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Supercharge your AI app development through cloud modernization

The advent of generative AI has ushered in a new era of intelligent applications that can understand natural language, generate human-like content, and augment human capabilities. However, as companies across industries begin to recognize the potential of AI to revolutionize their operations, a crucial first step is often overlooked: modernizing their on-premises application infrastructure.

If your organization aspires to harness the power of AI to enhance customer experiences and drive growth, cloud migration far outpaces on-premises alternatives. Many of the early-adopter customers such as H&R Block and TomTom have reiterated that what set them up for success in the AI era was the fact that they had already begun modernizing their app infrastructure on Azure. A commissioned study by IDC, “Exploring the Benefits of Cloud Migration and Modernization for the Development of Intelligent Applications,” based on interviews with 900 IT leaders worldwide about their experiences migrating apps to the cloud, threw up additional insights to connect these dots. In this blog, I will walk you through some of the takeaways.

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Modernize or fall behind: The AI-driven urgency for cloud migration

Let’s state the obvious: AI is a powerful technology, capable of creating content, code, and even entire applications. The rapid advancements in generative AI technologies, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, have transformed how businesses operate and interact with customers.

But generative AI models, like those powering ChatGPT or image-generating tools, are data-hungry beasts. They require massive computing resources, flexible scaling, and access to vast datasets to deliver their transformative capabilities. On-premises legacy systems and siloed data stores simply cannot keep pace with the compute and data demands of modern AI workloads.

Cloud platforms provide the robust infrastructure and storage solutions necessary to support AI workloads, all fully managed by the provider. They offer virtually unlimited scalability, ensuring applications can handle fluctuating demand and deliver consistent performance. The IDC study’s key finding revealed that organizations were primarily motivated to migrate applications to the cloud by numerous business advantages, including improved security and data privacy, streamlined integration of cloud-based services, and cost savings. Additionally, the cloud’s inherent agility allows businesses to experiment, iterate, and deploy AI models quickly, accelerating innovation.

The .NET platform, with its latest version, is equipped to leverage AI in cloud environments. Developers can integrate AI functionality into their applications using tools like the Semantic Kernel and libraries such as OpenAI, Qdrant, and Milvus. The integration with .NET Aspire ensures that applications can be deployed to the cloud with optimal performance and scalability. For example, H&R Block’s AI Tax Assistant, developed using .NET and Azure OpenAI, demonstrates how businesses can create scalable, AI-driven solutions to enhance user experiences and operational efficiency. By incorporating .NET into your cloud migration strategy, you can streamline development and accelerate the realization of AI’s potential across your business operations.

Migrating and refactoring legacy on-premises applications to be cloud-optimized unlocks the ability to exploit AI services, vast data repositories, and scale compute seamlessly. This can enable your company to not only create generative AI apps, but to fully integrate generative AI across all facets of their intelligent systems and data pipelines.

Accelerate your AI ambitions in the cloud

The recent IDC study makes clear a strong correlation between a company’s desire to leverage generative AI and the realization of its full value through cloud migration. Let’s break down some key considerations:

Data accessibility: Cloud environments make it easier to consolidate and access data from various sources, providing AI models with the information they need for training and refinement.

Computational power: The cloud’s elastic computing resources can be dynamically allocated to meet the demands of complex AI algorithms, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency.

Collaboration: Cloud-based tools facilitate seamless collaboration among data scientists, developers, and business stakeholders, streamlining the AI development and deployment process.

Beyond just enabling generative AI, cloud migration also accelerates overall innovation velocity. Cloud platforms provide a wealth of ready-to-use services like machine learning, IoT, serverless computing, and more that allow companies to rapidly develop and deploy new intelligent capabilities into their apps.

Embrace AI in the cloud to outpace the competition

The urgency to migrate and modernize applications isn’t just about keeping up with the times—it’s about gaining a competitive edge. Businesses that embrace the cloud and AI are better positioned to:

Attract top talent: The most talented data scientists and developers are drawn to organizations with cutting-edge technology stacks.

Adapt to change: The cloud’s flexibility allows businesses to pivot quickly in response to evolving market conditions or customer needs.

