Microsoft Power and Utilities News – October 2016 installment
Welcome to our October 2016 installment of Microsoft Power & Utilities News.
It’s been an exciting time here over these last few weeks, as we have shared news with several of our partners around the work that is happening to fast-track digital transformation in the industry and accelerate energy innovation.
First, we shared how our partnerships with Agder Energi and Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) are helping to prepare the grid of tomorrow. We are working with Agder Energi—along with partners Enfo, LOS Energy, Powel AS, and PSC—to develop a new pilot project that will serve as a roadmap for other utilities looking to transform their business models and find ways to introduce new services for customers and new avenues for energy efficiency and sustainability.
With the business group AEE, we are collaborating to develop a new predictive policy tool to support legislative advocacy in energy. Powered by Microsoft Azure integrated cloud-computing services and machine learning, AEE’s PowerSuite online bill-tracking platform can forecast the outcome of state and federal bills, providing valuable insights to help users adjust strategies in real-time to improve the odds of advancing policies for new energy technologies, products and services.
We also shared news from Itron, who recently announced their plans to deliver IoT services, built on Microsoft Azure, to utilities and cities around the world. Azure will be the backbone for Itron Total Outcomes, which provides business outcomes that address utility and smart city challenges in an Outcomes as a Service model to lower costs and improve performance. Itron will also use Cortana Intelligence Suite and Power BI to power critical insights from utilities’ sensors worldwide.
In addition, we announced that we are expanding our relationship with ABB to bring the power of Microsoft Azure and the intelligent cloud to ABB’s industrial IoT collaboration platform. Together, ABB and Microsoft will accelerate digital solutions that improve customers’ productivity by increasing uptime, speed and yield.
As we continue our dialogue on the importance of digital transformation for utilities, an important milestone is the launch of Dynamics 365, our next generation of intelligent business applications. With core business applications (focusing on Sales, Field Service, Customer Service, Project Service Automation, Marketing, and Operations), analytics from Cortana Intelligence and Power BI, and the productivity power of Office 365, this new approach will be the framework that will help grow your business. I invite you to watch this on-demand webcast to learn how your organization can better engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations, and reinvent products and business models with Dynamics 365.
Sincerely,
Larry Cochrane, Director of Industry Technology Strategy
Microsoft Power & Utilities
Cyberattacks: How safe is your grid?
The World Energy Council has recently issued a report stating that cyber threats are increasing across the globe, especially in North America and Europe. Immediate action is needed by all utilities to proactively improve the security on their grids and ensure safe, reliable service for communities. One way to do this is to move payloads into more reliable, trustworthy cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure. And, to make Azure an even more powerful cloud platform in terms of security, we just announced that Azure Information Protection is now generally available. This service allows you to share data safely with users within your organization as well as with external customers and partners.
Exelon, TransAlta choose Microsoft to transform in the cloud
With the emergence of more sustainable energy technologies and IoT solutions, utilities see the cloud as part of an organization-wide transformation. Today, we see utilities leading with the cloud as they integrate a variety of technologies and workloads; centralize asset monitoring; and improve real-time business insights, communications and collaboration across the organization—all in a safe and secure environment. Learn how Exelon and TransAlta are driving innovation in the cloud.
On Location: How Microsoft’s Carbon Fee is Empowering Communities in Africa
Learn how Microsoft’s company-wide carbon fee is helping to empower communities in Africa. Our hope is that other like-minded businesses around the world will use carbon finance and choose to invest in carbon offset projects, particularly in developing countries. These projects are changing lives locally while helping address the climate change challenge globally.
Microsoft Ignite: Empowering IT to drive digital transformation
At Microsoft’s annual Ignite technology conference, thousands of IT professionals recently gathered to learn about some of the latest breakthroughs in digital technology that will empower them to drive innovation and transformation in their organizations. At the event, there were exciting new technology innovations Microsoft showcased—spanning productivity, security, intelligence and the cloud—to make it easier to do just that. In addition, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced that Adobe is bringing its Marketing Cloud to Microsoft Azure and making it the preferred digital marketing solution for Dynamics 365 Enterprise.
How leading utilities are innovating with the cloud
Cloud computing offers many compelling opportunities for utilities, including the ability to bring new business models to market quickly, supporting maintenance and operational teams over dispersed geographical areas, as well as offering data storage for smart grid and other storage-intensive applications. We are seeing utilities doing amazing things to transform into digital businesses using Azure. Read their stories.
Microsoft increases European cloud investment to $3 billion, unveils cloud policy recommendations
Microsoft announced it has more than doubled its cloud capacity in Europe in the past year, noting that the company has invested over $3 billion (USD) across Europe to date, and Microsoft intends to deliver the Microsoft Cloud from datacenters in France, starting in 2017. These new investments in cloud are helping customers to innovate in their industries and move their businesses to the cloud while meeting European data sovereignty, security and compliance needs.
Microsoft Partners with UTSA for Next-Gen Energy Storage
Microsoft recently joined NRG Energy at The University of Texas at San Antonio’s (UTSA) Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute (TSERI) to announce new research showing that batteries can help ease the transition to a grid increasingly powered by renewables.
Companies that leverage data consistently outperform ‘laggards’
A new whitepaper Keystone Strategy, which is sponsored by Microsoft, has quantified the difference between enterprise data leaders and the so-called ‘laggards’ who are less mature in their use of data.
