Empowering Kiwi Innovation: How can Microsoft help lift our future with Microsoft’s Vanessa Sorenson

Special thanks to organisations who support innovation and tech leadership in New Zealand by partnering with NZ Tech Podcast: One NZ HP Spark NZ 2degrees Gorilla Technology

Episode Transcript (computer-generated)

Paul Spain:
Hey, folks. Greetings and welcome along to the New Zealand tech podcast. I’m your host, Paul Spain, today, very pleased to have Vanessa Sorensen of Microsoft back on the show. How are you, Vanessa?

Vanessa Sorenson:
I’m fantastic. Thanks for having me back.

Paul Spain:
Oh, always a pleasure to catch up and always lots to talk about. So we’ll be picking your brains on all sorts of things as you do today. Maybe you can just give listeners a reminder of where you fit into this big, wide world of. Of tech and of Microsoft.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, I can’t believe it. Actually, this is going to be my 7th year at Microsoft and sometimes I feel like it’s literally a couple of months and sometimes I feel like I’ve never been anywhere else. I became the country leader four years ago, just before lockdown. So that was interesting. And just over a year ago, I got offered the role of chief partner officer across Australia and New Zealand.

Paul Spain:
You resigned as Microsoft? New Zealand MD?

Vanessa Sorenson:
No, actually. So I have a jewel hat role, which is amazing. I mean, there’s not many people that get to live in this beautiful country and have an incredible role to look after partners across Australia and New Zealand and so I feel very privileged to be doing that.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. How do you cope with juggling the two workloads? Because I’m guessing they’re both not particularly small.

Vanessa Sorenson:
No. Look, I’d say my airports are right up there. I am traveling every couple of weeks because I have partners everywhere across both expanses of countries and so it does get a little bit tricky. Love teams. In fact, just before coming here, did a quarterly review with a partner. We’re used to that now. So it’s not always necessarily been in front of people, but I do get in front of as many as I can, as often as I can. So definitely every couple of weeks I feel like I’m on an aeroplane.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Okay. Well, I hope that’s not wearing you out too much, but sounds like you’re handling it well.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, well, it’s literally like catching a bus. Know, sometimes, actually, I get into our Sydney office after taking the red eye and I’m there before others actually get in the office. So that few hour time difference actually makes a difference.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, it’s good in that direction. Well, before we jump in, of course, a big thank you to our show. Partners to One NZ, 2degrees, Spark HP and Gorilla Technology. But let’s jump in. I’m kind of keen to have a little bit of a step back before we look forward and sort of delve into a bit of sort of summary of Microsoft’s story here in New Zealand. The building we’re in now is right next door to the original Microsoft house from 1991. And in fact in the shared basement and car park, I was down there on one occasion. I was looking at the generator and saw it had Microsoft House still scribbled on it.

Paul Spain:
So thank you, Microsoft for buying the generator for the building that I’m in.

Vanessa Sorenson:
I love it.

Paul Spain:
I don’t know if it still goes or I can’t recall any major power cuts.

Vanessa Sorenson:
It’s amazing. And I too remember visiting the team there. So yes, 1991 is when Microsoft made the investment to come into New Zealand and how incredible. There’s so many amazing leaders have come through Microsoft at a local level and in fact Australia opened 40 years ago and we celebrated that this week or this month actually. And so that’s been pretty exceptional. And then fast forward, it was 2010, the whole movement to cloud. And I remember thinking what is this azure thing? And just not really understanding the expanse and opportunity of a real platform play. And then you fast forward to four years ago when I announced that we would know producing New Zealand north in a hyperscale data center.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Here is something. Honestly, it was a massive wish of mine and it just shows the tenure of Microsoft reinvention. If you go back all those years ago when I also worked in the building next door at Wang, I was a Microsoft select salesperson and I remember the complexities of selling software and the years of many customers going, what is this to now? All of our programs are, to quote Satya, I know when you’re not happy with us, you simply turn it off. And so the whole motion now of a consumption world of we’ve got to earn your right and you’ve got so many different opportunities with the way that you want to purchase. I just think the Microsoft reinvention over the years and even just this last twelve months is just mind blowing. So yeah, we’re here for the long term, as you can see, and got very, very deep roots in this beautiful country.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, when we look at New Zealand, we’re known for our creativity, for our innovation. And when I’m looking forward and thinking how can we make New Zealand more successful, it is largely doubling down on those areas that have become natural strengths for New Zealand. How do you see New Zealand’s future playing out? What are the things that you and your team tend to think about?

