- Microsoft has announced it is spending $1.1 billion to drive digital transformation in Mexico
Microsoft has announced it is spending $1.1 billion to drive digital transformation in Mexico. This investment plan will provide cloud services from local data centers to contribute to the development of the country, a quality education, and skilling program to support employability for hundreds of thousands of youth projects applying artificial intelligence to benefit the society, and an Advisory Board with important CEOs as some of the first initiatives over the next 5 years.
As part of the “Innovate for Mexico” plan, Microsoft is focused on accelerating Mexico’s digital transformation by democratizing access to technology. And the company announced plans to establish a new cloud data center region in Mexico to deliver its intelligent and trusted cloud services to serve Mexico’s public entities, organizations and Mexican society, including Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform.
The first initiative of the commitment to apply AI to create societal impact is an investment in the “Artificial Intelligence to Monitor Pelagic Sharks in the Mexican Pacific Ocean” (Shark ID) project, which is focused on the conservation of Mako shark species, driven by Mexico Azul as part of the initiative AI for Earth. Plus Microsoft is engaging CEOs of leading industry companies evolving in their digital transformation to be part of an Advisory Board to identify the demand for skilling initiatives, share best practices, track progress, and improve employability.
Microsoft is using the power of its technology to minimize the environmental impact of the company’s products and operations and working with partners around the world to discover and implement innovative ways to transition to a sustainable and low-carbon future. And the new data center cloud region in Mexico will be part of Microsoft’s effort to reduce its carbon emissions by more than half by 2030, both for its direct emissions and for its entire supply chain and value. Plus by 2050, Microsoft will remove from the environment all the carbon it has emitted directly or by electricity consumption since its founding in 1975.
Microsoft also has a second initiative as part of “Innovate for Mexico” called “Skilling for the Future,” which has an objective of developing skills in new technologies for young students that give them a higher level of education and better future employability opportunities. And as one of the first initiatives of a comprehensive plan on this area, Microsoft is announcing the implementation of three physical laboratories of state-of-the-art technologies in three universities selected by the Education Ministry.
The objective of the third initiative is to positively impact society in Mexico. And as one of the first plans, Microsoft is announcing the investment to support the project “Artificial Intelligence to Monitor Pelagic Sharks in the Mexican Pacific Ocean (Shark ID)” led by the Mexican NGO Mexico Azul together with students from La Salle University.
The Mako Shark plan in Cabo San Lucas will receive a grant to create open-source software that will photo-identify individual sharks of four highly vulnerable pelagic species in the Mexican Pacific by using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies — which will result in better marine conservation policies.
Key Quotes
“At SAT, we are collaborating with Microsoft to make the digital transformation initiatives that support fiscal processes a reality. This is how, through the use of cloud computing on Microsoft Azure, we are able to process huge volumes of information and evolve our electronic invoicing service, which receives an average of 21.1 million invoices per day. To accomplish this, SAT worked with Microsoft to build the first low-cost platform for mass processing of electronic invoices, decreasing from hours to few minutes the processing time, but also reducing the monthly cost of the solution by 90%, which translates to approximately $4M USD. This latest generation architecture is based on the Spark Open Source platform on Azure called Databricks and Data Lake storage.”
– Juan Pablo de Botton, Planning General Manager at SAT
“Telmex and Telcel in collaboration with Microsoft work on the digital transformation of their processes and systems, including the use of Artificial Intelligence, with benefits and efficiencies for their end customers. Together they also offer services to support the digital transformation of Mexican companies.”
– Oscar Von Hauske, Chief Fixed-line Operations Officer and Director of America at Movil
“As part of Liverpool’s digital transformation strategy, in 2019 we changed the way to interact digitally with our customers through personalized electronic communication based mostly on Microsoft technology. This personalization initiative enables Liverpool to be closer to our customers, understand their needs and their life cycle so we can offer them what’s best for each one. With this, Liverpool transforms itself to really become customer-centric and customer first.”
– Graciano Guichard, CEO at El Puerto de Liverpool
“In a decade where the digital transformation will undoubtedly open new opportunities and horizons, we are convinced that the announcement of this $1.1 billion investment plan represents how we remain true to our commitment to Mexico’s social and economic development. The new datacenter region in our country will provide intelligent services to help companies innovate in their industries. The skilling program not only benefits government institutions, businesses and society at large, it also shows the importance of Mexico as a leader in the adoption of artificial intelligence, cloud and other technologies in Latin America. Over the next 5 years, we will invest on these and other initiatives including events to foster innovation and skilling for developers, startups, organizations in general. There is only one future, and it will be digital. Mexico is well-positioned to harness the power of new technologies, and by jointly working with Microsoft, the country will make this future a reality.”
– Enrique Perezyera, general manager at Microsoft Mexico
