With Google and Dropbox recently cutting prices for their enterprise cloud storage services, it looked like Microsoft would soon need to step up its game to make its own cloud solutions stay competitive in the market. As it turns out, the Redmond giant may not try to compete on pricing, as it’s already able to leverage artificial intelligence to differentiate OneDrive and SharePoint from the competition.
“Today, we are announcing upcoming capabilities that, along with our recent investments, combine the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with content stored in OneDrive and SharePoint to help you be more productive, make more informed decisions, and keep more secure,” wrote Omar Shahine, Partner Director of Program Management for OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft’s ambition with its cloud services is to offer the best search capabilities by using AI to identify what’s in your documents, including non-text based ones.
That’s right, after announcing intelligent search for images last year, Microsoft is announcing today that it will also use AI for analyzing what’s in your video and audio files stored in OneDrive and Sharepoint. This will be possible thanks to AI doing complete video and audio transcription, with a full transcript of your videos and audio files being available in Microsoft’s online viewer.
That’s not the only new features coming to Microsoft’s cloud services later this year: The company will also bring intelligent files recommendations to OneDrive and Office.com, which will leverage the Microsoft Graph to surface the most relevant files depending on the situation and who you work with. On the other hand, the OneDrive mobile app will also get an Intelligent Sharing feature that will use your Outlook calendar to suggest you to share picture and other documents created during a meeting with other attendees. “This deep understanding of user behavior and relationships among coworkers is unique to Microsoft 365 and continues to be enriched as you collaborate on content in OneDrive and SharePoint,” explained Shahine.
Microsoft will also be updating its file cards in OneDrive and SharePoint with more information including the time to read and key points for text-based documents. The current file cards can already show you who in your organisation viewed your shared files and for how long, Shahine said today that these file statistics will be directly integrated into the “native Office application experience” later this year.
“By leveraging Microsoft’s industry-leading investments in AI we have made OneDrive and SharePoint in Microsoft 365 the smartest place to store your content,” said Shahine. You can expect to hear much more about Microsoft 365 and the Microsoft Cloud at the upcoming Ignite conference in In Orlando, Florida next month.