Vanessa Sorenson:
We’ve got the most creative, incredible, innovative people in this country and often I hear of all these celebrated greatness that I already know has happened here first. So I really hope with the investments that we’re bringing into this country and this incredible world of AI that we just shout from the rooftops about what we do. We know the Kiwi ingenuity number eight wire. We’re kind of proud of that. But I also know from a productivity perspective, we’re not great if we base ourselves against the rest of the world. So how do we leapfrog again the investments that we’re making in this country, which is opening this year, which I’m so pleased to say, what is that opportunity for New Zealand? We’re going to be on the world network basically. And so for startups and new business ideas, I don’t know. I just want to shake the country and say let’s use this to truly digitalize and have those big dreams and there’s nothing holding us back anymore.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And that’s what I hope kiwi people really jump onto.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. When I look at, I see those productivity issues also where we sit from a risk profile perspective, cybersecurity, data privacy and so on, we tend to struggle in these areas. What do you see as the reasons we obviously got a lot of sort of smaller to medium businesses where the smaller a business is, the more hats somebody has to wear. That chance of having people sort of double down and specialize in areas is a challenge. Smaller business owners have, I guess, investments to make in every which direction. So it can be very hard to know how to do those things. But we’ve also got larger businesses too. What are your thoughts? Do you think this is because of how focused, how many of our people are in those sort of smaller to medium organizations or there are other things that jump out to you too?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, I think we’re quite risk adverse as a country and I think we take longer to adapt and adopt, to be honest. We love to be fast followers in some areas. Absolutely world leading. And so I think, again, this is the opportunity with all things AI to bring up that level of, I don’t know, everyone starts at a middle ground now. Yes, we’re a small, nimble country that actually has got the ideas, but I think sometimes execution isn’t quite there. I think the opportunity for health, for banking, for government and education is just next level. And I think we’ve just got to sort of step in and that’s what I’m really hoping for. I truly believe that tech could be the number one GDP provider for New Zealand.

Vanessa Sorenson:
We see companies like zero, we see incredible innovation. So how do we bring more of that I get the privilege to work with Vista and Plexia. These are New Zealand startups that are in fact leading the world. And I think this is our opportunity if we’re going to change the trajectory of earnings per capita, creating more skilling and more jobs for people. This is where I want everyone to be. And that moment for us, I really believe is this year, by bringing these hyperscale data centers and opening them. I think it’s going to be incredible.

Paul Spain:
Do you see it sort of encouraging more startups or what do you think is kind of the natural flow on from these investments? And what are the investments that you have to make sort of surrounding putting in local data centers to try and sort of spur that interest, to try and spur Kiwis on.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Spur Kiwis on. Well, we haven’t made it easy, actually. I think from a Microsoft perspective. I think people do want to start and they’re like, how do you provide something for us to do that? And we’re going to be launching soon some really incredible easy startup packages to get access to sandpits and the technology and just trialing things. I just think New Zealand can be such a fail fast, incredible environment. And so I’m so pleased to see that Microsoft has truly been listening and we’ll be launching those in the next month or so. So I think that’s one exciting area. I think also we don’t actually also have to recreate the wheel here.

Vanessa Sorenson:
I think sometimes we tend to start from the zero and I’m now seeing a lot of businesses going, okay, introduce us to someone in Seattle or somewhere else, and I’m happy to grab that and run with it. And because I think we have been a laggard, even moving to public cloud, we can leapfrog. So for those that haven’t and feel like, yep, I’m totally in cloud because I’ve moved to hosted environments. It’s really about getting to the crux of the brains of what this can offer you OpenAI all of the smarts that these hyperscale data centers are going to provide. It’s not just hosting your stuff somewhere else. And so I really hope businesses see that and can now really get their creative thinkers to think about the art of the possible.

Paul Spain:
Now when it comes to launching data centers here, part of that story tends to involve sort of launch customers and so on. I was having a chat to somebody within a reasonably large organization and they’d committed to one of the hyperscale clouds, but in having sort of discussion with them around the technicalities of actually trying to take what they had and actually move it into a cloud environment. Turned out that was actually maybe much harder than they originally thought. What have you been seeing on that front? And are some of these journeys maybe a lot longer than some would kind of hope?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, look, I think we’ve also got a lot of technical debt out there, to be honest, and a lot of legacy old systems, which here isn’t easier. But I mean this is why Microsoft invested in Kubernetes. Like to really containerize your work, but get the assessments done. I mean, again with my partner hat on, I see some phenomenal work where our partners can come in and truly give you that assessment that’s not full of technical jargon. It truly can give you the ROI, the business case, the why, and also why wouldn’t you actually maybe some stuff you wouldn’t move. And so it’s to give you that proper assessment. And not only once you do move, how do you have the guardrails to make sure that you are trimming the sales, you’re keeping the cost down, you’re turning things off, you’re innovating on this platform. And that’s the role that our partner community are really stepping up and having to change their own business to be so much more helpful for customers.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, I think those things are pretty important and we certainly see scenarios where the cost of putting things in the cloud, it can get pretty expensive pretty quickly. So it is important to understand whether things are in the right place and that you’re utilizing the right services. And yeah, you’re not burning money unnecessarily.

