Held annually in Las Vegas, Microsoft Inspire is the largest gathering of Microsoft partners on the planet.
Antares Solutions, one of the Cloud Collective’s three alliance partners, has received a special mention during a key demonstration at the Microsoft Inspire Corenote. The recognition was attributed to the Antares team in front of an arena packed full of Microsoft partners and employees from over 130 countries, an audience 40,000 strong.
The recognition for Antares’ work was acknowledged by Dr. David Kellermann from the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Introduced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Dr. Kellermann addressed the packed arena and related the AI initiatives that the Antares team implemented for his class of 500 engineering students.
Antares worked closely with Dr. Kellermann to develop QuestionBot, or QBot. QBot started out by integrating into Teams, looking up and tagging each student’s specific tutor when they asked a question. With over 200 questions answered within the first two weeks of being live, it was not long until QBot’s AI was capable of gathering the data it needed to answer questions without the tutor becoming involved at all. QBot even points students to a time stamped video link of lectures that were captured live on Stream to help them find the answers they need. Dr. Kellermann noted how he was able to implement the solution in just 8 weeks working with only one Antares developer. After the solution and stats was explained to the huge crowd, they were met with thunderous applause.
We are proud to say that this is the second time that Antares’ work has been acknowledged at Microsoft Inspire this year, with the team taking out the award for Business Transformation at the Nintex Partner Awards night for the APAC region.
The key message from Inspire was that together we can achieve more. Satya himself clearly believes that Antares’ work is an example of this, since he personally asked for Dr. Kellermann’s presentation to be included in the Corenote last minute, after being briefed on it just two weeks out from the event. It rang true again as Satya discussed three key numbers in his Corenote: 100, 17, and 7. Representing Microsoft employees, Microsoft partners, and the 7 billion people on the planet respectively, Satya discussed how each number was interconnected. Each group supports the next as we work together to make Microsoft’s mission (to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more) a reality. With the students providing Dr. Kellermann’s course a satisfaction score of 99% after QBot was implemented, the students were clearly engaged in the technology and the learning possibilities that it was able to make a reality. The solution has truly enabled and empowered the students, the leaders of tomorrow, to achieve more by working together as one learning community.
Written by Lara Vandersluis
