Microsoft showcases innovations accelerating AI transformation
The tour highlights how Microsoft's cutting-edge solutions are empowering organisations across industries in the UAE to achieve transformative outcomes for businesses of all sizes as well as the country's citizens and residents, Microsoft said.
Naim Yazbeck, General Manager of Microsoft UAE, stated: 'The UAE's swift embrace of AI is setting an ambitious benchmark. Across sectors like education, finance, energy, and retail, the innovations emerging here showcase the transformative power of AI in unlocking unparalleled opportunities for growth and progress. At Microsoft, we are honored to partner with forward-thinking organizations in the UAE, driving transformation in this new AI era and empowering them to shape a future characterized by innovation and resilience.'
The event brought together developers, innovators, and business leaders from key organisations in both the public and private sectors, as well as Microsoft executives including Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business & Industry Copilot at Microsoft; Jessica Hawk, Corporate Vice President, Data, AI and Digital Applications, Microsoft Product Marketing; and Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business & Industry Copilot at Microsoft, noted: 'The pace of cloud and AI adoption in the UAE is remarkable. It's impressive to see public and private sector organizations not only embracing the latest AI advancements but also rapidly developing their own cutting-edge applications. From AI-driven government services to intelligent customer engagement solutions, the level of innovation here reflects the UAE's forward-thinking vision and its commitment to becoming a global hub for AI.'
During the event, Lamanna also met with senior executives from leading organisations in the UAE who have developed a diverse range of AI-powered solutions and initiatives by leveraging the power of Microsoft's AI suite of solutions:
• The Abu Dhabi Department of Government Enablement's AI-powered TAMM platform is delivering around 950 government services to citizens, residents, visitors and investors in the emirate with unparalleled efficiency. A major advancement in the delivery of government services in Abu Dhabi in collaboration with Abu Dhabi government entities, federal entities, and private sector partners, including Microsoft and G42, TAMM provides 24/7 personalised service recommendations and features a conversational AI assistant in multiple languages, transforming customer experience in Abu Dhabi.
• Alef Education is harnessing the power of AI to transform learning experiences for more than 1.1 million students worldwide. The company leads the development of innovative AI-powered learning solutions, including the Alef AI Tutor, designed to support student learning by tracking progress, identifying challenges, and personalizing learning paths to improve performance. This approach has resulted in a 12.1% improvement in student outcomes within one academic year.
• As one of the early adopters of Microsoft 365 Copilot technology among utilities worldwide, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has successfully rolled out Copilot agents in its operations delivering natural, human-like interactions, enhancing both personal and professional productivity for users.
• First Abu Dhabi Bank's (FAB) FAB Wealth RM AI Advisor tool enhances relationship managers' ability to provide performance insights for clients and their portfolios, using a comprehensive dashboard. The tool also simulates personalized investment recommendations, through personalized investment advice and proactive engagement. A number of benefits include increase in frontline productivity and improved service for clients.
• Al-Futtaim's Blue AI, a groundbreaking feature within the Blue lifestyle app and the first AI platform of its kind in the Middle East, developed in the United Arab Emirates, empowers over five million customers in its first year to seamlessly interact with their favorite brands, offering tailored insights, dynamic engagement, and smart lifestyle guidance across the entire Blue ecosystem of products and services.
Microsoft's commitment to the UAE is reflected in its continued investment in the country's digital economy, including its data centre regions and centres of excellence dedicated to finding solutions to pressing societal issues, such as the recently announced Center for Responsible AI and the AI for Good Lab. In addition, Microsoft announced its commitment to opening a Microsoft Engineering Center, a move to attract developers to the UAE to support the country's increasing need for cutting edge technologies.