Vanessa Sorenson:
But I think, Paul, it’s also the flip side of that. We sometimes do not monitor and measure the things that we are spending money on that is dead money that actually a lot of businesses can turn off, sell those assets, move on. I think you think back to 2010 when public cloud was announced and everyone’s like, yeah, this thing’s not going to take off. It’s not only taken off, it has truly enabled organizations to have that innovation to do so much more, which is increasing their bottom line tenfold. So I think sometimes we look at the stuff like procuring toilet rolls, and it’s not, it’s got to be about an opportunity to open up. What you have now, you stack on AI. These things are now absolutely interconnected. And we joked even through lockdown, who would have thought teams would take off? Remember all those companies that wouldn’t get off? Like there was all of a sudden this forcing function because there was no other way we could actually run our businesses.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And I feel like this movement of AI interception is absolutely happening as well.

Paul Spain:
Now looking at the role of Microsoft coming into New Zealand with data centers, AWS somewhere in the background, we’re not quite sure when they launch. As you’ve said on a few minutes ago, Microsoft will be here and live this year, 2024. I think there’s some Google announcements in the background there. We don’t know too much on their front with timing. How important do you think this is for Microsoft? Because AWS is still the market leader when it comes to a lot of the cloud services. Obviously there’s probably a separate discussion around Microsoft, three, six, five and so on, which is insanely dominant I think would be fair to say. But how does that play out? And do you see a lot of differentiation between what Microsoft does and what aws does?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Look, I think it’s brilliant for New Zealand, quite frankly. I think the fact that big corporations are really investing and putting money behind this amazing country is 100% next level. I also know how hard it is. It is not as simple as building a couple of buildings. And she’ll be right. So I know the differentiator of Microsoft. We are a platform company. We want to be the number one trusted company in the world.

Vanessa Sorenson:
I mean we have led huge calls for change including even the Christchurch call around video footage. We’ve got the most aggressive sustainability goals which again I’m so proud of New Zealand around the contract that we’ve signed with ecotricity which is going to be carbon neutral day one. But then it’s also our contract with contact energy. We’re going to be putting energy back on the, you know, I know how much we’re again, you know, people weighing up the cost of their own data centers versus moving to public cloud. You want to be sustainable, this is the jump start that you have. And so for me gone are the days of organizations having every flavor of everything. It’s just too costly, it’s not secure. And what I love is the packaging of everything that we are now offering.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And you work the way you want to work. And a lot of companies that have gone all in with Microsoft, with bizapps for instance who are replacing ERP and CRM, they can work in word or excel, they don’t know what’s in the back end. The copilot that we’re announcing now for ServiceNow, SAP Salesforce fabric, I mean honestly I can’t keep up. So I don’t know how your readers are but it’s about giving that platform opportunity for organizations to go, yeah, I’m all in and it’s trusted and I believe in it. And like I said before, we have to earn the right. If you don’t like us, you can turn it off. You have options the way you purchase and that’s what I love. And I’ve seen the impact of all of this tech with so many incredible companies and yeah, that’s what I’m most proud of.

Paul Spain:
They talk about the option to turn it off. I think that is often much easier sort of said than done, right? Because we make investments in different directions and we were talking some weeks ago about, oh, you want to try out say copilot for Microsoft three six five and you look for the monthly option and it’s not there. You’re kind of committed in if you want to try these things out. And I think if you look at say Microsoft three six five, it has been insanely successful. And I guess the organizations I talk to, if they’re using a bit of Google, they’re usually using a bit of Google and a bit of Microsoft, maybe a bit of, you know, it’s a combination of things and it usually over time becomes clearer and clearer that actually the simplest option is just to ditch all that stuff and go with Microsoft, which is great in some regards, but I guess I don’t think I’ve seen it. But there’s that concern. If we were to go back to sort of an older Microsoft that got quite relaxed, then so many people will have their eggs in the Microsoft basket and won’t have too many choices. Do you understand the sort of concerns people might have down that track?

Vanessa Sorenson:
100%. And I think that’s for everything in life, quite frankly. And I also know what the cost has been for organizations to have every flavor of everything. And I think we’ve got to get that productivity up and if we’re to do that, you can’t afford to manage every single flavor. And I think if we didn’t have the best products available, people wouldn’t buy. I think, you know, Sartin Adela recently was interviewed and said we’re not going to sit back on our laurels. I mean let’s face it, right? Microsoft was not the first for developers. We weren’t the first for search.

Vanessa Sorenson:
We certainly missed mobile, we ain’t missing this. And the fact that we are world leading is something that I’m just so incredibly excited by. But we have to continue to earn the right every single day and that’s why I love that we launch tools that every day you can compare our pricing to the other guys. Every day there is option. Like maybe you say it’s harder, I say it’s getting easier. And the fact that everything that we are developing is open, it is for everyone to leverage. That’s incredible. And that means you do have choice.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And so I think if we don’t make the best products, people certainly won’t buy them.

