Microsoft Corp.
MSFT
recently launched a service for Azure Cognitive Services, expanding its long-running relationship with the artificial intelligence (AI) research outfit, OpenAI Inc.
The service will enable developers to gain limited access to a range of OpenAI’s AI models, including the GPT-3 base series, Codex series and embedding models.
The new OpenAI Service is aimed at helping developers deploy higher-quality models as application programming interfaces. They can infuse language capabilities into applications more efficiently through the OpenAI Service.
Moreover, Azure OpenAI Service will help developers to bring new reasoning and comprehension capabilities to the applications, in particular, use cases such as writing assistance, code generation and making sense of unstructured data.
Microsoft Corporation Price and Consensus
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Other Recent Updates on Azure Cognitive Services Platform
The launch of OpenAI Service was one of two major updates to Azure Cognitive Services at Build. Microsoft also launched Azure Cognitive Service for Language, which provides summarizations that can help developers locate key information in documents and call transcripts.
Among other new updates is the launch in preview of Azure Machine Learning’s responsible AI dashboard. This is a new feature within Azure Machine Learning that makes it easier for users to implement responsible AI free from biases. It includes tools such as data explorer, fairness, model interoperability, error analysis, and counterfactual and causal inference analysis.
Besides, Microsoft is adding some new capabilities optimized for critical tasks to Azure Applied Services, which are high-level services aimed at helping developers apply AI to key business scenarios.
Momentum in Azure Cloud and Teams to Aid Top-Line Growth
The increasing migration of workloads to the cloud is fueling demand for cloud infrastructure monitoring, web-based application performance management and human capital management solutions.
Teams’ expanding customer base and features are helping Microsoft win share in the enterprise communication market against competitors like
Zoom
ZM
. Markedly, at the end of first-quarter fiscal 2023, Zoom had roughly 198,900 enterprise customers, which grew 24% year over year.
Microsoft’s performance is benefiting from strength in the Azure cloud platform amid the accelerated global digital transformation. In the fiscal first quarter, Azure and other cloud services’ revenues surged 50% year over year (up 48% at cc). The upside was driven by robust growth in consumption-based businesses.
Microsoft’s industry-specific cloud offering is also driving adoption. Intelligent Cloud revenues are anticipated between $21.1 billion and $21.35 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter.
Azure’s increased availability in more than 60 announced regions globally is expected to strengthen Microsoft competitive position in the cloud computing market, dominated by
Amazon
’s
AMZN
Amazon Web Services and
Alphabet
’s
GOOGL
Google Cloud.
In the last-reported quarter, Amazon’s AWS revenues (1% of total company sales) rose 37% year over year to $18.4 billion. The expansion of its AWS services portfolio is helping Amazon maintain its dominance in the cloud domain by gaining more customers.
Meanwhile, in first-quarter 2022, Alphabet recorded a 43.8% year-over-year jump in Google Cloud revenues to $5.8 billion, which contributed 8.6% to quarterly revenues.
A solid uptick in Teams and strong Azure demand instill investors’ confidence in Microsoft, which currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
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