Josh Rubens
Good afternoon, good evening welcome to episode 56 of the leading it podcast hosted by Tom Leyden the CEO at Longview and me Josh Rubens CEO at Empyrean.
If you’re a new listener, welcome and if you’re a returning listener thank you very much for coming back and giving us your time. The purpose of our show is for IT leaders to discover unique and valuable insights into current trends from both sides of the vendor and client paradigm and we tackle relevant and time sensitive topics like Cloud, AI cyber security strategy and leadership and how to deal with emerging IT threats and opportunities.
So today we’re really going to get into the weeds about Microsoft copilot uh some use cases and how organizations should prepare some of the risks what works what doesn’t work so yeah really good be really good good episode for people who are interested in in getting into copilot how it works how to get ready for it so g’day Tom welcome.
Tom Leyden
G’day Josh it’s a big topic everyone is talking about copilot so people who haven’t got it there’s they’ve got FOMO people have got it have got plenty of opinions around you know what it works for and what it doesn’t work for so be good to yeah really get into that uh just cover couple of news topics Josh are you ready
Josh Rubens
am I ever
Tom Leyden
you go first then
Josh Rubens
all right well there’s been a lot of uh acquisition m&a activity in the last few weeks so um in continuation from from you know our last episode where we were talking about all the Broadcom VMware issues so that continues to be to you know Broadcom continue to meet and exceed expectations for being very unfriendly to customers and raising prices so I’m hoping at some point they’re going to calm down and listen actually listen to customers but I don’t know I’m not holding out a lot of hope Tom.
Tom Leyden
They’re squeezing the every ounce of blood are they out of this one
Josh Rubens
yeah they they’ve gotten rid of not for profit pricing it’s the first you know kick in the gut and then you know and then you know making cust… everyone buy per uh you know um subscription licenses every year which is basically the same price as buying it again every single
yeah so not fun I said my hope is that they’ll yeah they’ll calm down and and there’ll be backlash that they’ll actually do something but um but what but one thing is that the might not surprise anyone but Nutanix is having a smashing time and their uh second second quarter revenue leaped 16%
Tom Leyden
is that right
Josh Rubens
year on year already already and apparently their pipeline is huge at the moment and I’m not surprised yeah um so that was that was not really a big news story but I just thought that was a that was that was a point of interest
uh I I mean the thing is I mean Nutanix is is also very expensive so it’s not necessarily you know going to be cheaper than VMware it’s just maybe if you’re annoyed enough it’s more that
I’m annoyed so I’m gonna you know I’m gonna get back at you which
Tom Leyden
I’m gonna do something about it and yeah but the transition cost and everything you know you got to factor all that in of course but at some point you have to change horses you know just what you have to do right you you bite the bullet
Josh Rubens
so the first bit of news is that KKR uh is announcing that it’s uh going to buy the VMware end user Computing business for $4 billion so that’s the Horizon and workspace one you know VDI end point management solution so that’s not carbon black, carbon black is a separate is a separate deal so uh just some interesting points a lot of people are seeing this in a very positive light so they’re, because they’re promising to invest very heavily in in the platform in the team whereas you know up until now it’s been you know the ugly sister and they’ve just been laying people off and and you know not really doing any um any you know investment in it so they’re seeing it as as a very as a very sort of positive piece of news for the EUC uh Market
it’s going to be managed by the existing management team uh it’s going to be a standalone company so it’s not going to be you know um you know integrated with uh with anyone else and they’re going to be you know investing and bringing on staff and all that sort of stuff so which is a big contrast to Citrix who after the first year of acquisition 25% of the staff were laid off and then the second year 12% were laid off so yeah the staff and some and the customers are are seeing this as a as a positive.
Any thoughts on on your on your point of view.
Tom Leyden
I I think it’s still really strong use cases for that whole technology set right so it’s good to see they’re still investing in that space and they’re not just looking at as a cash kind of extraction they’re actually seeing what what it might do for the future so it sounds good to me
Josh Rubens
yeah well people will want a good option you know um against Citrix.