Paul Spain:
Fair point. Fair point. Now let’s talk about AI, because it’s really been the big topic for some time now. So first of all, the hard question, which I don’t expect you to succeed at. How many copilots does Microsoft have and what are they? Any ideas?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Holy moly.

Paul Spain:
Because I’ve lost track.

Vanessa Sorenson:
I wished, I mean, I just named a know copilot studio. What a phenomenal mean. I know for me every know using my copilot rather than going into teams and email and every other which way people are contacting me, that I can just see exactly what I need to do. Every day I’m hearing of new stories of how this is enabling people. And yeah, I can’t tell you how many, but as I say, I love it that we’re bringing out copilots for other products. And I think that we do partner heavily with the ecosystem to make sure that their software can be surfaced up. And isn’t that what we need? Why is it stuck in the boughs of something? We want to surface it, but it has to be safe, right? It’s got to be that whole feeling of your information, information in, information out. So you’ve got to get the guardrails around that.

Vanessa Sorenson:
But we’ve only just gotten started, so, yeah, there’ll be more and more.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Now I’m curious, how do you use the copilot technologies yourself? How does copilot.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Oh my goodness.

Paul Spain:
Make you more productive and make your life a little bit easier?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, look, the first thing, when I was one of the early adopters, and we’d just even record a meeting and the fact that all the action items and everything that was said and I didn’t tell the team I was on the copilot area and I’d send it out and they’re like, you are so efficient. So my efficiency has gone up next level around that. Like I say, I start my day every morning rather than coming in and going straight into email. Now I have a very clear, in fact, I did it yesterday and I would have definitely missed this. There was a customer complaint that I get a couple of hundred emailed overnight from many folk and it would have taken me probably half a day and I was calling that person within 30 minutes. So I’m just not missing things where actually, if I’m just scrolling through email, who knows? And PowerPoint, I’m not brilliant at it. And so just now crafting, I can explain what I would like and just seeing the creativity and of course I’m tweaking it has just enabled me to feel a bit more confident around producing my own slides. And I’ve only just gotten started.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, the sky’s the limit.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Look, I think everyone’s very curious how these things evolve. What about the challenges that we have with AI and varying companies and AI technologies have been in the media, whether it’s concerns around autonomous driving and that side of AI machine learning and its ability to make our road safer, which I think is still up for a fair bit of debate and discussion as we see that evolve. Google obviously recently with some of the things that they were doing to, I guess not just take the raw machine learning, but try and add in some guidance to the system which seemed to sort of veer off in an OD direction. And in fact, my own instance with Copilot recently, and we’re building some course material around some online learning around using copilot and using different AI tools. And I mentioned Copilot. And so quite quickly, or well, just in the results was this kind of little copilot promo sort of piece that’s like Microsoft, what are you doing? No, no, I don’t want that. And anyway, the little backwards and forwards I had before it blocked me and ended the know was like, I cannot show Microsoft in a bad light.

Paul Spain:
And this was what Copilot was saying and I wasn’t trying to do that, I was just, no, stop with the salespeak, copilot, just soften it down. So these things are obviously going to take some time to evolve and it’s hard to know exactly how it lands. And sometimes I think the hype can be like, oh, it can make these amazing PowerPoints for me and so on. And then you try it out and it’s like, it’s not quite what I wanted actually. And I guess we’re all kind of starting from a zero point and you know that copilot or the copilot and AI type tools as your assistants, are also evolving on their own. Outside of what you control, there are things that you can nudge and say, no, get rid of the zs. I would want this in New Zealand. English, please.

Paul Spain:
And you can do those sorts of things, but some things obviously going to be very much in the hands of Microsoft and others. Do you think we’re going to sort of solve all of these little problems?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Well Paul, AI has been around for years and this is a continuing movement, but I love you’ve just given that story because it still always is going to be a human at the centre of this technology. Like you don’t want it completely doing everything for you. In fact, when the team were presenting to our leadership team in Redmond with regards to what they were developing and what we would be launching, one of the engineers, he was asked and said well how does this feel to you? And he said it feels just like a copilot. And that’s how it became named Copilot because it’s the thing that’s going to help you. It’s not there to replace. And as you ask it more questions and even say hey, remove some of that, it will evolve. And so for me you don’t want it to be perfect. You’ve got to be able to still have a look at where and what it’s doing.

Vanessa Sorenson:
But what I do feel good about that it is Microsoft because you can actually audit where the information’s come from and including even my every morning, what are the top things I need to do. It tells me exactly where it came know, and we have done responsible AI for years. In fact, our chairman really and truly went to many governments saying that this needs to be in some point legalized because we have to be responsible. And that is absolutely why so many people are pleased that it’s in the hands of companies like us. And it’s about taking the mundane tasks, right. It’s about increasing our productivity. And if you could save an hour a day and do something more creative to earn money on your bottom line, why wouldn’t you? And that’s kind of the charge that I think we are looking to develop.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. And I think if you can get those time savings and you don’t kind of overuse it because you can ruin your reputation by sending out emails and content that’s come straight out of copilot or any other AI tool, right. Because it’s not all what you would write, but if you were just saving 1012 minutes a day, that’s a week extra a year that you’ve got back, right?