Drive revenue growth: AI-powered applications can open new revenue streams and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Spark AI-powered innovation by modernizing your cloud

To maintain a competitive edge, cloud migration must go beyond simply lifting and shifting applications. It’s about modernization—rearchitecting and optimizing applications for the cloud to unlock new levels of agility, scalability, and innovation. By modernizing your applications to cloud-native architectures, your business can:

Enhance functionality: Integrate AI-powered features like chatbots, personalized recommendations, and intelligent automation into existing applications.

Improve performance: Leverage cloud-native technologies to optimize application speed, responsiveness, and scalability.

Reduce costs: Pay only for the resources you use, eliminating the need for costly on-premises infrastructure.

The majority of respondents in the IDC survey chose to migrate applications to the cloud because it empowered them to innovate on application development and realize a multitude of commercial benefits as a result more rapidly.

Fuel your intelligent app development with a cloud-powered AI transformation

The migration and modernization of applications to the cloud is not just an option but a necessity in the era of generative AI. Companies that act swiftly to embrace this transformation will be well-positioned to harness the full potential of intelligent applications, driving innovation, operational efficiency, and customer engagement. The synergy between cloud computing and generative AI is creating unparalleled opportunities for businesses to redefine their strategies and achieve sustained growth in a competitive landscape.

By recognizing the urgency and quantifying the benefits, companies can make informed decisions about their cloud migration and modernization journeys, ensuring they remain at the forefront of technological advancement and market relevance.

Get the full rundown of the IDC’s survey by downloading the whitepaper
Exploring the benefits of cloud migration and modernization

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The post Supercharge your AI app development through cloud modernization appeared first on Azure Blog.
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AI on the road: Azure OpenAI Service helps drive better decision making for the transportation sector

Since the invention of the wheel in 3500 BCE, the world has become an increasingly fast-moving place. The Industrial Revolution introduced steam-powered trains and ships, revolutionizing land and sea travel. The 20th century saw the advent of automobiles and airplanes, drastically reducing travel time and transforming global connectivity. And today, AI is supporting how quickly, and intelligently businesses can move both goods and people and there is no slowing down in sight: global AI in transportation is expected to reach $23.11 billion by 2032.1

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Azure OpenAI Service is driving change in transportation

Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service is supporting the transportation industry through innovative business applications. TomTom’s Digital Cockpit, powered by Azure, offers an immersive in-car infotainment system, enhancing driver interaction that the company claims reduces costs. CarMax uses Azure OpenAI Service to streamline content creation for its car research pages. Fraport integrates AI with Azure OpenAI Service to automate operations and assist employees, preparing for future growth despite workforce reductions, and Alstom leverages AI to enhance operational efficiency across its value chain, supporting its vision of Engineering 4.0 and improving specification quality and project management. All four mark significant strides towards smarter, more efficient transportation solutions. Read on to learn how each Microsoft customer below uses Azure OpenAI Service to improve business operations.

TomTom brings AI-powered, talking cars to life with AzureTomTom has developed the Digital Cockpit, an immersive in-car infotainment system that automobile manufacturers can customize, potentially reducing costs by up to 80%. This system utilizes Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service to provide seamless control and interaction for drivers. TomTom’s goal is to surpass the smartphone experience by enabling conversational infotainment.The development group for Digital Cockpit was reduced from 10 to 3 people, and query response times improved significantly from 12 seconds to just 2.5 seconds. In evaluating 300 different scenarios, the AI assistant correctly understood and answered 95% of complex driver requests. TomTom Digital Cockpit is now available to car manufacturers, enabling them to customize the system to their brand—accelerating time-to-market and retaining brand ownership of the driver experience.