Microsoft's dedication to the UAE is further reinforced through its partnership with G42. The two organisations have embarked on a strategic collaboration to enhance digital transformation in the UAE through a joint sovereign cloud and AI offering. To date, Core42 and Microsoft have enabled several customers from the public sector and highly regulated industries, including First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), Department of Government Enablement (DGE), TAMM, International Holding Company (IHC), to accelerate their adoption of Microsoft Azure Public Cloud and AI transformation while maintaining full compliance with UAE cyber security regulations. This has unleashed home-grown innovation and enabled the creation of AI driven solutions that have benefited residents, customers and the UAE economy as a whole, Microsoft said. -TradeArabia News Service
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Tribune
30-07-2025
- Daily Tribune
Stock markets rise
Stock markets in the United States and Europe rose yesterday as investors turned their attention from trade deals to a slew of company results falling this week. New York's tech-heavy Nasdaq and the broad S&P 500 indices moved confidently higher out of the gate, though the Dow was struggling. London's FTSE, the CAC 40 in Paris and the DAX in Frankfurt were all trading higher, reversing dives a day earlier. The picture in Asia was mixed, though, with Shanghai closing higher but Hong Kong and Tokyo losing ground. The transatlantic bounce was different from Monday, when European indices closed in the red and US ones were muddled in the wake of the EU-US trade deal announced on the weekend. 'The fact that markets have bounced back today suggests investors have been buoyed by hopes that the US-EU trade accord might draw a line under recent uncertainty, offering European businesses a clearer path forward,' said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at Still, on the currency market, the euro extended losses against the dollar, indicating that European disgruntlement at the trade deal had not gone away. The euro has 'suffered a nasty battering... as investors questioned just how positive the US-EU trade deal was for the European Union', said David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation. Earning reports Tuesday's focus was now more on company earning reports that are raining down this week in the United States and Europe, with tech heavyweights in the spotlight. Meta and Microsoft were to give results on Wednesday, with Amazon and Apple following on Thursday. The massive investment race in artificial intelligence was informing much of the action. Bloomberg News reported that Microsoft was in talks to keep access to OpenAI technology, even if the ChatGPT maker achieves AI that goes beyond human intelligence. Meta, meanwhile, has opened its pockets wide to grab AI talent -- including several OpenAI employees -- to build out its own artificial intelligence operations. Amazon and Apple are also competing, though the latter is seen to be badly lagging so far. Thomas Mathews, a markets analyst at Capital Economics, said a continued rally in US stocks 'may depend especially heavily on 'big tech' profit results continuing to paint a positive picture, especially around AI'. 'With the worst of the risks around trade seemingly fading, we suspect there are fewer remaining obstacles to further investor enthusiasm for AI and its implications for US companies,' he said. London's FTSE was boosted in particular by heavyweight AstraZeneca after the drugmaker posted strong earnings. Shares in eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica jumped more than 6% on strong second-quarter results, topping the Paris CAC 40 index. Swedish music streamer Spotify's shares slid 7% after it reported an operating profit that far missed its target. The US Federal Reserve, meanwhile, was to begin Tuesday its two-day policy meeting under increasing pressure from President Donald Trump to slash rates, despite stubbornly high inflation. Oil prices extended Monday's rise after Trump shortened a deadline for Russia to end its war in Ukraine to August 7 or 9, following which he vowed to sanction countries buying its crude.
Daily Tribune
23-07-2025
- Daily Tribune
Chinese state hackers targeting Microsoft
Chinese state-sponsored hackers are actively exploiting critical security vulnerabilities in users of Microsoft's popular SharePoint servers to steal sensitive data and deploy malicious code, the US tech giant warned Tuesday. Microsoft said it has observed three threat groups –- dubbed Linen Typhoon, Violet Typhoon, and Storm-2603 –- targeting internet-facing SharePoint servers using two newly disclosed vulnerabilities that allow attackers to bypass authentication and execute remote code. SharePoint Server is Microsoft's collaboration and document management platform designed for businesses and organizations. Many large organizations use SharePoint as their primary platform for internal collaboration and for storing documents, and is appreciated for working well with other Microsoft products like Office, Teams, and Outlook. The attacks, which Microsoft said began as early as July 7, affect only on-premises SharePoint installations and do not impact the cloud-based SharePoint Online service, the company said in a security bulletin. Microsoft warned that it 'assesses with high confidence' that the threat actors will continue their assault against vulnerable systems where companies haven't taken the necessary precautions. The vulnerabilities allow attackers to spoof authentication credentials and execute malicious code remotely on vulnerable servers. Microsoft has released comprehensive security updates to address the malware and urged customers to apply the patches immediately.
