Infosys launches artificial intelligence platform `Mana’

IT software services and consulting major Infosys Technologies has entered the next-generation services with the launch of Infosys Mana, a platform that brings machine learning together with the deep knowledge of an organisation, to drive automation and innovation.

The new disruptive technology will enable businesses to continuously reinvent their system landscapes, the company stated in a release.

Mana, with the Infosys Aikido service offerings, will dramatically lower the cost of maintenance for both physical and digital assets, capture the knowledge and know-how of people as well as fragmented and complex systems, simplify the continuous renovation of core business processes and enable businesses to bring new and delightful user experiences leveraging state of the art technology, the release noted.

Coupled with Aikido service offerings, Mana will help clients capture knowledge while delivering new and delightful experiences to their end users, it said.

Infosys CEO and managing director Vishal Sikka said the new platform is the result of a realisation from over 35 years of managing systems across industry and geographies. Infosys, he said, has felt the need to bring artificial intelligence to the enterprise in a meaningful and purposeful way that leverages the power of automation for repetitive tasks and frees people to focus on the higher value work, and on breakthrough innovation.

Infosys, he said, has already started working with a number of clients, adding that it has found the use of self-learning capabilities of the AI platform helping to improve individual productivity up to 50 per cent in a company with a large fleet of field engineers

For a major global telecommunications firm entry effort of agents was reduced by up to 80 per cent by automating order validation and removing the need for corrective processes

For a global food and beverage manufacturer, Mana assisted sales managers in automating the sales planning processes by automatically resolving maintenance tickets of recurring issues. ''As the system self-learned, over time it provided solutions to known problems automatically, helping reduce the time required to provide a solution to a maintenance problem,'' he added.

''Purposeful AI is about leveraging technology to amplify people. We can automate the repetitive, mechanisable tasks; we can capture the knowledge and know-how across people and long-lived systems and bring this knowledge back inside the systems to drive more value; and in doing these things we can free people to put all of our creativity, passion, and imagination into thinking about the bigger opportunities ahead of us,'' Vishal Sikka, CEO and managing director, Infosys, said.

Sikka said the word 'Mana', a Polynesian usage for a pervasive spiritual force, and similarly used in many languages and cultures around the world, is an excellent inspiration for our endeavor to bring this purposeful AI to the enterprise.

Jeffrey G Augustin, vice president and CIO of Johnson Controls, said, ''Johnson Controls (JCI) is building leading edge automation capabilities in partnership with Infosys to drive excellence and efficiency across the enterprise. JCI will leverage Infosys tools and platforms to accelerate their automation journey.''

The Mana platform is part of the Infosys Aikido framework that helps companies undertake non-disruptive transformation of their existing landscapes.

Sikka, who joined Infosys in August 2014, has focused on adding new-age technologies like artificial intelligence and automation to drive revenues. The company acquired US-based automation technology company Panaya for an enterprise value of $200 million last year (See: Infosys to buy US firm Panaya Inc in $200 mn deal). It also bought stake in a number of startups, the latest being data wrangling software provider, Trifacta.

Infosys, along with Amazon Web Services and Silicon Valley leaders like Tesla's Elon Musk and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel have committed $1 billion investment to OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company.