CarMax puts customers first with car research tools powered by Azure OpenAI ServiceSince its inception in 1993, CarMax has evolved from a groundbreaking startup to the leading used car retailer in the United States, selling over 11 million vehicles. To continue its trajectory of innovation, CarMax has leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to streamline content creation for its car research pages. This collaboration has significantly enhanced CarMax’s digital tools and capabilities, allowing the company to produce AI-generated content that not only aids customers in their car-buying research but also boosts search engine rankings. For example, generating summaries for 5,000 car pages, which would have taken about 11 years manually, was accomplished in just a few months using Azure OpenAI Service. This efficiency also resulted in an 80% editorial review approval rate for the AI-generated content.The integration of Azure OpenAI Service has brought substantial benefits, including cost and time savings, improved content management, and the ability to scale and deploy custom models. The service has enabled CarMax to summarize extensive customer reviews into concise, readable sentences, enhancing user experience and driving more traffic to the website through improved SEO performance. As a result, CarMax’s search engine metrics have seen an upward trend.

FraportGPT leads the way to the airport of the future: Fraport makes employees’ daily tasks easier with the help of Azure OpenAI ServiceFraport AG, which operates Frankfurt Airport in Germany and holds stakes in 30 other airports worldwide, is integrating AI to automate and streamline operations. FraportGPT, a chatbot powered by Azure OpenAI Service, is designed to assist employees across an array of different specialized areas. The chatbot helps programmers create code statements, it summarizes lengthy texts for legal staff, and it assists human resource and administrative personnel with drafting emails and documents. By utilizing AI, Fraport aims to address the challenge of a projected 30% workforce reduction due to aging while simultaneously planning for a 30% growth in operations over the next few years.FraportGPT’s deployment has been met with enthusiasm from employees, who have begun using it in diverse areas such as rental management and administrative functions, enhancing efficiency and productivity.

Alstom integrates generative AI to its business processes with Azure AI technologiesAlstom, a global leader in the railway sector, has integrated Microsoft generative AI into its operations to enhance efficiency, meet its unprecedented backlog, and improve customer satisfaction. This AI-driven approach aims to streamline processes across all stages of Alstom’s value chain—including business opportunities, contract specifications, design, manufacturing, testing, supply chain, installation, and maintenance. Since 2020, Alstom has been leveraging AI to support its vision of Engineering 4.0 and the Augmented Workforce, ensuring that employees can use AI copilots to generate engineering assets more quickly and cost-effectively. For instance, AI helps in writing specifications for railway systems, and can improve specification quality by 25% and reduce costs associated with poor-quality requirements. Alstom’s in-house AI tool, supported by Azure OpenAI Service, facilitates a wide range of business functions—including human resource, finance, and project management—with over a thousand users conducting more than 15,000 operations monthly. The tool’s capabilities in content generation, translation, and document intelligence enable massive data processing, thereby enhancing operational efficiency.

Azure OpenAI Service is proud to support Microsoft customers like TomTom, CarMax, Fraport, and Alstom in enhancing navigation, optimizing logistics, and improving operational efficiency, and bolstering better customer support, research, and project management.

Our commitment to responsible AI

Organizations across industries are leveraging Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot services and capabilities to drive growth, increase productivity, and create value-added experiences. From advancing medical breakthroughs to streamlining manufacturing operations, our customers trust that their data is protected by robust privacy protections and data governance practices. As our customers continue to expand their use of our AI solutions, they can be confident that their valuable data is safeguarded by industry-leading data governance and privacy practices in the most trusted cloud on the market today.  

At Microsoft, we have a long-standing practice of protecting our customers’ information. Our approach to responsible AI is built on a foundation of privacy, and we remain dedicated to upholding core values of privacy, security, and safety in all our generative AI products and solutions.   

Get started with Azure OpenAI Service 

Apply for access to Azure OpenAI Service by completing this form. 

Learn about Azure OpenAI Service and the latest enhancements. 

Get started with GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service in Microsoft Learn. 

Read our partner announcement blog, Empowering partners to develop AI-powered apps and experiences with ChatGPT in Azure OpenAI Service. 

Learn how to use the new Chat Completions API (in preview) and model versions for ChatGPT and GPT-4 models in Azure OpenAI Service.

Learn more about Azure AI Content Safety.

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1 Precedence Research, Artificial Intelligence in Transportation Market Size to Reach USD 23.11 Bn by 2032, September 2023.
The post AI on the road: Azure OpenAI Service helps drive better decision making for the transportation sector appeared first on Azure Blog.
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