Matt Vasey of Microsoft Keynotes IoT Evolution Expo, Outlines Intelligent Edge

At last week’s IoT Evolution Expo, keynoter Matt Vasey, Director, Artificial Intelligence BD, Microsoft, brought to the audience a keen perspective on the impact of AI on IoT.

First, he opened with a rundown on the successive waves of innovation in connected devices and machine intelligence. Vasey said it all starts with the Cloud, which progresses to IoT implementation, leading to adding in the intelligent Edge, finally culminating in Artificial Intelligence. By 2020, he said, 85 percent of enterprises will be using AI as part of their operations.

Which leads to yet another timeline, according to Vasey: AI implementation leads to machine learning, and then, finally, deep learning.

Vasey asked: What do you do with these technologies? 

In the old model of enterprise intelligence, the only feedback a company could get was after a breakdown or fault. There would be an investigation and then, hopefully, change. Now that IoT and AI technologies are coming into use, companies can collect feedback from customer usage and operational data from the system. All of this is being digitized, and then the companies can empower employees and customers to give feedback, which hfurther informs the AI model.

He ran through an example of this new process, which is already… Rolling. Rolls Royce wanted to change the way it did business, with the goal of more efficient and profitable business. Microsoft worked with the Spirit of Ecstasy to build a dashboard through a huge Fog node to track the company’s car’s engines across several metrics, including fuel, telemetry, engine mechanics and routes. All of this will allow the company to derive detailed data points on its operations and customers, and can use them to drive to the future.