All right and news from your side
Tom Leyden
right yeah well a couple things I think um just got to you can’t can’t uh move past the fact that Bitcoin is well and truly back Josh I know you’ve loaded up heavily on Bitcoin in your super and or not but they’re saying what’s interesting about Bitcoin is they saying people starting to say it’s now a more stable option than the US dollar which pretty interesting isn’t it it’s like mainstream Bitcoin is is better than the US Dollars like
Josh Rubens
have you have you put your money where your mouth is Tom and actually bought some
Tom Leyden
I had some money uh yeah so I yeah why not well is it too late I don’t know I’m terrible at timing these waves though Josh well I mean yeah I think it’s it’s it’s mainstream right and that’s what’s driving that next that next Trend
Josh Rubens
yeah it’s never too late I I said I got in on Nvidia and Microsoft very recently and it’s still going up so you would have thought there was no chance um but it is it is yeah that is that that’s interesting I have heard that uh I was at dinner with some University professor and he was talking giving that spiel about how it’s more you know viable than the US dollar and the housing market and my eyes were glazing over looking at him you know like he was talking crap but okay you know that’s yeah it must be must be true and people are making a lot of money and I’m missing out so you know that’s uh that’s my problem
Tom Leyden
Oh exactly well you know what it’s always as you say it’s never too late but well we wait to see I me you and I been but we’ve both seen boom and bust in this world so keep an eye on that one I can’t tell you when it’s going to Boom or when it’s going to Bust though yet, one day maybe.
Josh Rubens
And we we are not giving investment advice just you know the the leading IT podcast does not give investment advice so just just putting putting that out there
uh all right so the next bit of news was um that Cohesity uh buying veritas so that’s interesting did you hear
Tom Leyden
no I didn’t hear about that one
Josh Rubens
so Cohesity are more of a modern um Enterprise Backup Tool so they have it’s like on Prem scaleout infrastructure or tier 2 and three workloads mostly back up an archive and yeah they’re acquiring Veritas so what they’re not… so there’s some interesting points to the to the deal
uh firstly they’re not buying back up exec so they’re not buying the midmarket SME product they’re only buying the Enterprise Products so you know net backup Aptara, Alta um you know Aptara is the sort of the data protection Analytics tool and Alta is more their Cloud native backup toolsets
so um and the CEO of Cohesity was a vice president at the VMware before so he’s very well known good operator uh and the transaction is going to be $7 billion so it’s a significant significant deal and yeah so they’re between the two of them they’re going to have 96% of the Fortune 100 so it’s you know a pretty it’s a pretty big buy um and yeah they’re looking at they they feel that it’s more of a complimentary Suite so you’ll have Cohesity as the infrastructure net backup software they’ve got net backup appliances and some of the software as a service um backup tools that that cohesity doesn’t have particularly for things like um you know Salesforce and other ones
they’ both got 365 backup but uh veritus has got more of the SaaS backup tools so yeah it’s an interesting it’s a big deal in in that data protection space I don’t think we’ve seen much in the storage and data protection well I suppose besides VMWare there hasn’t been a lot happening
Tom Leyden
very mature Market isn’t it but an essential play for every every organization has to have this under control right and they they can’t afford to cut corners on backups no one can do that
Josh Rubens
yeah I mean to be honest I was surprised veritas was still around you know that that was the original the OG data protection tool and net backup I mean that was always a beast remember net backup that was such complex
Tom Leyden
they’re very sticky their customers are very sticky right, once you’re on a backup solution you’re on it you can’t move off that solution easily
Josh Rubens
yeah particularly something like Net back up so yeah interesting to see um you know where where that goes
Tom Leyden
I’m sure they’ll make lots of money I think that’s all happen um my my only other piece of news here is that the Motorola phone you see that one that bends around your wrist so the phone so it snaps over your wrist to replace your watch so you don’t need a watch anymore you have a phone a giant phone on your wrist
Josh Rubens
have you seen it yes I haven’t seen it what does it look like
Tom Leyden
looks ridiculous like something Wonder Woman had you know to like I don’t
Josh Rubens
how how would it actually work
Tom Leyden
well the the screens Bend I mean that’s the interesting thing the round your wrist things gimmick but the it’s a bendable LCD Supply uh display and uh that’s that’s interesting because I think that amount of use cases for that flexible display is quite particularly industrial design uh but the bending around the wrist thing I don’t know who knows is that going to take off maybe, maybe not I don’t know
Josh Rubens
yeah okay wow, no I had I hadn’t heard of it hav’t seen it so can you buy one and bring it on for the next podcast please Tom and you can show it to everyone?
