49 for the scenarios that matter for their communities,” says Cheng. “Our partnerships with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, as well as open-source organisations like OpenAI, allow these technologies to be accessible to broad communities.” The use of AI is now widespread, from simple text predictions to complex data analytics. One of the major ways it is reaching users is via the cloud and augmented reality technologies, such as Microsoft Azure and HoloLens. “We build our HoloLens experiences and platform on top of the Azure cloud,” says Cheng. “This includes all our AI cognitive services and machine learning tools, communication services, low-code tools, as well as our cloud and edge platform components. The Azure services we leverage in Microsoft products can also be used and extended by any developer. This allows for a full range of solutions – from out-of-the-box solutions to highly customised low- and procode developed solutions.” These technologies are also creating more tangible business use cases for the metaverse. Though the concept – now well-known due to the relaunch of Facebook as Meta – has seemed vague and abstract to many, Microsoft is using its augmented reality solutions and HoloLens to create the industrial metaverse. “The metaverse can be used in many different ways, for example, with people gathering in an imaginary world or meeting together for a virtual work meeting,” says Cheng. “Our focus on the Industrial Metaverse allows organisations and their increasingly mobile frontline workers to overlay relevant information in real-world
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