Gulf Insider
09-06-2025
- Gulf Insider
AI Is Taking Thousands Of Jobs; Is Yours At Risk?
Just as the internet radically changed how America conducts business, artificial intelligence (AI) is also making waves in the workplace by taking thousands of jobs. It's an outcome that industry experts have warned would happen, and professionals across multiple employment sectors have already been affected. Beyond artists and content creators, AI is also impacting professionals in marketing, technology, translation, various levels of administration, and management. It has been a silent and ongoing trend for two years, but tech insiders say this is just the beginning. A senior software engineer at Microsoft, Nandita Giri, shared her thoughts with The Epoch Times on what kind of near-term changes Americans can expect as a result of ramped-up workplace AI integration. 'AI is particularly effective at replacing routine, predictable tasks … jobs in data entry, customer support, transcription, and logistics are the most vulnerable,' Giri said. 'In software engineering, even some junior [developer] testing roles are being replaced or reshaped with AI-driven tooling. Back-office operations across health care, finance, and legal are also at high risk.' Giri has observed a shift away from human workers in favor of AI in enterprise software development, where she said companies are quietly removing what they call 'coordination overhead.' She said this is happening as AI tools become more reliable for things like task triage, scheduling, and summarization. 'AI agents have enabled a single engineer to manage what used to be a multi-person workflow, especially in automation pipelines and internal support tasks,' she said. Cahyo Subroto, founder of the AI-powered data extraction platform MrScraper, agrees with this perspective. 'I've spent the last few years building systems that automate work, so I've seen firsthand where AI adds value and where it quietly pushes people out of the picture,' Subroto told The Epoch Times. Like Giri, Subroto said that the jobs most in danger of AI replacement are those that rely heavily on structured, repetitive digital labor. 'That includes early-stage analysts, junior QA [quality assurance] testers, data entry staff, and even support roles in HR and customer service,' he said. Subroto explained that when AI can learn workflow patterns, it can perform them faster and without the payroll cost. 'At my last company, I watched a client eliminate three QA positions after switching to a tool that could auto-generate test cases and report bugs in real time.' These decisions are based strictly on efficiency, he added. 'That's what makes this shift so difficult to stop.' In January, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report that estimated 92 million jobs would be displaced by AI by 2030. The think tank surveyed more than 1,000 of the world's largest employers, accounting for 22 industry groups and more than 14 million workers. There is a silver lining, however. The WEF—and many others—predict that AI will also create new jobs and reshape existing positions, allowing current employees in various sectors to focus on more high-value tasks instead of routine work. Jobs with declining demand include customer service representatives, claims adjusters, bank tellers, graphic designers, accountants, and auditors, the WEF report said. Subroto believes much of the shift toward AI will be subtle. 'Instead of replacing people, we're restructuring the workflow to rely on AI for the mechanical parts, while humans take on broader accountability.' 'That's a harder conversation because it's not about job loss. It's about job transformation, and not everyone will be equipped and ready to make that jump,' he said. In May, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 3 percent of its employees across the board, affecting roughly 6,000 people. In a statement to CNBC, a spokesperson for the tech giant said, 'We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace.' The spokesperson confirmed that the job cuts weren't related to worker performance. It's reportedly the largest series of layoffs at Microsoft since 2023. This arrives on the heels of reported cuts at Amazon, which in January said it would lay off what it called a 'small number' of its communications and sustainability employees. It followed that by announcing in March plans to eliminate 14,000 managerial positions by early next year. Among those who lost their job at Microsoft is former senior data scientist Tatiana Teppoeva, founder and CEO of One Nonverbal Ecosystem. She told The Epoch Times that increased tech layoffs alongside the rise of AI integration is an industry red flag. 