce, but it has built off-the-shelf solutions for its customers, so they can also benefit from Airbus’ expertise in building mixed reality solutions. Starting at the Paris Air Show, Airbus will be selling these in partnership with Microsoft on HoloLens 2.
“HoloLens 2 was born from the inspiration that it be designed for the customer, by the customer,” says Alex Kipman, technical fellow in Microsoft’s Cloud and AI group. “Airbus has long been a strategic partner in building the future of mixed reality solutions for an industrial environment and we have learned a lot from them. We are thrilled to continue our partnership as we embark on this next era of computing, the era of mixed reality and artificial intelligence.”
The first new solution offered under this partnership is a mixed reality training program first released with Japan Airlines (JAL). It helps maintenance operators and cabin crews learn in a 3D holographic environment and access instructions, heads-up and hands-free, while on the job.
In addition, Airbus will launch a collaborative map solution that allows participants from the defense and aerospace fields to virtually connect, quickly share space data and interact with complex virtual environments to plan and prepare ahead of missions.
Airbus is working on requests from other customers for mixed reality maintenance, training and remote collaboration solutions.
Over the next 20 years, Airbus aims to build 20,000 aircraft.
Leading in real life
Airbus’ collaboration with Microsoft on mixed reality goes beyond helping the company reach its internal goals. Such technological innovation is crucial to Airbus’ larger objective to become a world leader in digital services for the aerospace industry.
“We are very optimistic about this future collaboration with Microsoft based off what we’ve done in the last four years,” Dumont says. “This is really a way for us to lead our digital transformation. It’s multifold, but the use of mixed reality and HoloLens 2 are one of the key assets for Airbus in the future.”
Top photo: Holographic technology from Microsoft will be key to helping Airbus manufacture more aircraft faster.
Globally, more than 1 billion people are living with a disability, yet justone in 10 people has access to assistive technology,according to the World Health Organization.
Over the years, Microsoft has beenbuilding inclusion into its products and services. And to help everyone get the most from accessibility resources, the company has the Disability Answer Desk,or DAD. It is free, 24/7 technical support from Microsoft experts trained in assistive technologies.
“Our goal is to make the Disability Answer Desk a best-in-class support team for customers with disabilities and to use feedback to drive greater accessibility across our engineering teams,” says Sean Marihugh, an accessibility escalation engineer at Microsoft.
Technology has the power to strengthen opportunities for everyone, but it must be intuitive to have an impact. DAD gives customers the technical support they need while gathering critical feedback to improve the assistive features in products.
Each year, DAD experts field about 150,000 inquiries, assisting customers with products such as Office 365, Xbox, Windows and Skype, as well as third-party assistive technologies, such asscreen readers, screen magnifiers, and speech recognition software.
Microsoft has also established an Enterprise Disability Answer Desk, oreDAD, that supports enterprise customers. Available globally as a free service in English, eDAD also reports customer feedback to specific product teams so they can quickly resolve issues.
“With eDAD, we have the potential to empower people with disabilities to achieve more at work and school—and enable organizations to provide more accessible experiences to their employees and customers,” says Crystal Jones, alsoan accessibility escalation engineer at Microsoft.
Since introducing DAD in 2012, Microsoft has extended the service to customers in 11 English-speaking countries: the US, UK, South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, and India. The service has been rolled out to French– and Spanish-speaking countries, including France, Belgium, Canada, Mexico, and Spain.
With eDAD, we have the potential to empower people with disabilities to achieve more at work and school—and enable organizations to provide more accessible experiences to their employees and customers. —Crystal Jones
Over the years, Microsoft has gradually expanded the channels for accessing the service. DAD is available through 24/7 chat serviceand onTwitterby sending a direct message to @MSFTEnable.
DAD also hasAmerican Sign Language supportthrough videophone. People who are blind or have low vision can useBe My Eyes, a free app that connects customersthroughlive video calls.
In 2018, the team at the Microsoft Store in Jacksonville, FL, met a young lady that forever changed them. Her name is Molly, and she is a remarkable example of ingenuity, grit and gusto.