Tom Leyden
will, will do yeah like hey
Josh Rubens
oh that’s funny what whatever next
Tom Leyden
whatever next, mate have you got another piece of news or get on with it
Josh Rubens
let’s get into get into what people want to hear about let’s get into because I know me if I’m you know listening to a podcast and I’m wanting hear something and the guys crap on for 15 minutes about something else I get really annoyed so let’s let’s get in all right
m365 co-pilot so there’s lot Microsoft have lots of different co-pilots and they have a a co-pilot studio and they have an Azure AI studio so in this session today we’re going to cover M365 copilot and we’ll talk a little bit about the copilot studio and the AI studio and what is different about them and what some of the use cases are uh
because at Empyrean that’s where we’ve been focusing our time has been really around the AI studio so we’ve had some really interesting learnings that you know I want to share with the uh you know with the listeners
but let’s start you’ve been having you’ve been using M365 Copilot yourself so why don’t we why don’t we start there Tom and you can tell us what’s working not working
Tom Leyden
I want take one step back actually and just talk about everyone’s AI strategy so I think every CIO leader CTO everyone’s looking at how they’re putting AI use cases to work in their organization and I think the challenge with AI is you’ve either got to invest really heavily in building your own systems tools out right your own LLMS out and and Skilling up
or you can sort of plug into these existing tools that are out there and get some enormous benefit really really quickly so this falls into the plug it in and get some benefits quickly kind of camp right so we’re all looking for that low hanging fruit
but the risk is that maybe they’re not built for purpose right they’re not fit for purpose for your organization so you know there’s some there’s there’s a quick win easy to roll out but is it actually fit for purpose and I think that’s what we’re really going to get into today
so does it meet that one um and I know a lot of people out out there piloting you know doing some some Edge case testing rolling it out some brave people have rolled it out to the whole organization already um so we’ve got some interesting feedback from from users
I think you know from what I’m just just from my point of view you know the sort of office the office co-pilot you know just plugging that in incredibly easy to roll out right really easy to turn on no problems about that and we’ll talk about the security aspects in a sec Josh so I know you want to raise that
but just in terms of um like word for example the embedded word aspect of copilot is pretty pretty good
yes what have you what have you been doing with it sorry Tom.
Tom Leyden
so what what I love about about this particular one is that it’s incredibly easy to do those tedious tasks that you do once in a while my favourite one is doing job descriptions so you got to create a position description you just ask these things to go hey create a position description for a technical product owner and bang it spits out or a senior software engineer bang here’s 99% of it and you just fix up the bits that you want to put in
unreal for that sort of those jobs
policies it writes policies for you till the cows come home it’s really good for those little tasks you have to do on an irregular basis that frankly are are really painful but then it goes a little bit further and go right, write me the BYOD policy for example something like that don’t one those bang that out okay create a PowerPoint presentation that describes that explains this to the firm bang it does that for you
so all those like boring standard things you’ve got to do to tick off the order box and you got to have these things in place it does a lot of that work for you which I thought was is really aggressive
um so that’s just one little example of where I’m seeing it work quite well I won’t go into the negatives just yet Josh do you do you have some examples of where you’re seeing
Josh Rubens
yeah so I mean so what so the ones I’m getting really good feedback on is the teams meeting summarisation so summarising meetings generating action items agendas like that works really well.