'This has sparked genuine concerns over the future need for human programmers and signals a real, accelerating shift in how companies evaluate which human roles are essential,' Teppoeva said. Like Giri and Subroto, Teppoeva identified industries that have a lot of unchanging, rules-based tasks like back-end software development, data entry, finance, and logistics as areas with a high probability of AI job replacement. 'The most realistic near-term disruption is task-level automation, not full job replacement,' she said. 'For example, in sales, AI tools can draft outreach emails or analyze deal data, but they cannot replicate the human-to-human trust, nonverbal signals, and presence that close high-ticket deals.' Teppoeva said the human-AI gap is now a point of focus for her business. 'Helping sales teams, executives, and companies align their human communication, body language, voice, [and] nonverbal presence [is] what advanced AI tools still can't do,' she said, then added, 'At least not yet.' On June 2, a Midwest-based web content manager for a major U.S. company—who asked to be identified only as 'Tom'—was laid off with the rest of his department and most of the company's marketing staff. Tom requested the company not be identified out of fear it could affect his severance. Having worked in web development for more than 15 years, Tom said he saw the 'AI blitz' coming and had a gut hunch it would only be a matter of time before he was made redundant. 'The worst part is the lack of honesty,' Tom said. 'Companies aren't being straight with people, they're just saying things like 'sales are down' or 'we need to improve efficiency,' but the reality is it's about increasing profit by any means.' Tom said he has a friend who spent nearly two decades working in marketing and kept up with changing industry trends before being laid off a year ago because of AI integration. 'There are entire careers with university degrees behind them that are ending now,' Tom said. 'It's not necessarily a one-to-one ratio,' he added. 'Maybe an AI tool automates half of a department's workload. That means you can redistribute the remaining work amongst a smaller team.' Since the Hollywood writers' strike in 2023, the potential for AI to disrupt careers has been under a microscope, and it's easy to see why. Out of more than 80,000 jobs cut in May 2023, nearly 4,000 were due to AI, according to a layoffs report from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. The trend continued last year. In 2024, the Society of Authors surveyed 12,500 workers in different creative industries, revealing many had already lost work to AI. According to the survey, 26 percent of illustrators and 36 percent of translators had already lost work because of generative AI. Tesla co-founder Elon Musk also shared his views on AI job replacement during the Viva Technology conference in Paris in 2024, following news that Tesla planned to lay off 10 percent of its workforce. 'If the computer and robot can do everything better than you, what meaning does your life have? … In a negative scenario … we're in deep trouble,' Musk said. Other tech insiders share this point of view. During an episode of 'The Artificial Intelligence' show, Marketing AI Institute founder Paul Roetzer said AI is fundamentally reshaping the human workforce. 'It's not like we're drawing some difficult-to-find conclusion here,' Roetzer said when discussing Microsoft's most recent layoffs. 'If the CTO [chief technology officer] of the company is saying that within five years we expect 95 percent of all code to be written by AI, then what do you need a bunch of engineers for?' Subroto used an example from his work, describing the use of AI for 'task sequencing and code generation,' which allowed his company to launch features faster and fix bugs before users even saw them. However, he said the improved work efficiency came at the cost of no longer needing manual testers checking outputs line by line. 'These were smart, capable people, and yet the structure of the work changed so much that their role no longer made sense,' he said. The current phase-out of human work roles due to increased AI efficiency is nuanced, but some don't think it will stay that way for much longer. A McKinsey Global Institute analysis from July 2023 predicted that 30 percent of total hours worked could be absorbed by generative AI by 2030. Researchers estimated that 11.8 million employees working in sectors with shrinking demand may need to shift into other departments, while roughly 9 million may need to change careers entirely.
