The story behind Microsoft earnings: Our customers’ digital innovation

[News Bot]

Today, Microsoft announced its third-quarter earnings, including commercial cloud revenue of $6 billion, up 58 percent from last year. As always, this growth is fueled by the innovation and success of our customers and partners. Today, almost every company is a tech company, and below are a few examples of companies working closely with Microsoft to advance their digital business strategies.

 

Driving efficiencies with applications and infrastructure

 

Companies across all industries need a trusted cloud infrastructure, a powerful data estate and accessible AI technologies to grow and transform. Toyota Material Handling Europe is using Azure, AI and HoloLens to help drive its vision for the factory of the future. By distributing intelligent logic across the factory and its robotic systems, the company can train “pallet drones” to recognize patterns, automate processes and learn the flow of a manufacturing factory floor.

 

Bühler AG, a leader in food processing manufacturing, has developed a revolutionary optical sorting system called LumoVision to significantly improve food safety practices. Using the power of the Microsoft cloud, this new system creates a faster and more precise grain-sorting solution, eliminating 85 to 90 percent of contaminated and toxic grain, compared to 50 percent for conventional sorting machines.

 

Enabling better customer engagement with data and AI

 

Financial services is another space where companies are moving quickly to seize the digital dividend using data and AI. Today, more than 80 percent of the world’s largest banks are Azure customers.

 

Saxo Bank, a fintech leader, provides “banking as a service” and access to 35,000 financial instruments to banking and brokerage clients in 170 countries. To grow the power and scale of its services, Saxo Bank is moving nearly all its technology stack to Azure. We are also working with Eagle Investment Systems LLC, a BNY Mellon company and financial services tech leader with $21 trillion in managed assets. In partnership with Microsoft, the firm has created a new cloud-based data management platform on Azure to help investment managers capture data, ensure its validity, manage assets and “seek alpha.”

 

UPS, the world’s largest package delivery company, is enhancing its customer service with AI, using Azure Bot Service and Cognitive Services for the UPS Bot, which converses in text and voice with customers about their shipments. UPS developers are also using .NET and Visual Studio to extend its mobile app to more platforms faster, with less code.

 

Empowering employees in the modern workplace

 

Helping companies provide a modern workplace to their employees is core to our mission and business. For example, Jaguar Land Rover, the U.K.’s largest automotive manufacturer, sells its iconic vehicles in 130 countries, employs more than 43,000 workers globally and supports around 240,000 more through dealerships, suppliers and local businesses. Jaguar Land Rover has selected Office 365 as part of its effort to foster a creative and modern workplace culture that lets employees communicate and collaborate from the U.K. to the U.S., China, Brazil, Slovakia and Ireland — all while equipping the company with the security features needed to protect its business.

 

In the consumer space, the Coca-Cola Co. has made digital leadership part of its growth strategy. The company is digitizing its enterprise — from the supply chain and employee collaboration to consumer engagement — and has placed trust and security at the heart of the entire experience. Specifically, Coca-Cola is using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure to simplify its architecture, drive automation, deliver technology updates with less disruption, improve employee experiences and deliver proactive threat-protection.

 

Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Goldcorp is focused on responsible mining practices throughout the Americas. The mining industry is very dynamic, and Goldcorp needed to manage and harness data from its highly technical mining operations to inform real-time decision making. In addition to Power BI and Microsoft 365, Goldcorp selected Surface Pro for miners to use in the mines because the devices are fan-less. The company also deployed Surface Studio, Surface Book and Surface Pro throughout headquarters. By standardizing on Microsoft hardware and our modern workplace solutions, Goldcorp is gaining performance insights, improving security and building a foundation for the future of technology-enabled mines.

 

Simplifying processes with business applications

 

Another focus area for Microsoft and where we see customer innovation is in business applications and the digital simplification of business processes.

 

24 Hour Fitness, one of the U.S.’s largest privately owned and operated fitness chains, is deploying Dynamics 365 and Adobe Experience Cloud across its network of more than 420 clubs. This deployment will enable 24 Hour Fitness to dramatically enhance its ability to offer more personalized and unified digital experiences for members throughout every touch point in their fitness journey. With native technology integrations across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Adobe Experience Cloud, 24 Hour Fitness is investing in a combined cloud platform to engage its members and guests with highly personalized experiences, including health and fitness guidance they truly want and need.

 

Marc Jacobs International, the global fashion house with more than 200 retail stores across 80 countries, is another great retail example. The company uses Dynamics and a partner solution, MediusFlow, on Azure to streamline and automate a key part of its supply chain: Paying the enormous, continuously changing network of special vendors and suppliers it counts on to create and deliver its new collections each season.

 

As these customer examples highlight, virtually every company, irrespective of the industry in which it competes, is thinking big about data — how to harness it for growth, for efficiency, for greater employee collaboration and for differentiation. Taken together, these ambitions are the very definition of digital innovation and transformation, and here at Microsoft we are proud to serve as a trusted partner committed to helping organizations realize these ambitions.

 

The post The story behind Microsoft earnings: Our customers’ digital innovation appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

 

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