Opening Keynote | KEY01

Well, good morning. Good morning, everyone and welcome to Microsoft Ignite. It's fantastic to be here with more than 20,000 of you live here in San Francisco and more than 200,000 of you watching online around the world. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening, no matter where you may be. We are all very excited here at Microsoft to talk to you about the more than 70 announcements we have for you this week. For today's keynote, we're going to focus on the major ones that empower the Frontier Firm. I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart very sincerely for spending time with us today. Your time is valuable. Once you spend your time, you never get it back. So we're grateful that you've chosen to spend it with Microsoft today. Let's get started. I want to begin with this notion that frontier transformation is distinctively different from AI transformation. But like any good journey, it's important to reflect upon where you've been so that you can plot the course forward appropriately. So, like for any event, I used Copilot to prepare for this one. I asked Copilot, "Hey, what is the state of the union of AI?" Gives an honest response. Hey, look, there's been no wave of technology ever in the history of the world that has ever been adopted faster than AI. But on balance, the success rates of AI projects are not what we'd like them to be. Depending on the report that you read, there's a range of failures out there. And you have to look into the data to understand why. There's four very common reasons why AI projects fail. First, the alignment between business and IT professionals is very inconsistent. Second, there's a sea of data quality issues out there that need to be rationalized by AI developers in order to get meaningful output from the efforts. Third, governance and requirements in the markets, whether they be regulatory or otherwise, require AI to be kept on the sidelines from real major efforts that can impact business. And finally, there's an overemphasis on experimentation, random acts of innovation, rather than AI being put to use at scale across real business scenarios that can make an impact. But fear not, the ROI in AI is not somehow elusive. At Microsoft, we have the pleasure of working with thousands of customers around the world, across industries, and they are making a difference with AI in their business. Many of them use the success framework in front of you, what I call the "Frontier Success Framework". And there are some common patterns that emerge. These companies are deeply focused on enriching the employee experience, hiring the best talent, nurturing that talent, equipping them with the world's best tools, AI infused into the way they work, tying it back to measurable KPIs on the business so that they can see real impact in the results that they strive to achieve. Second, frontier firms are ruthlessly focused on making sure that they see the results in the customer experience journey. It's about real-time engagement with customers. It's about making sure that they have connections, better relationships with customers, so that at the end of the day, they achieve better results with a better cost structure. Third, you have to reshape business processes. You can't simply apply technology to an existing process and expect revolutionary results. You have to comprehensively look left to right to see how a business process can become AI-first and truly be changed to impact the business. Last but not least, the Frontier Firm focuses deeply on innovation and bending the curve so they can drive real competitive advantage in the industries that they serve. Whether it's advances in material science or drug discovery or simply writing code faster than you've ever written it before, there's no question that putting AI to work for your competitive advantage is the right approach. Look, the more you study it, the difference between successful projects and those that fail are this mindset shift from technology-focused efforts to business-led transformation empowered by AI, and in that order. Look, the Frontier Firm needs to holistically reimagine the business, putting AI deeply aligned with human ambition to achieve the organization's most aspirational goals and growth potential. At the heart of every frontier business flow is this notion of democratizing intelligence. Again, human ambition at the core, coupled by your AI assistants and agents to get real work done. At Microsoft, this is Copilot and an agent ecosystem aligned to your business infused into the way you work. Simply stated, AI transformation needs to do more for humanity. We need to evolve the approach to become frontier. We have to obsolesce the mundane, unlock creativity and innovation. The world's greatest filmmaker, the world's greatest musician, educator, the cure for the uncurable, advances in climate science and basic research, all of these things that can move humanity forward can be unlocked by democratized access to intelligence. So there's no question that aligning to the business aspirations and putting AI to work is the right approach. But beyond that, if you study successful frontier firms, there are three common traits to their approach. First, they put AI in the flow of human ambition. And this is contrary to somehow cutting and pasting your life into a chat window and expecting insights. It's about AI infused in the tools that people love to use each and every day, seamlessly accessible to get real work done. Second, it's about ubiquitous innovation. There's a maker in every one of us. And the frontier firm has a maker in every room of the house. By putting tools into the hands of people that can create AI artifacts right in the flow of work, the person often closest to the problem and the challenge and the opportunity is the best person to solve it. And that's what we do here at Microsoft. Third, the frontier firm needs to govern and manage the AI they deploy. And it requires observability at every layer of the stack. What agents do you have? How many people are accessing them every day? What are the workflows they're assigned to? What results are you getting? Govern, manage, secure, and optimize the AI that you put to work in your business. Beyond these three traits, there are two fundamental building blocks, intelligence and trust. Now you might say, "Hey, Judson, intelligence is kind of obvious", but I will challenge you that we need to put the "I" back into AI. Because if you look at what's happening today, developers have to navigate a sea of data, thousands of connectors, thousands of APIs, all while sipping data through a thousand tiny straws and trying to inference over it, which is just a fancy way of saying "guessing". Folks, we can do better, and today we're going to show you how. The fundamental building blocks of AI need to know how you work, with whom you work, the content over which you reason. They need to provide real intelligence to developers to help them scale and build better solutions than ever before. Finally, trust. We're going to talk a lot about observability today, but it's about aligning AI to your purpose and your principles to get the outcomes that you want to achieve. At the end of the day, it's about your IQ and your differentiation in your business and in your industry. Today, everything we will show you will be model-diverse, open, and heterogeneous at every layer of the stack, because, again, it is about your ambitions, what you aim to achieve, and Microsoft here is to empower all of those things. The rest of our keynote this morning is organized around these three successful traits of the Frontier Firm. AI and the flow of human ambition, ubiquitous innovation, and observability at every layer of the stack. At Microsoft, we're at our best when we put our portfolio of technology and capabilities to work for your business needs. So accordingly, everything you'll see today is an integrated flow of our capabilities aligned to real business outcomes. Let's get started with AI and the flow, and to do that, please join me in welcoming to the stage Ryan Roslansky.

