Welcome to the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast. Analyze the latest AI Copilot and Agent Developments from Microsoft and its partners, delve into customer use cases and explore how AI Plus Cloud can help customers rethink their business.
In this episode, PWC's Matt Hobbs focuses on business transformation, orchestration, cloud infrastructure growth, and technical debt. Hobbs is PWC's Cloud, Engineering, Data and AI Platform Leader.
Highlights
Approach to PWC transformation, industry expertise (01:05)
Hobbs explains a PWC outcome-based approach, focusing on business outcomes rather than just technology. The PWC strategy involves modernizing the mainframe environment, using AI to break down business logic and building an enterprise-independent infrastructure. PWC's approach to AI begins with productivity, then efficiency, and ultimately value creation.
He uses examples such as Southwest Airlines and insurance companies to highlight the power of agents in a particular industry. He discusses the importance of industry knowledge in building AI solutions that drive business outcomes.
PWC's agent OS deals with technical debt (5:01)
Agent OS was built from the needs to connect various cloud and legacy systems. The platform allows agents to learn from each other and build enterprise-independent infrastructure. Hobbs highlights the importance of agent OS in addressing sophisticated issues and integrating with leading cloud providers such as Oracle (OCI), Microsoft, AWS, and Google.
Hobbs explains that the agent OS provides solid integration layers and microservices to mask complexity. He discusses the need to modernize legacy infrastructure to address human-created technical debt and support advances in AI.
Cloud Architecture: Avoid sprawl in AI deployments (11:50)
Hobbs notes that many clients are still in the POC phase with AI deployment and are facing challenges with data and legacy infrastructure. He emphasizes the need to modernize the data environment to utilize AI to deliver business outcomes. He proposes focusing on dealing with existing technical debts created by humans, while modernizing with agents. Hobbs talks about the cost benefits of using AI models. AI models only incur the cost of actual consumption.
Cloud Infrastructure and the Future of AI (19:07)
Hobbs forecasts the continued growth of its cloud infrastructure business. This continues to see large investments from hyperscalers driven by the increasing importance of technology in business and digital consumer needs. He points out that while cloud penetration is important, there is still plenty of room for growth.
He looks forward to significant advances in AI deployment over the next few months. He describes the deployment of AI as a sustained decade-long trend with continuous progress and new development beyond agents.
AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event that defines opportunities, impacts, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Based on the success of 2025, the 2026 event will take place in San Diego from March 17th to 19th. Please see details.