At the age of two, Molly’s parents learned that she was born with a neuro-developmental disorder called Rett Syndrome, a rare condition which, over time, has severely impacted her mobility and her ability to speak. But as Molly will be the first to tell you, the disorder has not impacted her interminable spirit or her intense desire to empower those around her.
With the support of her family, Molly found The Foundation Academy, a school that was able to accommodate her needs and has spent her academic career there.
Over the years, the Microsoft team has grown close to Molly and her mother, Robin. They’ve helped her with a number of projects, including one where she hacked the Xbox Adaptive Controller to make a dancing wheelchair. The team was happy to jump in to support her big ideas because it’s clear when you meet Molly that she is going to do great things for the world.
Last week, we had the honor of watching Molly give her Valedictorian speech at her graduation from The Foundation Academy. She has blossomed into a curious developer, eager to pursue a career in computer science and engineering, so she can one day develop new technologies to empower herself and others like her.
But the story doesn’t end there because, after all, graduation is just the beginning of a lifetime of learning and potential.
Our graduation caps are off to you, Molly, your family and the team at The Foundation Academy!
Share your story or a story about another Changemaker in education, submit here through the Microsoft Education blog.
To discover everything Microsoft has to offer and how we can work with you, please visit your local Microsoft Store.
Last month, Xbox and ELEAGUE announced the “ELEAGUE Gears Summer Series: The Bonds and Betrayals of Brotherhood” – a six-part event series focused on the stories and players behind the world of Gears Esports. During our special E3 Edition of Inside Xbox on June 10, we teased the show with a two-minute trailer. If this left you wanting more, you’re in luck! The first episode will debut on TBS tomorrow, Friday, June 14, at 11 pm ET/8 apm PT.
With one-hour long episodes, the series will provide an unprecedented look into the uniquely passionate world of Gears Esports through the lens of six of the most well-known professional players, including Gilbert ‘Xplosive’ Rojo and Danny ‘Identivez’ Santillana. The six episodes will explore each player’s intense connection to the game and each other as they navigate to become the best players in the world on Gears 5 Escalation 2.0, the mode designed specifically for Gears Esports.
In addition to the TBS episodes, ELEAGUE will host Gears 5’s first-ever esports tournament, with new Versus gameplay, from July 13-14 (Saturday to Sunday), live on Twitch and the premium live sports streaming service B/R Live. The ELEAGUE Gears Summer Series tournament will feature eight of the world’s top teams – many of which will star in the TBS series – competing live within ELEAGUE Arena at Turner Studios in Atlanta. The final two episodes of the TBS programming will showcase the most exciting moments from the live tournament.
Alfred Krupp founded his company in 1811. Now, over 200 years later, he is the namesake and inspiration for an artificial intelligence solution built by thyssenkrupp Materials Services (tkMX), one of Germany-based thyssenkrupp AG’s strategic business areas – and the largest materials distributor and service provider in the western world.
The “alfred” AI solution, powered by Microsoft Azure, helps the company analyze and process more than two million orders per year and better serve its 250,000 global customers.
Though alfred has been in place for just under a year, the solution is already helping tkMX optimize its logistics network – allocating materials to the right location much faster, minimizing transport volume and enhancing usage of the company’s transport capacity.
Axel Berger, head of the Digital Transformation Office, thyssenkrupp Materials Services.
Transform caught up with Axel Berger, head of digital transformation at tkMX, to hear more about how alfred is changing the business.
TRANSFORM: Tell me about alfred and why tkMX developed it. What business challenges were you facing?
AXEL BERGER: We are a wholesaler, so data insights and data algorithms are possibly one of the strongest levers we have to improve our business. We had a lot of data that we weren’t using before, for three main reasons.
First, we didn’t really have the expertise to work on specific data science topics – we had the data, but it wasn’t always available. Second, data quality was an issue. And third, we lacked the technology to store data in different formats to use it and make it available in one central location on a massive scale. We also lacked the related tools to really analyze it, visualize it and finally, build algorithms out of it that could be deployed in different scenarios.
