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With insights gleaned from these connected intelligent devices, companies will be able to reimagine business models with new product offerings, new customer experiences, and new efficiencies.<\/p>\n
The business potential is huge, and the competition is likely to be fierce. Isaiah Cheung, Microsoft\u2019s Vice President for Consumer and Device Sales in the Greater China Region, said the race is now on among Asian manufacturers and service providers to get into the intelligent edge game.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew emerging device companies in our region want to infuse their products with AI,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd big, established companies are doing the same. They want AI built into the big multimillion dollar machinery in their factories to improve efficiency. And, they want to build the intelligent edge into all the consumer devices, appliances and services they export around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the other day, I had one big brand ask me how they could put AI into a new line of rice cookers. Another one is doing the same with its white goods. The list goes on and on.\u201d<\/p>\n To add to this progress, Microsoft has established the \u00a0Intelligent Edge Partner Community<\/a>.<\/u> \u201cOur initial focus is on fostering collaboration across our partners, providing training, and early-adopter programs,\u201d Roanne Sones, Microsoft\u2019s Corporate Vice President of Core Operating System and Intelligent Edge, shared. \u201cFrom a resource perspective, members receive access to documentation, specs, builds and certification details to further their intelligent edge business\u201d.<\/p>\n Parker sees a new wave of business opportunities and economic progress coming off the back of the intelligent edge, with Asia being a major player.<\/p>\n \u201cAsia has always been very much a center of global innovation, whether it is in a lab in Shenzhen or our partnerships across the Greater China region in terms of supply chain or our partnerships in Taiwan,\u201d \u00a0Parker to a media conference at Computex. \u201cWe see so much of our new technology, particularly in the intelligent edge, starting here and delivering worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n Asia is also playing a major role in developing new AI technologies, with Microsoft\u2019s research labs around the world \u2013 including in China<\/a> and India<\/a> \u2013 working in this space for decades. They have achieved a series of breakthroughs, using the immense computing power of the Azure cloud.<\/p>\n With this know-how, Microsoft has been able to infuse AI into its core products and services. It has delivered AI tools and frameworks, including cognitive, vision, spatial and object APIs, and earlier this year announced a limited preview of Project Brainwave<\/a>, an architecture for deep neural net processing on the edge \u2013 all of which partners can use to enable next-generation AI applications and solutions that run on devices.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, intelligence is spreading across mass markets as microcontroller units (MCU) become connected. These tiny AI-enabled single-chip computers (see picture at the top of this article) now power more than 9 billion new devices around the world every year.<\/p>\n \u201cAn MCU is a single-chip computer that is no larger than your thumbnail,\u201d Distinguished Engineer and Managing Director at Microsoft, Galen Hunt, told the Computex audience. \u201cThese are very tiny, very low-cost chips and enabling them with connectivity means you can turn anything into an IoT device. We are headed to a world where everything can become connected.\u201d<\/p>\n As amazing as they are, these tiny chips have had one a big flaw: They were never designed to be secure. When a device is compromised, it can impact your privacy, your data and your infrastructure, and even your physical security.<\/p>\n \u201cIf these devices aren\u2019t secured, who are we bringing into our most personal spaces? Who are we bringing into our homes, into our schools, into our hospitals, our offices, our factories? And what is at stake? Our data, our privacy, our infrastructure, our property, even our safety.\u201d<\/p>\n This changed this year when Microsoft launched Azure Sphere<\/a>, an end-to-end solution for creating highly secure, MCU-powered devices.<\/p>\n In a recent blog<\/a>, Hunt described MCU internet connectivity as \u201ca two-way street.\u201d \u201cWith these devices becoming a gateway to our homes, workplaces, and sensitive data, they also become targets for attacks. Look around a typical household and consider what could happen when even the most mundane devices are compromised: a weaponized stove, baby monitors that spy, the contents of your refrigerator being held for ransom.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also need to consider that when a device becomes compromised, it\u2019s not just a problem for the owner, it can also become a problem for society. A device can disrupt and do damage on a larger scale.\u201d<\/p>\n This is what happened with the 2016 Mirai botnet attack where roughly 100,000 compromised IoT devices were repurposed by hackers into a botnet that effectively knocked the east coast of the United States off the internet for a day.<\/p>\n With connected MCUs built into billions of new devices every year, it is of \u201cparamount importance\u201d that security keeps pace with an ever-changing threat landscape.<\/p>\n Hunt suggests that as we look to a future, where every device will be smart or intelligent, we need to redefine what we mean by \u201csmart\u201d. Yes, smart devices are intuitive, insightful, and easy to use. But we need to add one more thing: Smart devices must be secure\u00a0\u2013 if a device is not secure it is not smart.<\/p>\n This makes security essential for manufacturers in Asia and around the world. \u201cWe see an ecosystem that is very eager to deliver the products that customers need, and customers need secure products,\u201d he said adding that Azure Sphere makes it easy for manufacturers to create smart\/intelligent products that are innately secured.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/asia-and-the-intelligent-edge-riding-a-new-wave-of-innovation-1.jpg\")
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