Thanks, Jackie. How about a round of applause for Jackie and Seth? Look, the work that Jackie and Seth do is deeply personal to me. My father was a surgeon for over 50 years and even as a child he would lecture me that there was a mantra about operating at the top of your license as a doctor. The work that Epic is doing to infuse AI into the flow of how healthcare providers deliver care allows physicians to go one step beyond -- not just performing at the top of their license but performing at the top of their potential. We're really privileged at Microsoft and honored to be able to provide the platform and tools that Epic uses to build their AI solutions. We're actually very excited to share more with all of you today about how to leverage the same. Like I said in my opening, there's a maker in every one of us, empowering citizen developers and professional developers and enabling them all to collaborate with IT to create amazing AI solutions and then allowing them to build upon new layers, new fundamental building blocks that embody context and intelligence is what it's all about. Here to share more about ubiquitous innovation, please welcome to the stage Asha Sharma.

Thanks, Asha. Well, I'm excited to talk about ubiquitous innovation in real life, and to do it with one of my favorite brands, Mercedes-Benz. And I'm pleased to be joined by Daniela, the CIO of Mercedes-Benz North America. Daniela, welcome to the Ignite stage.

So Mercedes-Benz has truly been one of our best partners on this AI journey. And we chose to highlight our partnership here because you really have represented ubiquitous innovation across the firm.

That's awesome. So you've also done a lot of work with AI on the front lines in the factories. Maybe you want to share a little bit about that innovation and the unlock that's provided for your employees there.

Yeah, let's take a look.

Thanks. So, awesome things happening across the spectrum, across the employee base, across operations and innovation. But I think perhaps my favorite part is how you're enriching that engagement with customers, share a little bit more about Hey Mercedes.

Super. Let's check it out.

Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Daniela, for showing off all of the amazing things we're doing together between Microsoft and Mercedes-Benz, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

So we love the partnership we have with Mercedes-Benz and how it's unlocking ubiquitous innovation across everything that we do. We're inspired by how we can invoke new levels of creativity and innovation at every room in the house of the Frontier Firm, from how we empower citizen developers, professional developers, enable rich collaboration with IT, and then provide the fundamental building blocks of context and intelligence through Work IQ, Foundry IQ, and Fabric IQ to empower the success of the Frontier Firm. But you may be wondering, 'How do we get all of this done inside of our company, Judson?' 'How many of these assets from Microsoft do we have to have to pull off all of the magic that you've shown in this room?' Well, when I said we need to democratize intelligence this morning, I meant it. And so today we are announcing Microsoft Agent Factory. It's one way to harness all of the power of Work IQ, Foundry IQ, and Fabric IQ through a single meter. What does that mean? Well, what it means is that whether you're trying to automate claims processing or freight forwarding or supply chain management, you can meter the entire experience, measure the ROI for your outcome so that you know the ROI and AI up front. You can leverage our forward-deployed engineers, our partners, and our skilling assets to deliver the solutions that you've seen in the room today for your business. We're super excited about Microsoft Agent Factory, and we hope you take advantage of it. So. . . you might be feeling a little bit of tension in the room; and to be fair, the constructive tension between innovation and governance is real across many firms around the world, across all kinds of industries. And as you start to see all the innovation happening around the room, you might be wondering, 'How do I manage all of this?' 'How do I govern?' 'How do I secure?' 'How do I optimize?' Well, it all comes down to observability. And to talk more about that, I'd like to welcome Charles Lamanna to the stage.

Thanks, Charles. Microsoft has no more important partner than Adobe, and I'm delighted to be here with Adobe CEO, Shantanu Narayen. Shantanu, warm welcome to Microsoft Ignite.

