Microsoft on Tuesday announced Microsoft Frontier Company (MFC), a new operating business focused on providing artificial intelligence (AI) support to customers through its enterprise AI engineering expertise.
The move follows the trend of Amazon Web Services, OpenAI, and other major companies that design and train AI systems, including large-scale language models (LLMs).
Rodrigo Quede Lima will lead MFC as president, leveraging his approximately 30 years of experience. Kede Lima has spent the past six years at Microsoft leading company-wide changes in sales in the Americas and Asia.
Microsoft Commercial Business CEO Judson Althoff said in a blog post that his experience helping customers and partners navigate technology transformation allows him to understand how platform innovation, engineering, and partner ecosystem collaboration come together to drive growth.
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MFC will “embed” more than 6,000 industry and engineering experts into customer locations to “co-design, co-innovate, deploy, and continuously improve AI systems” based on customers’ measurable business goals and outcomes.
“Companies need to establish an intelligence platform so that their unique IQ (proprietary data, expertise, workflows, decision-making processes) grows from within and over time,” Althoff wrote. “They need a trusted platform that allows them to use FinOps to assess ROI and observe, manage, govern, and secure AI solutions across all layers of the technology stack.”
MFC will focus on transforming its clients’ businesses using AI. Employees in the division will work closely with Microsoft’s partner companies, including Accenture, Capgemini, EY, KPMG and PwC.
As part of the project, Althoff discussed how MFC protects customer IQ, an enterprise intelligence layer designed to provide AI agents and Microsoft 365 Copilot with context about people’s work, business data, knowledge, and more.
It serves as a content layer that captures and integrates real-time data signals across your company.
No client data or company intellectual property is used to train models in a way that commoditizes differentiation within the industry.
Consulting firm Deloitte calls this “multidimensional” outsourcing. According to findings released in May from a Deloitte survey of more than 500 global business and technology executives, 70% of organizations reported bringing previously outsourced work in-house over the past five years to strengthen internal capabilities, improve service quality, and minimize vendor price increases.
92% of organizations surveyed by Deloitte reported that they have integrated or plan to integrate AI into their service delivery, and many are now adopting “digital workforce” strategies that leverage both human and AI capabilities, while incorporating practices such as robotic process automation and machine learning.
Integrating advanced AI across an enterprise is challenging, especially when relying on existing in-house capabilities.
According to Deloitte, the role of next-generation managed service providers is to work with internal teams to support and inform technologies such as agent AI.
Today’s announcement from Microsoft more than doubles the investment by Amazon Web Services announced earlier this week when AWS launched a $1 billion initiative to embed Forward Deployment Engineering (FDE) teams into customer enterprises to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.
Unlike Microsoft, AWS has named major partners such as the National Football League (NFL) and Southwest Airlines.
AWS works with the NFL to support millions of fans who want to watch football content year-round, including during the offseason.
In May, companies implementing OpenAI
launched with a purpose We help organizations solve business processes across the enterprise as they deploy and use AI.
OpenAI’s new business is made possible by the acquisition, also announced today, of Tomor, an applied AI consulting and engineering firm that helps companies turn AI into operational benefits. This acquisition will bring 150 experienced engineers and specialists to OpenAI.
All outsourcing services embed engineers who specialize in AI implementation into customer companies, similar to how original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) embed employees at companies like Apple that outsource hardware manufacturing for iPhones, tablets, and laptops.