Vanessa Sorenson:
I certainly am.

Paul Spain:
So the benefits are largely there for a lot of people. Obviously it depends on the sort of role and how familiar you get with the tools and how they fit into your particular work profile and what you do. But, yeah, I think we do also just need to go in with our eyes wide open. I’m not sure I agree with your we don’t want it to be perfect. Yes, I want it to be perfect.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Well, it’s going to get better because it learns from you. Right? This is what’s really cool. My amazing ea marinka, she did a keynote a week or so ago at an executive assistance conference. She took everyone through how she’s helping me with using tools like loop and getting me ready, and she took everyone through all of this. And then her mic drop moment was everything that I’ve produced. I put in through copilot and showed exactly how she did it. I mean, everyone’s jaws wide open. She said that would have taken me days.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And so she said, this is where I had to tweak it. This is what I had to do. Some of it wasn’t quite me. But the more she does it, the more it will learn how her style is. And so that’s what the machine in the back end, it’s learning from you. And so I just can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. I think soon enough we can split ourselves in three, go to different meetings, do a couple of podcasts, because more and more, it’s going to learn the way you want to work and what you are trying to express.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. And I think my encouragement for listeners and probably anyone I come across is that we should all be using and experimenting with this technology because we are in that position where as a country, we can move ahead and start actually addressing some of these productivity issues and other issues by getting on board quickly. Or we can just sort of sit back and think, it’ll be all right, I’ll adopt it when everyone else in the world adopts it. And we just miss out on that opportunity. I think we should be jumping in. Yeah. Learn the shortcomings, learn the challenges. Send a message to Microsoft and say, hey, this bit’s not working, or what have you.

Paul Spain:
Right.

Vanessa Sorenson:
But this is the thing. I mean, recently we did hear that 95% of New Zealand businesses have got a pilot or a project that they’re thinking of. So that’s phenomenal. However, we have also done a study where some of our partners and our smaller SMB customers are not like very low. So a huge shout out to Dickadata. They’ve actually, in conjunction with us, they’ve released an incredible tool to help organizations get started because it is one of those things, too. You imagine you’re a small business owner, you’ve got five different hats and I think some of them are sitting. Is it just going to be a fad? Is it just going to go away? And it absolutely will not.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And again, we want these organizations to thrive and so leverage some of these great tools. I’ll share with you the amazing report that they’ve had done and not only what they’ve had done, but they’re offering free tool sets out there to truly understand where you should start first. And I love the saying you should never ever do a first draft ever again.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Get the AI to help you out.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Totally. Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Spain:
That’s good. And look, we’re using it within my business every day and for all sorts of things. And yeah, I’m always surprised and pleased as I talk to people across a whole range of sectors to see some of the really good use cases that are coming through. I was speaking at a conference recently, financial advisors, and the individual who was mcing and introducing me shared his own story. At the end of my talk and the particular business he was in, they had lost, I think their, I can’t remember the exact title. It was sort of a compliance officer type person. And so they thought, oh, can we use AI to do this? And part of it was reviewing all these contracts and looking for the Gotchas and the contracts. So they just put into their workflow.

Paul Spain:
It didn’t make the work entirely disappear. But all of the contracts then were going through OpenAI’s APIs and then being asked what stands out. Are there particular issues and the pace at which it can do that and the amount of time savings and you.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Can’T tell me that that’s not safer to do than human error. Right? We have a lot of that and it’s a lot of repetitive work we do. New Zealand loves to send out rfps, like who wants to write another one of those from scratch?

Paul Spain:
Let’s face it. Yes. It’ll be very interesting to sort of analyze a couple of years down the track, how many of these things are entirely human written. I imagine that’s an era that’s probably changing very quickly.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Definitely very costly and you get what you ask for.

Paul Spain:
And I can’t keep up with all of these, but I think the security copilot is probably one of the very latest to launch. What are the copilots? You mentioned some for other than non Microsoft products? Maybe just tell us a little bit about that because I think that’s something that will probably surprise a few folks that the copilots aren’t just for the Microsoft suite but for other vendors products.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Absolutely. And again, I think it’s just this tight collaboration that we’re doing out there. Satya Nadella came in and said we want to be the most open organization and truly if we want to be that partner of choice to help you bring your data forward, then it has to be with everybody. And I think, yeah, so if you think of Salesforce, it’s about bringing that data forward then using it in other tool sets. And so it’s just going to be an open fabric basically that you can add these attachments to. And if I think of talking to the developer community who have used GitHub copilot around how it stopped them, also creating no issues with their code and again, auditable. And they were probably one of the hardest communities to convince that they could have someone sitting right next to them to help them and they’re saving 50% to 70% of their time and having far better projects. So it’s the same sort of thing over and above for the SAP servicenow so they can service the data and that it’s completely secure.