Tom Leyden
Does that work in meeting rooms though I reckon it works well when everyone’s on the screen but as soon as you’ve got a group of people in the meeting room it’s doesn’t know what’s going on
Josh Rubens
sure yeah yeah for sure for sure it’s more if people everyone’s dialing in um also if you’re not attending a meeting you can ask it to give you a summary of events, yes, that’s pretty useful you can pretend you pretend you were there so that’s and that’s driving some teams premium people buying teams premium
you get that and it’s a lot cheaper it’s about 12 bucks a user a month rather than the you know 600 bucks a year uh
PowerPoints the feedback has been limited there is some use around but it’s um you know that’s nascent email summarising email action items all that works works really well so yeah that’s been pretty good
so I think I think it’s more um you know giving it to the giving it to the right people, people who who are you know generating the guys who were the curators and and the developers of of of information and the creators of information they’re the right people for it
Tom Leyden
the knowledge worker the classic knowledge worker right and they’ve kind of hit a sweet spot with that one, some of the frustrations with it though email some emails okay but writing emails pretty ordinary
right like you can’t it can’t write an email for you if you send off an email written by AI it’s like pretty bad it’s pretty ordinary and then the email coaching and I need a lot of help with email I’ll be the first to admit that uh but the coach is not that helpful it’s really I end up coaching it more than it coaches me
Josh Rubens
yeah is it getting better over time or is it just it is what it is at the moment
Tom Leyden
just more annoying over time I find, I don’t know about you
Josh Ruben
yeah yeah so so I think people who are writing proposals all the time or reports as you said those sorts of things those sorts of people will you know or or example bid managers so someone who’s having to review lots of bids uh proposals you know would be fantastic so it’s really yeah giving it to the right people in the right roles and also I think it’s also people who know what the output should look like
because if they don’t know then they’re just going to go along with what they’re given and it’s going to be pretty low quality so I think you know it’s like using a calculator you sort of got to understand how it’s going to get there but just helping you get there faster but if you don’t know or understand what’s going on then maybe it’s not going to be very useful for you
Tom Leyden
yeah well the analogy I use is like a musical instrument you know you can you can get out a basic tune but if if you practice you’ll get a much better sound from your your instrument and the same with with copilot if you practice it and use it commit to using it you get a significantly better result.
Josh Rubens
And what about Excel have you had a crack at it on Excel?
Tom Leyden
uh well the feedback from the people who use Excel on regular basis is that it it’s not that good that gets in the way mainly um it doesn’t it seems to be very limited in what it can do at the moment
Josh Rubens
yeah because you need to you need to have a formatted table and things like that properly formatted table so you’re supposed to be able to ask at things and and create tables for you I’m interested to see people using the powerbi Copilot where so that’s I haven’t come up with that that’s that would be very good for finance people or CEOs or CFOs who have to review dashboards and just want to understand what they’re looking at
Tom Leyden
yeah so we’re doing a lot of work um to get ready for that because it does speak to making sure you’ve got your data sets you know ready to go and cleaned up and clearly identified
so we’re hoping that with our data sets published correctly um that then then that makes a lot more sense so when someone ask a question of of co-pilot it’s actually looking at the correct underlying supporting data and that data needs to be labeled correctly otherwise copilot is going to go off on it’s weird tangent
so we’re doing ground work to make that happen but I haven’t seen results yet
Josh Rubens
yeah so talking so which excellent segue Tom like we’ve done this before so um in in preparation so really you know in in in you know getting prepared I think what you said earlier about having a strategy or some sort of road map or really you know that’s something you know we’ve been helping customers with
so people that want to sort of get into some specific use cases and understand what what they’re gonna what they want to achieve that is a good way to do it or just let’s get it in and see what happens that’s also you know rather than wait you know because if you wait too long for the perfect use case you may you may you know you may be left behind
but really you know making sure that your data because it it’ll honour the in place permissions and as we’ve said many times before that’s good and bad because if your permissions are not least privilege so you really want to have you know least privilege access deployed and the best tool in the Microsoft ecosystem is Purview so it allows you to classify your documents label them and and put data prevention policies in place
so people can only once that’s done they’ll only be able to see and access data in um you know in files that they’re allowed to see but you have to get that done first
Tom Leyden
well so I’d say that um yeah that that’s a really important piece but don’t I don’t think you need to do 100% I think you need to have a very good feel of where the crown jewels are and make sure they’re well protected
but everyone knows every organisation is full of stuff all the way so you’re never going to get that rolled out 100% you should not wait to that but just make sure that you know the executive you know CEO folder or whatever that stuff is locked up tightly and then do some do some real sense checking on these things right so once you’ve rolled it out start searching for salary people’s salary and just make sure that things that shouldn’t pop up magically right
