- Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced it is buying Orions Systems for expanding Dynamics 365 capabilities. These are the details about the deal.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced it is buying Orions Systems for expanding Dynamics 365 capabilities. Orions Systems is a pioneer in the development of large-scale and hybrid smart vision systems focused on “human-in-the-loop” machine teaching combined with services that are able to adapt to running on a single device or scale to address large scale edge-to-cloud network topologies. And the company’s technology is able to utilize computer or human insights in real-time to learn and adapt to new data at the edge.
As the role of computer vision expands, it helps businesses run better and increase earning potential. And with this technology, retailers are able to better manage their physical spaces by gaining a deeper understanding of customer behavior. But most brick-and-mortar retailers lack the data for tracking real-world behaviors and actions — which leads to missed opportunities to manage costs and increase revenue.
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Store was built to close that gap by tapping into computer vision and IoT sensors for helping understand spaces better, optimize business operations, and meet newer levels of customer expectation with real-time observational data.
“Computer vision unlocks the opportunity, but challenges remain on how to rapidly configure, train, deploy, and utilize the data to drive actionable business decisions. Additionally, most spaces are unique—creating a last-mile challenge that requires specific customization for each space to optimize the outcomes,” wrote Muhammad Alam, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Dynamics 365 in a blog post. “Today, this critical step is hard and requires deep expertise, which is scarce and costly for businesses. Our vision is to simplify this customization process so that businesses can more easily use their domain expertise to teach the solution to adapt to their needs using visual tools—no code or tech expertise required. In achieving this vision we will prioritize the businesses’ ability to maintain control and security of their own data, without having to share information with Microsoft or other vendors.”
Orions Systems has developed a strong reputation and leading technology for organizations seeking to gather and analyze high-value data specifically in the areas of video and image content. This acquisition will bring additional technologies that will allow solutions like Dynamics 365 Connected Store and the Microsoft Power Platform to offer retailers and other organizations a way to build and train their own artificial intelligence models to customize and optimize how they can learn from their physical space. The extra tools will deliver on scenarios beyond what is offered out-of-the-box today and it can adapt to the unique dimensions and needs of their physical spaces.
