Why Microsoft Is Looking At Artificial Intelligence For Its Corporate Business

Microsoft has made a huge change in its business strategy as revealed by its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Wednesday. The company is moving away from Windows Mobile towards a new domain - artificial intelligence (AI), which might help it create more diverse corporate offerings, especially for businesses, which are working on integrating AI into their everyday functioning.

In its SEC filing, the company referenced AI six times in comparison to zero times in previous filings, indicating its strong AI focus. The company’s decision can be seen to make business sense. Apart from creating consumer technology, Microsoft sells its products and services to many corporate users. The company’s decision to focus on AI is reflective of the fact that businesses are slowly and steadily adopting AI to optimize their processes and make their output more efficient.

Read: Microsoft Adding AI-Powered Search Feature For Windows 10 Photos App

“Our strategic vision is to compete and grow by building best-in-class platforms and productivity services for an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge infused with AI,” Microsoft’s corporate vision statement, a part of its filing, states. A noticeable change from what it said in its filing for the past few years — “Our strategic vision is to compete and grow as a productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.”

This strategy shows Microsoft is finally shutting down its mobile business after many years of trying to compete with Apple and Google. Microsoft has chosen to walk away from the mobile business it so aggressively invested in just a few years ago. The company had actually acquired the rights to Nokia, which was once the world’s leading phone brand and tried to popularize its phone software among users with Nokia hardware.

The company failed to prop up Windows against strong competitors, such as Google and Apple, and ultimately decided to cut its losses. It now seems to be more focused on its services business and on ingratiating artificial intelligence with that business.

AI is gaining in enterprise functioning going from being just a basic corporate tool to increased automation. According to Price Waterhouse Cooper, 72 percent of business decision makers believe that AI can provide them with a definite business advantage.

AI based solutions can cut down on menial tasks and provide consistent results and quality and more importantly round the clock functioning in fields such as quality assurance and software testing. That being said, AI in a sense is in its nascent stages and needs much development before large-scale adoption and expansion, which is why Microsoft's move at this point in time to create a primary focus on AI seems like a smart business decision.

The company has established a formal AI and research group, which will focus on AI development and research efforts “spanning infrastructure, services, application and search.”

Read: Microsoft Developing Artificial Intelligence Processor For HoloLens 2

It will also be working on infusing AI in many of its software offerings such as Microsoft Office. This decision is projected to give Microsoft an advantage in integrating its products in future business applications.

Other companies such as Google and Facebook have been developing their own AI, but while these companies’ efforts seem geared at essentially improving their current offerings such as search, Google assistant and Facebook feed, Microsoft AI efforts might benefit a large number of corporate users who use its products and services.