There are many possible use cases for wholesalers, and it took us a long time to pinpoint the use case that we should implement first. The major topic we’ve focused on is network optimization. How can we optimize, for example, transport costs or our supply network? How can we reduce the stock that is delivered from A to B without sacrificing our service levels? So the first project that we’ve worked on is network simulations within our German trade network.
It’s important to note that alfred is growing through its use cases. We didn’t create a huge global platform that could do everything. The first use case requires a specific amount of data, computing power and certain tools. But with additional use cases that we are now implementing, alfred is growing.
thyssenkrupp Material Services’ alfred AI solution.
TRANSFORM: I understand you developed alfred internally. Can you tell us a little about that?
BERGER: Alfred came to life in early 2018. The biggest challenge was definitely data availability. You can have the greatest technology, the best tools, but the biggest challenge is to get quality data. Another challenge is to have the domain knowledge, the expertise in the specific topic to really make it relevant.
Everybody’s thinking that if you just use data and artificial intelligence, in the end this artificial intelligence will give you the insights that you don’t know yet. But that’s not happening. It’s about having the right data of the right quality, the expertise and the domain knowledge on a specific topic, and the technology to run it. Technology is the easy part, because nowadays there is someone like Microsoft with the technology. But to bring data and domain knowledge into the project and to understand the use case and the questions you are trying to answer, that is the hardest part.
TRANSFORM: Can you walk me through what alfred might do over the course of one day?
BERGER: There are so many things that alfred can do! Alfred dynamically tells us from which site we should ship which material to which customer. Alfred optimizes our stock levels. Alfred tells us what the perfect price for a specific customer for a specific product is. Alfred visualizes and tells us which customers are profitable, and which customers are not.
Alfred can help us build a predictive maintenance model for our machinery, and tell us which machine is about to break. Alfred also helps us to optimize our supply network in terms of physical sites – where should we open the next site or close it down, and which materials should be subbed somewhere else. It helps us to get better purchase prices because it helps us in negotiations and the bundling of materials that we want to purchase. These are all current or potential use cases.
TRANSFORM: I understand it’s still evolving, but what is the biggest benefit alfred has had on your business?
BERGER: We handed over decision-making to alfred (a machine) that relies on data. One of the taglines that we use for alfred is “intelligence in each transaction,” which means that we want to build decision engines. Alfred already delivered the first decision engine: The system tells us from which location the customer is to be supplied – taking into account all relevant frame data. That was our first decision engine, you could say.
TRANSFORM: What has been the employee reaction to alfred? Have they embraced alfred, or was there some resistance early on?
BERGER: People weren’t resistant to alfred, because right away we could show them how alfred would help them in their daily work, and the benefits we’d gain. With the use case we’ve been working on, alfred doesn’t imply any layoffs or redundancies. It is purely optimizing the way we are working, and helping to enhance the impact our employees are driving. So alfred is seen positively.
All company data can be combined on one platform with alfred.
TRANSFORM: Did you do any training to prepare employees for alfred?
BERGER: Yes, absolutely. We helped them, trained them, involved them in the process very early. We trained them in the tools. What we are also planning is to deploy data labs, small versions of alfred, so people working on a specific data problem can use alfred to solve their own problems with just a push of the button. We teach them how to do this – how to use Microsoft Power BI, for example, to visualize their own data. That helped a lot because they started to work with data and to better understand what it’s all about and how it can be utilized.
TRANSFORM: How else has alfred helped your employees achieve more and optimized their work?
BERGER: Alfred has helped employees by enabling them to simulate tkMX’s network setup, which was extremely difficult before because our network is extremely complex. It has helped with data availability – the employees have much more data that they can now access themselves, without involving anybody from data warehousing. And obviously by increasing data transparency.
TRANSFORM: Have new roles or opportunities opened up to support alfred?
BERGER: Yes, of course. Roles like data engineering, data architecture, data science, solution designers – these are all new roles that we staff now.
TRANSFORM: What advice would you give other companies that are considering launching an AI initiative?
BERGER: I’d like to shift the focus away from the buzzword “AI” and better discuss what’s behind it. I don’t believe that there is an artificial intelligence as such. We have focused algorithms.
