Microsoft has launched three industry-specific cloud solutions, as part of its new vision to co-innovate and support its customers and partners across the globe.
The technology giant has introduced Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing and Microsoft Cloud for Non-profit, which it says have been designed with industry challenges in mind – to enable organisations to deliver value at record pace.
The announcement follows a year of dramatic disruption, with companies in every industry turning to digital tools to provide the resilience and agility needed to survive amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the need to innovate being greater than ever, Microsoft says it ramped up its efforts to help customers and partners to address their most urgent needs.
Available locally, the industry-specific clouds break down siloes to increase collaboration, productivity and efficiency, with new capabilities, customisations and standards tailored to industry needs, according to the company.
Microsoft has also made the first update to existing solution Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, and provided the public preview timing for Microsoft Cloud for Retail.
“We created the Microsoft industry clouds by bringing together common data models, cross-cloud connectors, workflows, APIs, and industry-specific components and standards, with the breadth of Microsoft’s multiple cloud services,” says Alysa Taylor, corporate VP, business applications and global industry at Microsoft.
“Through these industry clouds, we aim to empower everyone to deliver value faster, adapt quickly to changing conditions, build for the future and do all of this with security at the core.”
Microsoft’s new vision, according to Taylor, is informed by the observation of organisations worldwide accelerating their investment in five key areas in response to COVID-19: workforce, design and engineering processes, customer engagements, and the end-to-end value chain with Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing.
The introduction of the new solutions comes as Microsoft was recently rated as the top-performing cloud vendor in 2020, by research firm Comprar Acciones,
Its cloud revenue for the year totalled $59.5 billion, 31% higher than Amazon Web Services, which ranked second($45.4 billion) and Google Cloud, which came in third place with $13 billion.
Microsoft says it has invested heavily in developing the new solutions − through embedded industry experts among its employee base, who play an important role in informing the company’s priorities.
This includes doctors working alongside engineering teams on healthcare challenges; retail executives imagining new customer experiences; financial experts helping to understand fintech, banking and payments; and non-profit leaders who are shaping the company’s vision.
Microsoft’s new cloud offerings are:
Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services: Helps retail banks create a 360-degree view of the customer, with greater insight and the ability to embed digital collaboration into their process workflows and help reduce fraud, using Microsoft’s software templates, APIs and multi-layered security capabilities.
Microsoft Cloud for Non-profit: Creates a connected, intelligent platform to empower staff and volunteers to enable the most common non-profit scenarios, such as constituent engagement, programme design and delivery, volunteer management and fundraising, brought together by the non-profit common data platform.
Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: Designed to deliver end-to-end manufacturing solutions as well as partner solutions that together can seamlessly connect people, assets, workflows and business processes, to help organisations become more resilient.
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