Director of the Ukrainian division of Microsoft, Leonid Polupan, told what products of the corporation the tech giant's specialists are working on, how the local office functions in general, and whether they plan to expand the local team this year.
This and much more was discussed by the head of the company's local division in the first interview for Forbes. Polupan began managing the company's divisions in Ukraine and the Baltic countries at the end of 2022. Since then, specialists from Ukraine have participated in the work on AI products of the tech giant, in particular, the line of assistants based on artificial intelligence Copilot, which works on the basis of GPT4.
According to him, employees from different countries are involved in the development, they are chosen based on their skills, not geography or work in a certain office. Among them there are Ukrainians, and in general, many employees are engaged in testing. Yes, Polupan himself tests almost all new products produced by the company.
In particular, he said that the basic function of Copilot, namely decoding, is currently being tested in the Ukrainian language.
«The tool shows good results of simultaneous translation. For example, a colleague gave a presentation in Ukrainian, Copilot translated the speech into English and answered questions on the topic of the speech,» Polupan is quoted as saying by the publication.
Ukrainian localization of Copilot for M365 will be released soon. Polupan also told why work on it started relatively recently. The fact is that when it comes to artificial intelligence products, their training is more effective using the languages that are used the most.
Regarding the Ukrainian office, Polupan reminded that his subordinates, namely Ukrainians and part of the employees living in the Baltic countries, focus mainly on work with partners, clients and interaction with the state. Since the beginning of the zero years, when it began to work on the local market, Microsoft has experienced many periods of turbulence and, despite everything, did not curtail its activities. At the same time, there are no plans to expand the Ukrainian team in 2024.
«There are Ukrainians working here, there are those who wanted to relocate. We do not disclose the number, because we work with customers of critical infrastructure and the public sector,» said Polupan.
He added that the number and intensity of projects in Ukraine has increased significantly, so the team also involves employees of global offices to work with them.
“That is, we do not need to have employees with different skills directly in our office. If there is a request for a project with a certain technology, we go to an employee in any country,» he explained.
Polupan noted that the company has a matrix structure. Some of the employees who live in Ukraine do not report to him. He himself mainly takes care of the support of the partner program, as well as interaction with the state and commercial sectors.
Among the most popular among Ukrainian consumers of Microsoft products, he noted those aimed at digital transformation, as well as Modern Workplace, solutions for cyber security and the cloud environment. Customer data is additionally protected from physical destruction — mostly it is stored in European data centers. It is known that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine uses the Microsoft cloud, and the Ministry of Digital Affairs the company helps to store data in a secure form and provides Modern Workplace.