Elly Yates-Roberts |
Microsoft is launching new industry-specific clouds: Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit.
Microsoft has already released clouds for retail and healthcare and says that it aims 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”.
“Designed with industry challenges in mind, these clouds can enable organisations to jump ahead and deliver value at record pace,” said Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president of business applications and global industry at Microsoft. “This is because they provide an on-ramp to the broader portfolio of Microsoft cloud services, enabling customers to begin with the areas where the need for technology transformation is most urgent.”
Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services aims to help organisations adapt to new trends such as e-commerce and fintech. It combines Microsoft solutions with industry standards to “deliver differentiated customer experiences, improve employee collaboration and productivity, manage risk and modernise core systems”, said Taylor.
Retail banks can use the platform – which is planned for public preview in March 2021 – to better understand customers, embed digital collaboration into workflows and enhance insights to reduce fraud.
Available for public preview by July 2021, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is designed to support the core processes and requirements of the industry. These end-to-end manufacturing solutions bring together new and existing capabilities from Microsoft and its partners to connect people, assets, workflows and business processes, helping organisations become more resilient.
Taylor says that the non-profit cloud aims to create “a connected, intelligent platform to empower staff and volunteers to focus on the work that matters most – their mission”. Launching for public preview by July 2021, the platform is already being used by charity Right To Play. It has enabled the organisation to scale from 100 to over 3,000 new monthly donors and building better programs to serve over two million children every week.