Infosys bets big on its artificial intelligence platform Mana

Bengaluru, June 13: India's second largest IT services exporter Infosys has placed huge betsonitsrecentlyunveiledartificial intelligence platform – Mana - which could become a game changer for the country's technology industry, which the company says is a repository of knowledge to do multiple tasks likeautomation,machinelearning and Big Data among others.

The $150 billion Indian IT industry has been busy automating itself to move to the next level in IT services, thus relying less on people with higher emphasis on the use of machines and software. This has been necessitated due to growing influence of technologies such as cloud, analytics, digital which have put pressure on the cost structureof theITservicescompanieswhilealsoseekinginnovative ways of delivering these services.

Talking toFE,SamsonDavid, senior vice president - global headCloud,Infrastructure&Security (CIS) & Global Head Mana - ?Infosys, said, “The core of Mana is knowledge. We are constantly looking at how do we ingestknowledgefromdifferent sources then convert into insights.”

According to David, Mana helps in many downstream functions including machine learning.

At the same time Mana is not an esoteric concept which does not measure the return on investment. Infosys has already implemented this AI platform for two of its customers – Telstra and Johnson Controls. David said that during their engagementwithaclienttheyfoundout that there were 763 ways on how an order could be placed.

Mana has the ability to predictwhatisgoingtohappenwith actionsthatincludeautocorrection.

Mana is not being implemented by the customers of Infosys alone as the IT major has started to implement this platform for its various internal functions like travel and finance.

David said, “Every engagementof InfosyswillhaveaMana engagement and in new contract we are not starting from ground zero as we have lot of knowledgewhichisalreadycodifiedanditisaboutadjusting,refining and configuring.”

Rachael Stormonth of Nelson Hall, a BPO and outsourcing analyst firm said, “A key differentiator in Infosys’ approach to AI with Mana is that it starts by targeting L3 (higher level) activities and identifying bugs in code (with some level of selfhealing), rather than the conventional approach of starting by automating L1 and working up to identifying eligible areas in L2.”