Summary: Microsoft Azure came out with an interesting customer win in the manufacturing sector. Kubota, an Osaka, Japan-based maker of tractors and other heavy engineering equipment, will move its IT infrastructure and SAP environment to Azure. On top of the infrastructure hosting, Kubota will team up with Microsoft to build an AI platform. The idea here is to help Kubota develop new products across its extensive agriculture and water engineering practices. Kubota is a stalwart of Japan’s engineering sector and has been in business for well over a hundred years. There is a lot of scope here for AI within agriculture and water systems. Utilities were an early use case for Big Data and AI with electricity using the technologies to manage demand and detect unusual (ie. fraudulent) usage. Manufacturing is traditionally a vertical that spends little on IT and technology outside its core business, but now traditional companies are coming to see cloud and AI as a way of automating core functions, while driving intelligence, and building new product offerings.
The post Manufacturing win for Azure with Kubota appeared first on Structure Research | Cloud, Hosting & Data Centres.