Vanessa Sorenson:
When that announcement came out and we heard at the same time everyone else did, went, wow, that’s a real game changer.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, it’s interesting. And we do hear these sort of figures banded around others, say 50% to 70% of time. It does seem to vary a lot from one individual to another depending on what they’re doing. But I guess my recommendation is that individuals and organizations need to be at least kind of kicking the tires and getting a feel for what’s possible, getting together and collaborating and looking at what others are doing to utilize the tools. I remember discussion with some folks on my team and one of them didn’t seem very enthusiastic about GitHub Copilot. And I guess there’s these sort of natural concerns, is this technology going to evaporate my role and so on. But another team member was like, well, we’ve got this thing, we’ve got to migrate and it’s really hard. And look, this is what I threw at copilot.

Paul Spain:
This is what I got back. It’s taking a bit of weight off us. Why wouldn’t we use it, right?

Vanessa Sorenson:
100%. And rather than being fearful, think of those opportunities. And again, it’s those tasks that actually do, they actually fill your soul honestly. And it’s trying to help everyone get better. And that’s why again, I’m going to keep saying it, it’s a copilot for that very reason you need humans at the center of it. And, yeah, I love it. As I say, I think the developer community, once I started hearing so many positive remarks from, I thought, we’re onto something pretty good here.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. So where to next? And are there sort of specific opportunities jumping out in your mind for New Zealand?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Well, we believe it’s a $21 billion opportunity by 2026. And we mean that by new business opportunities, productivity, and again, you’ve got to go and look at it yourself. I mean, there’s a company called Texan that I want to talk about, an amazing Mosgill farmer who wanted to work out how to sort out parasites within his cows. And so he used AI to sample poo. That’s what it was. And rather than actually going point by point and dredging these cows, and what I love about this is now it has moved into human health care. So people with gut issues and concerns, and, in fact, these machines, you’re going to be able to have in your own home. So you think about bringing technology into the home of people that’s truly going to help you have a better quality of life, especially for people in rural areas that can’t get to doctors.

Vanessa Sorenson:
That’s a great example, Lawview, who are taking the world by storm around those internal legal beagles that take forever to do contracts. You now can have your know, AI version. And, yeah, just so many, so many exciting opportunities for this amazing country.

Paul Spain:
And, I mean, talking about the example in Mosgie or so can you delve into that one a little bit more? I’m sure folks will be kind of curious. A little bit.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah. So they partnered with Awanui Labs. And again, just how do we do this better than, we haven’t got enough folk to scale and go out to do all this dredging, basically. And so, yeah, they took what they were developing with animals. They have this little, kind of looks like little machine that you actually put the sample through. And AI does all the detection. And in fact, it’s gone so well, countries like India, who have got issues within human health gut are really looking into it, and it couldn’t have been done without a wear group. A wear group are an amazing partner that can really have a look at all the numbers and the codes and turn it into a picture.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And so we’re just seeing some phenomenal growth with this organization. So to bring something that you test with animals into human health care, imagine what this little kiwi company is going to do on the global stage. And so Awanui, they are rolling this out now. So anybody with irritable bowel or real gut health issues, you can do your own sampling. Let’s face it, it’s not always the nicest thing to go to a doctor. That to me, and it’s happened in such a short period of time in a partnership with great. Yeah, it’s going to be amazing.

Paul Spain:
And so if we look across New Zealand, there’s always lots of innovative things going on. But one of the challenges that we tend to have is that these things will sort of happen behind closed doors. Organizations often don’t know how do we take what we’ve come up with and scale it, take it to the world and so on. But that’s essential for New Zealand’s future growth and success. What have you seen Microsoft has been able to do to help Kiwi organizations on that front? And how might that sort of be evolving going forward?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Well, I have 200,000 of my closest friends who work at Microsoft and if anyone that knows me, it’s an instant introduction to someone that’s directly in engineering. We are doing that a lot with Kiwi companies. So Lawview and tection, just to name a few, are working directly with our engineers. And that’s what true partnership is. It’s not just, hey, rolling out once a year and taking your money. This is truly about bringing that number eight wire and innovation to the rest of the world. Same with Vista and Plexia. These organizations, their engineers are working with ours.

Vanessa Sorenson:
The work we’re doing with soul machines, they’re absolutely influencing the way we’re even looking at digital humans. But we’re doing that together. And so my ask is, keep letting me know the stories. I will not be shy, I will screech from the loudest rooftop. But it’s about connecting a lot of the Kiwi companies, the top people in with our direct, with our engineering team and co collaborating. And that’s where I’ve seen some pretty phenomenal magic happen and talk maybe a.