Josh Rubens
I mean most customers you know a lot of them their permissioning for the really important stuff is pretty good already yeah most people have the you know the salary file locked down and the bank account and the board reports you would hope most organisations would have that locked down so that’s not going to be and particularly if you’re in Pilot phase and not everyone has it then you know it’s less it’s less of an issue but I think it’s more around a broader a broader deployment that’s when this stuff is is really going to have to be there and Microsoft have done a good job with purview of it can protect data in prompts live and do all that the classification and a lot of is bundled in with definitely with E5 it is or you can have if you have an E3 or a business premium you can buy an add-on purview add-on and and get get get all that stuff in place without without too much difficulty
so um you know as far as preparation that that’s a pretty good um you know that’s a pretty good way of doing it and how we’d be doing it is you do a scan so there’s a scanner Puriew has a scanner so you can scan your files it will show you at a very granular level where all your risky data is and then it’ll allow you to provide to to to sort of um implement policies about classifying that data
so you can say you know highly sensitive sensitive you know non-sensitive data and then you apply policies to those levels so what people can do with that and then once that’s in that’s it you’re pretty much done and then that will automate that so as soon as something comes in and it’ll see that this data has got passport numbers it’s highly sensitive people won’t be able to do certain things with it
so um yeah that’s probably uh the best way for people to from a technology point of view then obviously there’s things looking at you know risk risk programs and privacy and all that and compliance and all those sorts of things so um you know those are those are certainly um yeah areas customers should should look at and if you’re in um you know government there’s been there was an extensive sort of document released by The Victorian Governor about um copilot preparation around doing risk assessments and some pretty yeah they were they were the opposite of you Tom they weren’t saying just get it in they’re saying here’s the 20 things you need to do before you start it so
Tom Leyden
yeah right yeah well fair enough too I mean not everyone can just just rip it out there
Josh Rubens
yeah well you’re lucky I mean you’re in a you’re in a you know a corporate um environment and so you’re able to do it right you’re not you’re not you’re not under
Tom Leyden
if you’re highly regulated if you’re highly regulated this is not yeah you don’t just run into these things
Josh Rubens
yeah um so Financial Services um you know Public Service, health, going to be a real uh it’s going to take take a lot of take a lot of time and then obviously there’s the privacy considerations which is the new Privacy Act that came out so again looking at what are what privacy private personal information is going to be collected by Copilot how’s it going to be shared lots of different use cases there
um so organisations who are concerned about that you know it’s worth getting in a uh you know some consultants and people to assist you and I may know I may know someone who who can help you with that
Tom Leyden
but you’re right it’s really about understanding your organisation’s appetite for risk particular information information leakage information exposure because copilot is designed to make the most of your information right yeah, which kind of assumes you know what you’re doing your own your own data so yeah it’s really important point.
Josh Rubens
Can I ask you Tom do you think it’s worth 600 bucks a user a year
Tom Leyden
yeah that’s a really good point so I I think it’s worth 600 bucks a user for some users right not for all of them uh I want to talk about this a little bit because I think as you roll it out uh you’ll know that there are people who who will engage with it and and work out what it’s good for what it’s bad for and really love it
and run with it and the people who go who be the first people to tell everyone around them how bad it is and how inaccurate it is and how it’s never going to replace them blah blah blah blah blah
so I think you’ve got to be very mindful about the people who you want to give it to uh and not just give it to everyone particularly the laggards of the world who will be the first ones to show everyone how it’s incorrect inaccurate not quite right blah blah blah
because it will produce inaccurate results from time to time, it will produce things that aren’t quite right so you don’t want those people bad mouthing telling everyone how how crap it is and why it’s a waste of money so pick your people pick those people really carefully right and build up that support base before you blast it out to the rest of the team don’t waste your money with those laggards just it’s not worth it definitely not worth it for them.
Josh Rubens
And are they the people are always the complainers and whingers and squeaky wheels in every IT project right – we know who they are you know who they are out there so don’t go to them they’re last
Tom Leyden
don’t do them and and that they won’t support it they won’t support it they’ll be the first ones to say how bad AI is and how wrong it is and how it’s going to destroy the world you know what let them let them be their own people over there in the corner by themselves like
but there’ll be people out there who really engage with it like people who want want to just want to know more about it and want to see it work well and they’ll be the ones who put the time and effort into understanding how to use it
pick those people and pick them across your departments and all that sort of stuff but don’t don’t give it to everyone is my advice.
