Data is eating the world, and the world is changing. Industries are transforming rapidly, the drivers for economic growth are evolving, and technology is at an inflection point.

Individuals are generating around two megabytes of data per day. AI has changed how computers interact, moving from programming them to giving complex instructions through natural language-processing interfaces.

In this keynote presentation, Lee Hickin – National Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, encourages businesses to use AI to improve their products and services and remain competitive.

Microsoft Fabric is a new project that offers businesses a simplified way to integrate their data sources into their products. Data quality and availability are crucial in making AI effective and valuable.

Microsoft Fabric is a unified cloud-based analytics platform that offers a single interface for data engineering, warehousing, science, and analytics.

It incorporates Copilot, an AI-driven feature that enables natural language interaction, code generation, and machine learning model creation.
Fabric is grounded in responsible AI and secure data management concepts and is designed to function as a Software-as-a-service product.

It supports data shortcuts and seamless connectivity to other platforms like Google and Amazon.

Key Takeaways:

  • This may be the most significant technology inflection point of our lifetimes—one that will help define the tech industry and how the world works for decades.
  • Today’s data and analytics challenges: Scaling data and analytics while reducing costs and optimising existing data and management, making data more accessible to technical and non-technical users in a governed and secure way, growing BI adoption to drive a data-driven organisation across LOBs and teams and breaking down data siloes and eliminating unnecessary data sprawl.
  • Microsoft’s responsible AI principles: privacy and security, inclusiveness, accountability, transparency, fairness, reliability and safety.
Contributors
Lee Hickin National Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft
Lee is a senior technology leader and practitioner with 30+ years experience as a consultant, architect, seller, business manager, people manager and... More

Lee is a senior technology leader and practitioner with 30+ years experience as a consultant, architect, seller, business manager, people manager and now the CTO for Microsoft Australia. Lee is also a member of the NSW AI Advisory and review committee and a member of the Federal Government’s AI Action plan committee.

Lee has a proven track record in delivering business value and bridging the gap between technology innovation and business ambition. I have worked in both AWS and Azure clouds and have a deep knowledge of cloud architecture, design principles and the culture of an agile cloud native team.

Lee is the co-host of the AI in Education podcast where I get to talk about to to innovation in the field of AI, Machine Learning, skilling and education (https://aipodcast.education/).

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Data Cloud Transformation