Paul Spain:
Little bit around with your partner hat on what’s evolving there and what do Microsoft’s partnerships look like? Who are you partnering with? How’s that sort of changing?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, so look, we are going deeper with fewer. And again, we can’t scale across everywhere. And we’ve always been through partners. It’s been our secret source. We’ve never changed from that and that is going to continue. I think the challenge for our partners is how are they adopting this? So they are ahead of the curve. Probably the number one concern, even for customers, has been around skilling. And so we are rolling out massive skilling projects.

Vanessa Sorenson:
In fact, there’s a massive one in Perth happening right this very moment. We’ve got a massive few sessions coming to Auckland and Wellington and Christchurch, Brisbane. So please get on our Internet site and have a look. And I encourage everybody, including every single partner, to skill themselves. I personally use Fridays to really educate myself, do training, do enablement, because this freight train is coming at us so fast and if it feels like a wild ride, it is. And so that’s the number one challenge, but opportunity for our partners. But, boy, Paul, I have seen them grab hold of this. This isn’t the typical right on scorecard.

Vanessa Sorenson:
We need you to sell more of this. This is their coming to us going, how do we ideate together? How do we. You said it’s a lot of hype. It is, but I’m seeing some massive execution and we can only do that with our partners. And so again, a lot clearer programs are going to come out, a lot more training enablement, a lot more skilling. So, yeah, watch the space. It feels clearer than it ever has for me.

Paul Spain:
And if we sort of step back, look a little bit forward into the future, any sort of specific advice or tips on how we do better in New Zealand, right down to that sort of small to medium business segment that we talked about. Often, we’re really behind the eight ball from a productivity perspective, from a cyber perspective, too.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Don’t wait, get on. I think it’s one of those things that people say, ooh, I’ll dip my toe. I’ll just wait and see how it goes. You can’t with this. I say it. It’s like you’re in the middle of the surf, the barrow of the surf, and you’re going along and you will be left behind. This is going to make businesses great if you grab hold of it. And it doesn’t need to be a massive, big project.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Work with partners. Like have a look at what Dickadata are offering. There’s so many free opportunities for you to actually jump on and test something. I heard when Judson was here in New Zealand, he works for Sati Nadella and a customer said, we just don’t know where to start. And he said, what do you hate spending money on? And we all have one or two things. That’s where you start.

Paul Spain:
And some folks probably be interested to hear about the Kiwis who have joined Microsoft and then ended up in all sorts of roles around the world. Yeah. Any particular folks you’d like to mention that of interest?

Vanessa Sorenson:
So many so Dee Templeton is actually coming to New Zealand soon. She’s phenomenal. She’s on the OpenAI advisory board. She is just incredible. And yeah, a kiwi that started in Wellington and Auckland. Natasha, who works for Brad Smith. So she’s doing all of our work on making sure that we are safe setting huge government policy. She too is coming to New Zealand soon.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Heather Gordon. She’s an american kiwi but she was here for a long time. She’s now moved to Singapore and running the partner community for one Asia. Honestly, so many incredible Kiwis and they’re just name a few that just came to mind because that wasn’t something you heard on the know. I’m in awe every time I meet these people and flying the flag but in incredibly senior roles but have their heart here and so, yeah, many of them are definitely coming down under.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. And why do you think Kiwis are often successful when they get outside of New Zealand? That they can really compete often in a much, much bigger scale organizations than kind of the local counterparts. I mean, New Zealand is what, around 200 people for Microsoft here. Yet sometimes people will be starting at Microsoft or NZ. Couple of hundred people and then they’re at the mothership. I don’t know how many people are sitting in Seattle these days, but it must be in the tens of thousands.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Oh, yeah. Again, I think Kiwis just have this tenacity. You’ll speak to anybody. You don’t mean. What other country can you wander up to your prime minister and say hi? I mean, I think we’ve got that intrinsically built. Let’s get on with each other. And I think a lot of senior people love that. I mean, they’re just some of the senior mean.

Vanessa Sorenson:
I’ve even seen a lot of our local New Zealand interns now in Singapore and Seattle. If I think of Stephen Lyons and Anu who’s in Singapore, I mean, they’re going places. And in fact, I think of our own interns in New Zealand. Dylan Isaac unique. I’ll one day be working for them. Like, no, they. They are next know, they’re multi pacifica. They’re coming in, they’re going.

Vanessa Sorenson:
I can’t believe I’d be here. And they’re the ones creating change. And so watch this space. It’s the next generation. That is like gobsmacking incredible. So, yeah, that could be our next podcast. We could talk just about them.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, we’re probably running out of time, but was there anything else that you thought that we should touch on before we wrap up.