Josh Rubens
So is is this you know like all the other innovations the time for a centre of excellence for you know champions in teams and and communities and all that sort of I mean Microsoft is certainly advocating that do you think this needs that or is this so gonna be so pervasive
Tom Leyden
well guess what it depends so where there’s really high impact for these tools typically departments where there’s a lot of content generation uh marketing great one right so so if there is high impact then you want you want a center of excellence or you want a a team that’s going to drive that out pretty quickly and robustly so the marketing team’s a great example of that one where you want people within marketing to really drive that out across their own use cases
um but if it’s like a really like an operations based team or you Field Services team you know may maybe they’re not the right people at this point for that stuff so pick your team wisely and then if if there are benefits yeah really run hard with it
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah so some of the I saw a survey across an organisation where it was rated out of five so it was given it a 3.1 and there was some interesting feedback do you mind if I just go through it so what it was good at was teams meeting summaries and transcripts summarisation of document content and emails and data and information retrieval was good to save time improved communication and creativity and innovation
and then the hurdles were lack of use cases or value prop
so they didn’t feel that it had enough use cases or value and they didn’t know how to use it effectively and then technical issues and bugs was the other one so is there a training should we use a is there a training component here as well
Tom Leyden
I think so and I think that’s what you should be driving your early adopters should be explaining to the rest of the organisation how they’ve got value from it in their own world so it’s not a basic IT led training I suspect I think it’s more of a user based training where or user led training where power users actually demonstrate how to use copilot with actual use use cases actually it’s exactly what they’re saying so
so you know Gary from whatever the the audit Department stands up says yeah I’m really loving it I use it this way and he shows everyone how to actually get that working for him and that’s really effective but if it’s someone from IT going okay you press this button and you do that without the business context that’s pretty hard actually that’s gonna be hard to to get going just one um just on that feedback
so I heard the uh the CBA um CIO or CTO talking you might have heard this as well they they rolled it out out to a bunch of people with pilot and they said to everyone if we – you can either have co-pilot or we’ll give you 50 bucks a month and they turned around said actually most people said we’ll keep copilot that’s quite interesting
Josh Rubens
goodness that is interesting.
Tom Leyden
Do they overpay the people at that bank?
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s 50 bucks is clearly not enough
Tom Leyden
so they found it was they found it was useful from that point of view
Josh Rubens
what if they said 500 anyway I’m just saying so I think we’re getting down to really is you know what’s best is it top down bottom up both you know what’s the best approach here?
Tom Leyden
Both um always I think you’ve got to lead from the top and say hey this is a new tool, this is what it does for you these are the key risks and this is what we’re doing about that of course as you said about I think it’s really important that IT leads and clearly explains what those risks and issues are but also explains where the potential benefits are and then from the bottom up start demonstrating where those benefits are.
Josh Rubens
so we’re talking really about getting the CEO you know the business because the CEOs as we saw there was a you know I think I mentioned there was that EY CEO survey 99% of CEOs saying they were going to invest in AI so getting getting the CEO in saying hey we’re using AI getting
then getting you know, risk, getting everyone involved, security making sure you’re doing it properly
but also do doing some bottom up PoC and really showing getting it out into the business at the same time so it’s really a balance of top down bottom up so that we you know moving
Tom Leyden
don’t forget the the top down thing that’s really important that the COO, CEO is looking for AI use cases right yes to sell their investors that’s what they they want those AI use cases and this as I said at the start this fits into the quick win space right
Josh Rubens
yeah I mean you’ve had that experience yourself you mentioned put AI into any investment slide deck and the value goes up 10 or 15% is that immediately
Tom Leyden
mainly yeah that’s the model. no that’s not. There’s a bit more to than that Josh.