In other words, what I would recommend is to calm down and don’t be afraid of AI, because the methods are 60 years old. What has changed are the opportunities that advanced technologies such as cloud and edge computing provide and the pace at which they evolve. So, businesses need to get used to these new technologies, and use technology that is easy to handle – like Microsoft Azure. With Azure we can quickly launch applications that can be used for data aggregation, manipulation and analysis with the click of a button, with only a few people in the beginning.
To start, I would recommend taking data, searching for your first use cases, and just building them without engineering them forever. Clarify the questions you want to answer. Don’t believe in overarching algorithms that will solve the problem of finding the question, the use case. Because otherwise everybody is expecting results for something that you don’t even know is a problem.
TRANSFORM: Based on your experience, what concerns or rewards do you see for society as AI becomes more ubiquitous?
BERGER: Again, I would say calm down and get in touch with the methods and technologies behind AI. People are fearing things they don’t know. If you get in touch with it and understand what’s really behind AI, then I think it’s easier for people to understand that we are far away from real artificial intelligence. We see specific use cases, specific technologies to solve specific problems, but nothing like a mastermind.
It’s important to talk about AI and engage in the public debate, because with the evolving technology around machine learning and AI, there are questions to answer, including both ethical and legal questions. For example, the much-used example of an autonomous car. How do we cope as we give more and more autonomy and decision-making capacity to machines?
I studied mechatronics some 25 years ago. With mechatronics you were already talking about cyber-physical systems and programming and automizing machines. So IoT is nothing new. It’s just the technology has evolved and that gives us new opportunities.
When you look at artificial intelligence, the methodologies are out of the 1940s, 1950s – neural networks, for example. It’s nothing new. It’s all about cheaper storage, more computing power and better connectivity, but also about standardization and harmonization of data. And if you come back to that point, you realize it’s feasible to cope with it, because we’ve been able to cope with it for many years.
AI will help thyssenkrupp Materials Services efficiently manage their logistics network.
TRANSFORM: You talked about what alfred is doing now. In 10 years, where do you want the platform to be?
BERGER: Technology is evolving so fast, it’s hard to foresee. Do you know the saying, ‘The appetite comes with eating’? It’s like when you’re working on a project, you’re finding new data insights, new data points that give you the motivation to go to the next step. So I am convinced there will be so many more use cases in the future that I cannot foresee right now.
I will learn, we all will learn, the machine will learn. We will get more and more data created out of the data that we already have – other data sources, third-party data and so forth. So right now, I cannot foresee all the use cases we will see in the future. We will work under one paradigm, which is ‘Intelligence in each transaction’. Over time alfred will also take decisions in our ERP system automatically. In average transactions that we do, we would like to have more intelligence, and alfred will help us with that.
TRANSFORM: Is there anything you would like to add?
BERGER: I’m a great believer in removing the mystique of buzzwords like AI and focusing on what’s behind it instead – helping people and companies understand the technologies and methods that help us make our businesses as well as our personal lives easier and better.
It’s part of my role as the CDO, but I also believe that digitalization is a bunch of buzzwords. If you ask someone at a conference what you really mean by digitalization, most people will get very thin in their answers. Why?
Because they don’t really know, because they are looking at digitalization from a huge height. And I think if you really want to go beyond the buzzwords, you really need to go into the use cases and the business, and you really need to redefine the opportunities. So I am trying hard to get out of these buzzwords and really get down to the use cases.
Top photo: thyssenkrupp Materials Services receives around 14 million order items annually. With alfred, these can be efficiently processed and analyzed. (All photos courtesy of thyssenkrupp Materials Services)
This evening at a press event to kickoff MWC Barcelona, I had the pleasure of joining CEO Satya Nadella and Technical Fellow Alex Kipman onstage to talk in depth about Microsoft’s worldview for the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge.
As part of today’s press event, we also introduced the world to HoloLens 2.
YouTube Video
This is a tremendously exciting time for Microsoft, our partners, our customers, the computing industry and indeed the world. The virtually limitless computing power and capability of the cloud combined with increasingly intelligent and perceptive edge devices embedded throughout the physical world create experiences we could only imagine a few short years ago.
