Microsoft said on Thursday that it is investing heavily in cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

At the 2018 Azure Summit organised by the company in HCM City on Thursday, which attracted more than 200 developers, technology experts and IT managers, it unveiled a new cloud service called Microsoft Azure.

The company said it is not simply a cloud storage but offers more than 100 services with end-to-end tools.

It has become the first choice of 90 per cent of Fortune 500 companies, it claimed.

Security, privacy and compliance are embedded into its development methodology and it has been recognised as the most trusted cloud for US Government institutions with more than 70 compliance offerings, the company said.

Pham The Truong, country director of Microsoft Vietnam, said: “Without cloud, organisations will not have access to high-power computing and storage which supports big data analytics. Without big data analytics, emerging technologies like AI/cognitive/robotics will not be possible as they require data.”

Microsoft also said it has invested in AI research and achieved some significant milestones that would have seemed impossible even a few years ago.

At the beginning of this year, its researchers created a technology that uses AI to read a document and answer questions about it like a human being. — VNS