Josh Rubens
I understand I’m just joshing that’s okay so um do you mind if we talk I want to talk a little bit about the the copilot studio and the Azure AI studio and just explain that because it is it is confusing because there are a bunch of other copilots there’s a um a sales copilot as part of the Dynamics 365 there’s a a service copilot there’s co-pilots in power apps there’s PowerBI copilot so there’s co-pilots all over the place but there’s two other main areas
so the first one’s called Copilot studio and that’s about 300 bucks a month and what that’s really and it and what that’s really good for is where people are maybe have existing chat bots in place or they want to create a chatbot that has a lot of really good workflow inbuilt, workflows in place behind it so if you do this you’ll do that and then you want to add some AI functionality into it and you want to might maybe add some process automation because it will integrate into all the thousand power apps connectors
so it’s really good for doing those sorts of things but it’s not good for search it’s not because it doesn’t have the vector search capability so where you want to have that natural language interaction with your data that that that’s not the use case for copilot Studio
that’s really so you know so for customers who are thinking about right I want to have a an AI chatbot for my you know customer service support and we’ve got really good workflows if they say this do that and that and I want to do a bit of automation so once they do this we’re going to automate right into this application or going to off this workflow the copilot studio is is a really good um place for that and it costs AU 300 bucks a month or 200 US and you get 25,000 messages.
Tom Leyden
Yeah right. okay
Josh Rubens
so that’s you know good for um certain use cases so maybe a web something on your website you have a a copilot on your website but people who would be having chat Bots or virtual agents in place already this would really enhance that
so that’s you know it’s a low code tool you get a nice gooey yeah right quite intuitive you get a nice sort of you know that Microsoft experience where you can you know manage so you can build these things connect them to other applications and you get a you get a single point of management and support in this in that co-pilot Studio you know
Tom Leyden
does it provide that natural language over on top of your existing chat Bots is that what you’re saying so
Josh Rubens
no no that’s not that’s not the the best use case you will get you will get that natural language obviously because it’s GPT you will get some natural language interaction yeah but it’s not gonna it requires a lot of that logic to be in place
Tom Leyden
okay well that’s good to know.
Josh Rubens
It’s not going to be that that intuitive because as I said it doesn’t give you that Vector that Vector database right it doesn’t give you that that really powerful um search capability
uh you know so can access you know docu there’s some documentation in there it’s good for customer service data analysis uh so that type of virtual agent um capability it’s really that’s where you would, we would you know that’s what we’re seeing um copilot studio and and you know with those a thousand connectors etc etc
now the Azure AI studio is a different thing so it’s similarly it’s a it’s a it’s a wizard based you know single platform but it gives you access to all the um the Azure AI Services right so you have you know you can simplify deployments for all the AI models that they have there so you know GPT 3.5 turbo, 4, 4 with Vision, Dall•e Tech so it’s much more complex AI use cases
this is really you know instead of having to you know without this you would have had to have a lot of skills in coding and bringing all these Services together so this is giving you, the you know a nice…
Tom Leyden
It’s more than that right so we we we are playing with this as well we’re doing amazing things like we’re filling in gaps in our data with this technology so for example we’re looking for property age so we can then send AI here’s a whole bunch of images of a property estimate the property’s age and it actually does a really good job of doing that stuff where you couldn’t do that up until now
that is actually filling that image the image processing stuff fantastic amazing
Josh Rubens
yes that’s either GPT Vision or Dall•e or whatever so it’s giving you you don’t have access to these sorts of things with the copilot studio I’m just trying to differentiate
Tom Leyden
it’s hardcore stuff right
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah so so the so the stuff we’ve been talking to customers about we’re using the cognitive search which is the vector database which is not like Google search it it inferences it can it can interpret data so um you know had a really good win with the client for their store FAQ they’ve got 300 stores across Australia and all the you know the retail people asking stupid questions what’s our returns policy what’s this so instead of going into SharePoint trying to find the right document and what the returns policy is you can just ask it
but you need to have it processed with with the vector search so if you think about more complex use cases OH&S HR, your you know again it’s really limited by your imagination so this is where you would want to go to do um you know to do those more complex AI use cases and that’s certainly where you know Empyrean as an organisation is really focused on at the moment um