When intelligent cloud and intelligent edge experiences are infused with mixed reality, we have a framework for achieving amazing things and empowering even more people.
Today represents an important milestone for Microsoft. This moment captures the very best efforts and passion of numerous teams spanning Azure, HoloLens, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Devices — this truly is a moment where the sum is greater than the parts. From cutting-edge hardware design to mixed reality-infused cloud services, today’s announcements represent the collective work of many teams. And none of this would be possible without our passionate community of customers, partners and developers.
On behalf of everyone on the team, it is my privilege to introduce you to HoloLens 2 and all the announcements we made today to kick off MWC Barcelona.
Introducing HoloLens 2
Since the release of HoloLens in 2016 we have seen mixed reality transform the way work gets done. We have unlocked super-powers for hundreds of thousands of people who go to work every day. From construction sites to factory floors, from operating rooms to classrooms, HoloLens is changing how we work, learn, communicate and get things done.
We are entering a new era of computing, one in which the digital world goes beyond two-dimensional screens and enters the three-dimensional world. This new collaborative computing era will empower us all to achieve more, break boundaries and work together with greater ease and immediacy in 3D.
Today, we are proud to introduce the world to Microsoft HoloLens 2.
Our customers asked us to focus on three key areas to make HoloLens even better. They wanted HoloLens 2 to be even more immersive and more comfortable, and to accelerate the time-to-value.
Immersion is greatly enhanced by advancements across the board, including in the visual display system, making holograms even more vibrant and realistic. We have more than doubled the field of view in HoloLens 2, while maintaining the industry-leading holographic density of 47 pixels per degree of sight. HoloLens 2 contains a new display system that enables us to achieve these significant advances in performance at low power. We have also completely refreshed the way you interact with holograms in HoloLens 2. Taking advantage of our new time-of-flight depth sensor, combined with built-in AI and semantic understanding, HoloLens 2 enables direct manipulation of holograms with the same instinctual interactions you’d use with physical objects in the real world. In addition to the improvements in the display engine and direct manipulation of holograms, HoloLens 2 contains eye-tracking sensors that make interacting with holograms even more natural. You can log in with Windows Hello enterprise-grade authentication through iris recognition, making it easy for multiple people to quickly and securely share the device.
Comfort is enhanced by a more balanced center of gravity, the use of light carbon-fiber material and a new mechanism for donning the device without readjusting. We’ve improved the thermal management with new vapor chamber technology and accounted for the wide physiological variability in the size and shape of human heads by designing HoloLens 2 to comfortably adjust and fit almost anyone. The new dial-in fit system makes it comfortable to wear for hours on end, and you can keep your glasses on because HoloLens 2 adapts to you by sliding right over them. When it’s time to step out of mixed reality, flip the visor up and switch tasks in seconds. Together, these enhancements have more than tripled the measured comfort and ergonomics of the device.
Time-to-value is accelerated by Microsoft mixed reality applications like Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Dynamics 365 Layout and the new Dynamics 365 Guides applications. In addition to the in-box value, our ecosystem of mixed reality partners provides a broad range of offerings built on HoloLens that deliver value across a range of industries and use cases. This partner ecosystem is being supplemented by a new wave of mixed reality entrepreneurs who are realizing the potential of devices like HoloLens 2 and the Azure services that give them the spatial, speech and vision intelligence needed for mixed reality, plus battle-tested cloud services for storage, security and application insights.
Building on the unique capabilities of the original HoloLens, HoloLens 2 is the ultimate intelligent edge device. And when coupled with existing and new Azure services, HoloLens 2 becomes even more capable, right out of the box.
HoloLens 2 will be available this year at a price of $3,500. Bundles including Dynamics 365 Remote Assist start at $125/month. HoloLens 2 will be initially available in the United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand. Customers can preorder HoloLens 2 starting today at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens/buy.
In addition to HoloLens 2, we were also excited to make the following announcements at MWC Barcelona.
