Microsoft participates in Global Informatics Forum, 2016

In line with its commitment to accelerate government modernization in the era of “Digital Transformation” towards a knowledge based economy, Microsoft unveiled an array of solutions at the Global Informatics Forum from the 21st to 23rd November in Kuwait. The event was held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, Amir of Kuwait, and organized by His Highness Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah Informatics Corporation.

The event acted as a platform aiming at encouraging individuals and establishments to participate in the knowledge economy by adopting new technologies, promote entrepreneurship and provide an interactive platform for the exchange of knowledge, experience and expertise.

Microsoft demonstrated its latest Mass Happiness Index solution based on Microsoft Cognitive Services that captures facial expressions in massive crowds, processes the emotions and reports analysis in real-time. The technology using a set of Emotion APIs can be leveraged at various events and locations to study audience response and use the data collected to make intelligent actions.

The Mass Happiness Index enables the capture of a range of sentiments such as anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness and surprise; gauging the happiness level of the individual.

“Our participation at the Global Informatics Forum is in line with Microsoft’s support to the Kuwait Government modernization and innovation objectives and to succeed in this journey of digital transformation, providing leading services to its citizens” said Charles Nahas, Country General Manager, Microsoft Kuwait. “The region is in pursuit of digitization to achieve a knowledge based economy, and Kuwait is rapidly accelerating towards adoption of innovative technologies and solutions”

Visitors to the Microsoft stand in the Future Zone at the Global Informatics Forum were also able to experience its cloud solutions including Internet of Things (IoT) and Business Intelligence tools. Shijaz Abdulla, Business Transformation Specialist for Microsoft Kuwait, also delivered a session on Azure, its world-class hyper scale cloud computing platform used to build, host and scale business applications. Audiences received an overview on Azure cloud, along with a brief account of services that can aid in improving IT efficiency for the Government of Kuwait.

A research conducted by Accenture states that digital transformation can have a significant impact on the country’s economy, boosting innovation and reducing back office costs to 45%. It also highlights that a 1 % increase in digitization can result in 0.5 % GDP gain, and a 1.9% gain in international trade. Microsoft has always endorsed government modernization, focusing on building products and solutions that can be leveraged to generate accurate insights for digital transparency, value creation and for delivering more personal and intelligent computing services for citizens.

“The world is progressing at an alarming rate with digital technology transforming the way we live, work and interact with each other. With the exponential growth in data and information, it has become vital for governments to ascend towards and adopt digital transformation”. Said Nahas. “At Microsoft, we are focused in empowering governments and organisations to gain access to, and deploy intelligent technology for addressing the most pressing societal challenges. We strive to significantly expand our efforts towards modernizing government institutions across Kuwait and enable them to embrace current practices through our software and services, and our cloud computing capabilities; empowering them to achieve more.”