Vanessa Sorenson:
I just hope Kiwis jump on this bandwagon, dip your toe, try it. If you’re scared, reach out, ask for some help. It’s a bit like when I started. I’ve set up this drop in Friday where we get my team together and we just share stories on how are we using it ourselves, Microsoft. We’re learning at the same time. You all are. A partner said that to me. Like, Vanessa, how do we keep up? And I went, I don’t know, but we are.

Vanessa Sorenson:
We’re trying to get this in a far bigger motion. While Judson was here, he said, Vanessa, if you put a time video in our enterprise briefing centre a year ago, people were turning up big corporates going, yeah, AI, we don’t think this thing’s going to take off. It’s some sort of black magic. He said, three months later, customers are coming, going, oh my God, the robots, they’re going to kill us. To now I’ve got four or 500 projects on the go. This is within one year. And so I think we’ve just now got to see this for an opportunity for this country, increase productivity, increase the bottom line, bring new businesses to life and get on the world stage.

Paul Spain:
Good message. I’m definitely in agreement on that. That’s great. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Vanessa. Been great to catch up and thank you for your insights and your encouragement to all of us to double down and really get our feet wet. When it comes to leveraging AI especially, we’ll look forward to what’s next and data centers opening. Any more closer indication you can give us what are we march now?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Become an anchor tenant and you’ll become into the tent. And we are launching with some amazing partners like Avpoint and others to be announced as well. But yeah, I mean, a date will be announced soon. Once we announce the date, there’s no going back, but it’s definitely this year.

Paul Spain:
Now, lastly, you’ve got something to announce. I understand.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, it’s really exciting and a time when in journalism, we really want some good news stories. So we have pulled together a partnership with stuff New Zealand, striker AI and Microsoft. And what we’ve been building out for the last 18 months is a full AI te reo Maori translation.

Paul Spain:
Wow.

Vanessa Sorenson:
So we can create digital media in full te reo. And this model will continue a learning neural model that goes through. So it is so exciting.

Paul Spain:
So where will this fit? Will this be the sort of written news stories? Will it be written news stories, podcasts, video, the kind of whole lot.

Vanessa Sorenson:
What’s all of that? All of that. And it’s really to boost inclusion with today, Omari, it’s something that’s been near and dear to my heart. And it actually came about when about 20 Microsoft people did a full immersive te reo course. And it was phenomenal watching them go through it. Then afterwards they said, I’m finding it really hard to keep the language because no one at home is speaking it. I can only read single words. It’s clunky. Like if I go on the Internet, I kind of can hear something back.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And this idea came actually when Grant and I happened to be in Seattle with the then prime minister and we both sidled up to Brad Smith, our amazing chairman, and we said, hey, do you want to be a world first? Because we truly want to do more for indigenous languages. We think it’s our role to truly hold the taonga near and dear to a country’s heart. But we believe to put it out there in more digital and podcasts, that actually more and more people will become fluent speakers. And that’s what we’re launching.

Paul Spain:
Wow. So what will that look like? What do folks expect to see? Where do they go?

Vanessa Sorenson:
Yeah, so all be revealed tomorrow, but go to stuff and you’re going to see so much more content now in full. Know you’ll be able to see an english version of their news story and then a full one in te reo. It is a machine learning model, so it’s not going to be brilliant day one. So it’s one of those things that you need to constantly. The better you get and the more you change things. But including a teams meeting, you’ll have fullte reo transcription happening now. In any meeting that you’re having, podcasts will be fully. You can interchange it now, listen to English and then change it into Maori.

Vanessa Sorenson:
And we just believe it’s going to be incredible for kids in school. We started with Ngā Motu, which is the te reo version of Minecraft.

Paul Spain:
That’s right.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Where kids are learning a few years ago. Yeah, that was about five and a half years ago. And this is now. And a real extension on it around how our model now is going to really gain the insights of te reo? And it’s been 15 to 20 years of work. This has been working with iwi to make sure that we are not doing this to commercialise. We want this platform to be open for everyone and it’s to make so many more to our inclusive speakers in this country.

Paul Spain:
And is the longer term sort of thinking that this would be built in to our apps, to our platform? So you browse to any site NZ Tech Podcast and it gives you an option to listen or to read the content in te reo?

Vanessa Sorenson:
That’s certainly where it’s going.

Paul Spain:
Yeah.

Vanessa Sorenson:
100% exciting times ahead. It is.

Paul Spain:
Well, thank you again and of course, thank you to our show partners to Gorilla Technology, HP Spark, 2degrees and One NZ, and we’ll look forward to catching everybody on the next episode. If you’d be watching the live stream, of course, make sure you fire up your favorite podcast app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, et cetera, and subscribe to New Zealand Tech Podcast there. And of course, if you’re listening to the audio, make sure that you follow us on whatever app you consume, video, whether that’s YouTube, LinkedIn, you can follow myself for our live streams. And we’re also across on Facebook and X so that’s where to find us. Thanks everyone we’ll catch you next time.

Paul Spain:
Cheers.

Vanessa Sorenson:
Kia Ora.