Azure Kinect Developer Kit (DK)
The Azure Kinect DK is a developer kit that combines our industry-leading AI sensors in a single device. At its core is the time-of-flight depth sensor we developed for HoloLens 2, high-def RGB camera and a 7-microphone circular array that will enable development of advanced computer vision and speech solutions with Azure. It enables solutions that don’t just sense but understand the world — people, places, things around it. A good example of such a solution in the healthcare space is Ocuvera, which is using this technology to prevent patients from falling in hospitals. Every year in the U.S. alone, over 1 million hospital patients fall each year, and 11,000 of those falls are fatal. With Azure Kinect, the environmental precursors to a fall can be determined and a nurse notified to get to patients before they fall. Initially available in the U.S. and China, the Azure Kinect DK is available for preorder today at $399. Visit Azure.com/Kinect for more info.
Dynamics 365 Guides is a new mixed reality app that empowers employees to learn by doing. Guides enhances learning with step-by-step instructions that guide employees to the tools and parts they need and how to use them in real work situations. In addition to the experience of using Guides on HoloLens, a Guides PC app makes it easy to create interactive content, attach photos and videos, import 3D models and customize training to turn institutional knowledge into a repeatable learning tool.
This application will help minimize downtime and increase efficiency for mission-critical equipment and processes and becomes the third Dynamics 365 application that will work on both the previous generation of HoloLens and the new HoloLens 2.
Dynamics 365 Guides is available in preview starting today.
Azure Mixed Reality Services
Today we also announced two new Azure mixed reality services. These services are designed to help every developer and every business build cross-platform, contextual and enterprise-grade mixed reality applications.
Azure Spatial Anchors enables businesses and developers to create mixed reality apps that map, designate and recall precise points of interest that are accessible across HoloLens, iOS and Android devices. These precise points of interest enable a range of scenarios, from shared mixed reality experiences to wayfinding across connected places. We’re already seeing this service help our customers work and learn with greater speed and ease in manufacturing, architecture, medical education and more.
Azure Remote Rendering helps people experience 3D without compromise to fuel better, faster decisions. Today, to interact with high-quality 3D models on mobile devices and mixed reality headsets, you often need to “decimate,” or simplify, 3D models to run on target hardware. But in scenarios like design reviews and medical planning, every detail matters, and simplifying assets can result in a loss of important detail that is needed for key decisions. This service will render high-quality 3D content in the cloud and stream it to edge devices, all in real time, with every detail intact.
Azure Spatial Anchors is in public preview as of today. Azure Remote Rendering is now in private preview in advance of its public preview.
Microsoft HoloLens Customization Program
HoloLens is being used in a variety of challenging environments, from construction sites and operating rooms to the International Space Station. HoloLens has passed the basic impact tests from several protective eyewear standards used in North America and Europe. It has been tested and found to conform to the basic impact protection requirements of ANSI Z87.1, CSA Z94.3 and EN 166. With HoloLens 2 we’re introducing the Microsoft HoloLens Customization Program to enable customers and partners to customize HoloLens 2 to fit their environmental needs.
The first to take advantage of the HoloLens Customization Program is our long-standing HoloLens partner Trimble, which last year announced Trimble Connect for HoloLens along with a new hard hat solution that improves the utility of mixed reality for practical field applications. Today it announced the Trimble XR10 with Microsoft HoloLens 2, a new wearable hard hat device that enables workers in safety-controlled environments to access holographic information on the worksite.
Open principles
Finally, as we closed things out, Alex Kipman articulated a set of principles around our open approach with the mixed reality ecosystem.
We believe that for an ecosystem to truly thrive there should be no barriers to innovation or customer choice.
To that end, Alex described how HoloLens embraces the principles of open stores, open browsers and open developer platforms.
To illustrate our dedication to these principles, we announced that our friends at Mozilla are bringing a prototype of the Firefox Reality browser to HoloLens 2, demonstrating our commitment to openness and the immersive web. Alex was also joined by Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, who announced that Unreal Engine 4 support is coming to HoloLens.
In the coming months we will have more announcements and details to share. We look forward to continuing this journey with you all.
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