This is the second article in a series about the different solutions that Microsoft Azure has to offer for specific industries. In my first post, I covered how these industry specific solutions help organizations to accelerate their digital transformation, and why this is so important nowadays.

In this second part, we will look at the manufacturing, financials services and government industries.

Azure for manufacturing

In the upcoming years, instead of selling unconnected products, manufacturers will start focusing more on selling products that come with connectivity services. They will also move from selling a discrete product to selling products as a service.

To accommodate global crises, manufacturers will also seek ways to be more agile and responsive to changing market demands. Manufacturers are building digital feedback loops that help companies connect with their products and customers to continuously learn, grow, and improve existing services, as well as build new ones.

With Azure for manufacturing, organizations can keep pace with customer needs and market trends and drive business transformation, by modernizing to a smart factory with Azure.

Azure for manufacturing includes the following tools and services:

  • Azure AI and Machine Learning: With these tools, manufacturers can capitalize on the potential of Industry 4.0 with intelligent manufacturing operations and supply chain powered by proven and responsible AI practices.
  • Azure Industrial IoT: Help securely connect new and existing industrial machinery to the cloud with open manufacturing solutions that support brownfield connectivity and enable system interoperability.
  • Azure Stack: Build and deploy hybrid and edge-computing intelligent manufacturing applications and run them consistently across location boundaries.
  • Azure Synapse Analytics: With Azure Synapse for Analytics, manufacturers can collect, store, process, analyze, and visualize their operational and supply chain data of any variety, volume, or velocity to pave your way to smart manufacturing.
  • High Performance computing: Rapidly iterate on product design to reduce time to market and improve product quality with scalable and secure on-demand infrastructure.
  • Azure Mixed Reality: Blend your digital world and physical world to create immersive, collaborative experiences across the manufacturing floor and beyond, by for instance, using the Microsoft HoloLens 2.
  • SAP on Azure: Run your IoT manufacturing and supply chain operations with SAP workloads on Azure.
  • Azure Virtual Desktop: Enable a secure remote desktop experience from virtually anywhere.

Azure for financial services

For financial services, technology will become a transformative tool that enables everything from contactless cards, new forms of payment to defeating financial crime. AI will become the foundation for driving intelligent banking for all financial services organizations.

This will also improve the ability to deliver new customer experiences, empower employees, and drive innovation in security, compliance and regulatory environments. With Azure for financial services, financial organizations can transform their company with the speed and security of the cloud. They can offer new customer experiences, enhance risk management, and fight fraud.

Azure for financial services includes the following tools and services:

  • Azure AI and Machine Learning: Create financial models and build the next generation of intelligent financial services with proven, secure, and responsible AI.
  • Azure Synapse Analytics: Gather, store, process, analyze, and visualize your financial data of any variety, volume, or velocity to pave your way to intelligent banking.
  • High Performance Computing: Execute complex calculations and large datasets in seconds with scalable and highly secure on-demand infrastructure.
  • Azure Virtual Desktop: Quickly deploy virtual desktops and apps to enable secure remote work.
  • Azure Stack: Extend your Azure capabilities across datacenters, edge locations, and remote offices to build and run hybrid applications with more flexibility.
  • Azure Security: Gain protection with built-in cloud protection and stay ahead of risks with AI-powered monitoring tools.

Azure for government

The need for greater efficiencies and better communication with citizens is making digital transformation initiatives crucial across local, regional, and national governments. Especially in crisis situations.

We can expect that in the near future governments are going to deepen their reliance on remote access, empowering cross-agency collaboration, and delivering trusted and secure services to engage with citizens better and more safely and improve citizen public health. Azure for government supports to meet the needs of citizens and helps to innovate faster. And on top of that government cloud security and compliance standards.

Azure for government includes the following tools and services:

  • Azure AI and Machine Learning: With Azure AI and Machine Learning, governments can build mission-critical solutions that can analyze images, comprehend speech, and make predictions using proven, secure, and responsible AI capabilities.
  • Azure Synapse Analytics: Query data on your terms, using serverless or provisioned resources at scale.
  • Azure Stack: Extend Azure services and capabilities to the environment of choice. This can be from the datacenter to edge locations and remote offices.
  • High Performance Computing: Execute complex calculations and large datasets in seconds with scalable and highly secure on-demand infrastructure.
  • Azure Virtual Desktop: Easily and securely access corporate applications, data, and resources from anywhere on any device.
  • SAP on Azure: Run your mission-critical SAP workloads in the cloud.
  • Azure Security: Gain protection with built-in cloud protection and stay ahead of risks with AI-powered monitoring tools.
  • Azure Sentinel: Make your threat detection and response smarter and faster with AI. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance and elastically scale to meet your government cloud security needs.
  • Azure IoT: Securely connect assets and equipment to the cloud with solutions that unlock real-time insights and enable system interoperability.

Wrap up

In this second part of the series of blogs about Azure for Industries, we have covered manufacturing, financial services and governments. Also, for these industries, Microsoft offers a comprehensive toolset.

Implementing these cloud solutions on a large scale and embedding it into your organization, involves a structured approach, a cultural shift, and a need for a solid and secure architecture. This also includes setting up a Cloud Center of Excellence, and embracing cloud native technologies and the Microsoft Well Architected Framework.