Cloud and AI trends to watch with Bibhas Bhattacharya, Microsoft Ireland

In this interview we talk to Bibhas Bhattacharya who is the Business Group Lead for Microsoft’s Azure business in Ireland. 

Firstly Bibhas can you tell us a bit about yourself

I currently work as the business group lead for our cloud and AI business in Ireland. I’ve held a variety of positions in sales, channel management, and most recently in strategy and execution. I have worked for the last 16 plus years in the technology industry, across different geographies, and technology companies such as HPE, VMware, Microsoft and Oracle. I have worked with organisations, from start-ups to global and public sector, to digitally transform their businesses in markets with various levels of maturity. 

Cloud and AI trends with Bibhas Bhattacharya, Microsoft Ireland

How do you feel digital transformation has rolled out over the last few years?

I have witnessed acceleration in digital transformation across organisations in recent years and an increased focus on data-driven innovation. 

The reality is that different organisations are at different stages of their digital transformation journey. Customers across all industries have increasingly looked at ways to transform how they operate and the way they engage with their employees or customers at a very fundamental level. 

This push towards transformation has accelerated over the past year. Whether it be providing a secure seamless remote working environment for their internal staff or setting up customer engagement platforms to provide pre-Covid level customer experience, driven by data and insights. 

How has the last year been? What have been the big successes and what have been the challenges?

It has been an extremely challenging year for all organisations that we have engaged with. While some organisations might have had the right digital tools, processes, services, and governance structures in place, they still might not have the right policies and change management processes to support employees, customers and also transform at pace. We’ve also seen a huge number of organisations trying to retrofit their IT security since the pandemic began as organisations grappled with new ways of working.

It is no exaggeration to say that data is the new oil. At a very basic level, with the help of data, our customers are either trying to understand their business better or understand their customers better to drive efficiencies and improve customer experiences, and to drive innovation by developing new products and services using data insights, machine learning, and AI technologies. We have seen customers go through massive transformation over the past year, whether it be a public sector organisation trying to serve its customers better or for that matter, a retail company trying to serve its customers better.

One such example is the National Transport Authority (NTA) who have successfully used AI and machine learning to analyse passenger flow and serve citizens better in the greater Dublin area. 

Another great example is the work Kinetic has done in the retail space with our partner Intouch.com. Kinetic is a Dublin-based outdoor advertising company. They have developed an intelligent platform built on Azure using AI services to allow retailers and FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) companies to understand shoppers inside their retail stores and make recommendations in real-time based on multiple factors such as location, time of the day, weather etc. With such intelligence available some brands have seen anything from 27% to 39% increase in sales. 

What opportunities do you see going forward based upon data driven insights?

Almost all organisations across industries are focusing on the potential of data and how to improve the quality, security, and maturity of the data landscape, to ensure they can make the right data-driven decisions. 

The opportunity ahead is limitless for organisations, whether you look at a retail or an FSI organisation who wants to build a 360 view of the customer and reduce fraudulent transactions, or a manufacturing organisation seeking to sustainably reduce waste and drive efficiency, or even a healthcare organisation trying to improve the time to care for patients. We are also seeing a lot of organisations exploring how data can help them reach their sustainability goals. 

In order to address industry-specific challenges, we have launched Industry Clouds which use common data models at the core, to address specific challenges.

Another opportunity is around reducing the entry barrier to help anyone develop and deploy AI solutions on the edge. Just to explain this further, we recently launched Azure Percept, a comprehensive, easy-to-use platform with added security for creating edge AI solutions. It can be used to develop a proof of concept in minutes with hardware accelerators built-in to integrate seamlessly with Azure AI and Azure IoT services. With 5G and better connectivity becoming the norm all over the world, we will see rapid acceleration in the uptake of resilient and secure edge computing to drive innovation across industries.

Having said that there are other key considerations such as data governance and ethics in AI. We need to ensure that whatever we do with the data, that we are transparent about the what, why, and the how of that data usage. When it comes to data governance, customers are trying to understand what data do I have? Can I classify that data? Can I organise that data with the right taxonomy with little or no technology expertise, as well as make that data discoverable with ease?

All this can be addressed today with Azure Purview, launched at the end of 2020. Azure Purview is a unified data governance service that helps organisations manage and govern on-premises, multi-cloud, and software as-a-service (SaaS) data.

Tell us more about sustainability initiatives?

When you talk about sustainability, it varies by industry and roles within an organisation. The path to sustainability for a manufacturing organisation will differ from that of a financial services organisation, or a Healthcare organisation. A sustainability goal for a CEO could be to become carbon neutral as an organisation by 2030, and the steps to achieve this goal would be different for each department within the organisation.

For example, the head of logistics may achieve this by switching fully to a fleet of electric vehicles or the facilities department might introduce smart building technology to reduce carbon footprint. Sustainable innovation in organisations can be achieved by having a clear view of the end goal, backed by intelligent data driven insights. 

A very exciting carbon-reduction project currently underway in Ireland is Terrain AI, a world-first piece of research being conducted by the University of Maynooth, with support from Science Foundation Ireland and Microsoft. The project uses the latest multimodal sensing technologies, IoT and Azure to measure the impact of human activity on land use, and how it relates to climate change. The ambition is to share insights and the AI models developed with other countries to support their cloud reduction strategies and ultimately have a global impact, all driven from Ireland.

Where do you get your sources of information and inspiration in order to inform your research?

At Microsoft we truly believe in leveraging best practices and successes that we have seen with customers from across the globe. 

We also have the good fortune of learning from the work we do with Industry experts, our Consulting services arm and our ever-growing list of partner organisations from Global to local System Integrators and Independent Software Vendors (ISV), who have delivered best in-class, tried and tested solutions for customers.

Looking forward. What trends are you excited about going forward?

AI, Edge Computing, Cybersecurity with an underlying theme of Sustainability are the trends that I am most excited about. 

The advancement in AI, especially in the field of healthcare, will be significant as we look to understand the current pandemic better or work towards improving our response to similar issues in the future.

With greater connectivity and 5G services, we will see more computing moving to the edge and the use cases for edge will continue to evolve and solve some unique problems in the future across Industries. 

With the ever-expanding landscape of access points for application and data, coupled with the recent spike in sophisticated cybersecurity attacks, a strong cybersecurity programme will be absolutely key to ensure that organisations can continue to drive innovation across the board. 

As more and more organisations and government authorities look to make carbon negative pledges, sustainability will be a key discussion point for any investment or partnership both in the short and long-term. 

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Bibhas Bhattacharya is the Business Group Lead for the Azure business in Ireland, covering both Intelligent Cloud Apps & Infra, and Data and AI Solution areas, and is responsible for end-to-end accountability for the Azure business in the Irish market including strategy, planning, execution, advocacy governance and learning. 

 Bibhas holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Data Science and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science. In his spare time, he likes to sketch, do wildlife photography, and explore the outdoors.

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