and this is good I mean it’s it’s it’s in public preview at the moment you need to apply for access to it and it’s a pay as you go service so you pay for what you use and um some organisations I think would get more value out of this at a lower cost than you know spending 600 bucks for you know 300 users for the M365 Copilot because this is more of a you know an Enterprise type use case so this is where you would go for customers who are interested in that obviously any question um have a you know come and have a have a chat to us about it but yeah I’m really um yeah it’s good that you guys are having a go at it Tom do you want to maybe tell us a bit more about what you’re
Tom Leyden
yeah yeah well I mean the sort the world we’re living in fact a lot of customers a lot of people listening will have a similar problem where we deal with a lot of data sets and the data is uh inconsistent so we’ve got property records that have been scanned in from you know years, 100 years ago a lot of gaps in our data sets so we’re starting to use AI to try to work out okay well what given everything else what is the answer what what is the missing data and start to start to fill that out so that’s, that seems to be really useful actually from that point of view um
we can then use it to apply intelligence to things like analyse a floor plan for example so just adding whole bunch of value that was really impossible before the before this came along so we’re finding that really useful particularly for use cases where we don’t need to be 100% accurate all we need is is something that’s generalised you know advice or input or Direction this is good enough right saying a house is built in 1950 versus it has to be built in 1951 precisely 1950 to 1960 that’s fine for us so we’re finding it really really good for that sort of broader Generalised data sets and as a result that we can then go and do a whole bunch more on top of that as well so
so that that’s kind of useful I imagine a whole bunch of people going to use that for image image processing right so people have got security footage or video footage whole bunch of stuff you can start doing with that well
Josh Rubens
yeah so as I mentioned in addition to AI the Azure AI search there’s translator speech AI Vision AI language and Azure AI document intelligence which is what I’m assuming you’re using yes so so people who you know particularly in uh construction engineering or anything where they’re trying to process lots of documents or create vision or or process Vision or have natural language and then have a natural language front end into this and people can talk to it instead of needing to have all these you know really smart data science skills you can so that’s the cool thing is the front end to this is a web front end it’s just a chat just a chat front end where you can ask questions and it doesn’t just bring it to it’s not like Google it actually is smart enough to actually interpret and bring you the stuff you need so that that’s the that’s the cool part about it
so yeah I think you know um it’d be worth customers exploring you know which one of the you know where do where do I have virtual agents already and I can use copilot studio and I can start connecting it to other apps and using power automate and bringing business processes into it, and where do I really want to use AI and and and look at vision and document processing and the more complex stuff in an Enterprise use case and that’s where the Azure AI studio um really you know really comes in and that’s where you could the that’s the area I think you can really get the CEO or CFO excited about
Tom Leyden
absolutely so you’ve got low low hanging fruit easy wins demonstrate the wowness and then you you’re building up something really amazing that’s specific for your organisation that’s going to give you the edge and I think that’s that’s what every CIO is trying to, CTO is trying to do is like you need some quick wins to sort of keep everyone happy but we really need to build our capability behind this and it’s a two strong, two prong attack here
Josh Rubens
yeah fantastic and also most importantly um happy 50th birthday Tom.
Tom Leyden
right thank you what can I say we’re all getting older I can’t do anything about it yet
Josh Rubens
mine was on the I turned 49 on the weekend and my kids were mercilessly you’re 50 I’m no I’m not 49 I’m in my 50th year but I’m I’m let me enjoy my 40th Year my year last year of the 40s all right so can you believe it Tom we we nearly we’re 50 it’s it’s scary
Tom Leyden
I can’t believe it when you tick that box what age group you’re in yeah that’s really that’s that’s harsh
Josh Rubens
yeah we’re out of the 40 to 49 into the into the 50’s but no congratulations Tom and you don’t look a day over 40- 41 so at least we feel young I about you I still feel young I don’t feel
Tom Leyden
oh still exactly right exactly that’s the thing I still feel like I’m 23
Josh Rubens
except with my my sore shoulders and joints and knees but uh mentally yeah yeah,
Tom Leyden
mentally about 14
Josh Rubens
correct exactly so no good excellent thanks thank you Tom was there anything else you wanted to
Tom Leyden
that’s it mate, I think we’ve covered off the key points there.
Josh Rubens
Excellent, thanks Tom and thanks everyone out there for listening. I hope you’ve got some good value and and enjoyed the session uh if anyone’s interested in exploring please contact me through Linkedin or jrubens@empyreanit.com.au we’d be delighted to help you as we help many others and yeah thanks again for listening and uh we’ll speak or see you next time thanks again thanks, Tom.
Tom Leyden
Thanks Josh.