Well, there's high expectations now. We'll see how you can do on your layup. So we've talked a lot about this notion of the Frontier Firm. We've talked about ubiquitous innovation. We've talked about AI and the flow of work. We've talked about observability. And I know that Adobe shares many of the same views. You want to talk a little bit about how Adobe brings to life AI through your strategy and your customer orientation, and how Copilot and agents come to life inside of Adobe?

That's awesome. And you just had Adobe Max a couple months ago and had your own slew of announcements that were really magical. I think, suffice to say, the pace of innovation is really frenetic right now. Talk a little bit about our partnership and how that comes together in light of all of the new things you're releasing to market.

Indeed. And we've been using Adobe prolifically throughout our marketing organization at Microsoft, also doing co-innovation and engineering work, even with Firefly. And it's really important how Adobe takes on this notion of Enterprise-grade, it matters to Microsoft. It matters to our joint customers. At the core of that is trust. And maybe your view on how AI has to come through and deliver on the promise of trust in the enterprise.

That's awesome. Well, look, it's a fantastic partnership, one deeply ingrained in engineering and joint work together, a partnership with a purpose, and a partnership that, above all, stands for customers. So thank you so much, Shantanu, for being here with us today. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, I appreciate it. So we've talked a lot this morning about the three traits of the successful Frontier Firm. AI in the flow of human ambition, ubiquitous innovation, observability at every layer of the stack. But at the end of the day, you have to bring the magic to life. You need to have the core cloud platform and all of the services that enable AI to reach millions of customers around the world, unlock that human ambition, and really help deliver on the promises of all of the innovation that we talk about and your ambition. So you need the cloud and AI platform that lights that up, and there is no one better than the man in the red shirt himself. Please join me in welcoming the one and only Scott Guthrie to the stage.

Thanks, Scott. Well, we have one last great customer to share with you here live. I'm joined by Paul McEwen through the magic of Teams from UBS. Paul, thanks so much for joining here, and a warm Microsoft Ignite welcome to you.

So Paul, look, UBS is one of the best adopters of Cloud and AI in the financial services industry, and we've had this amazing partnership that we've shared over the years. It's no secret that you're ahead in AI because you are also ahead in the adoption of Cloud capabilities, and you've worked this strategy from end to end. Can you share with us a little bit your approach?

Well, Paul, I want to thank you for being here with us today, and when I sort of ask you this last question, we'll turn it over to a demo. But you've talked about the importance of data as the foundation for everything that lights up AI. You've built this amazing STAAT solution that helps your wealth managers connect with customers. Maybe you can share a little bit about the demo, and thanks again for joining us here at Ignite.

Awesome. Thanks, Paul. Over to you, Jim.

AI can help democratize intelligence, bringing information to the Edge and making it accessible to everyone, everywhere. We're working with Land O'Lakes, an agricultural cooperative, to put data-driven intelligence with AI into the hands of agronomists like Tyler, to help farmers grow their businesses while feeding their communities.

AI can help us accelerate innovation, empowering builders with the tools to tackle big challenges through agile experimentation. We've partnered with industrial automation leader Siemens to infuse AI into industrial automation processes right on the factory floor for engineers like Svenja to build what's next.

AI can help us unlock creativity, removing barriers to innovative thinking, and enabling makers to spend more time bringing their bold ideas to life. And we're doing just that with Nestle, one of the world's most beloved brands and companies in the food industry. They are weaving AI into the creative process and inspire marketers like Filipe to imagine and design what's next.

AI can help us enable opportunity, applying tools and technologies to foster more equitable experiences. We're working alongside the State Secretary of Education in São Paulo, the governing body for education across all of Brazil, to build AI-powered solutions that help students learn with confidence and help educators like Catia rediscover the joy of teaching.

AI can help us obsolesce the mundane, reducing tedious and time-consuming tasks that get in the way of meaningful work. We've teamed up with telecommunications provider Telstra to deliver intelligent AI solutions for retail associates like James, so they can spend more time doing what they love, helping people.

AI can help us fundamentally change the future. Pushing the boundaries of what's possible to drive societal progress at-scale. We're collaborating with Insilico Medicine, a clinical biotech company, to apply the most advanced AI models to accelerate drug discovery and help scientists like Dr. Heng Zhao discover breakthroughs and find cures.

AI in the flow of human ambition, ubiquitous innovation, observability at every layer of the stack, all on the fundamental building blocks of intelligence and trust, empowered by Work IQ, Foundry IQ, and Fabric IQ. Because it's about your IQ, your bold ambitions, the human ambition that lives inside of your company. All brought together so that your organization can achieve its highest aspirations and growth potential. At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And that is what we're going to do by empowering all of you to become Frontier Firms. Thank you and have an amazing Ignite.