With strong demand for cloud services amongst enterprises, Microsoft Asia Pacific has recorded triple-digit growth year-on-year for Azure in the first 10 months of 2016.
New enterprise customers using Azure include Fullerton Healthcare (healthcare, Singapore), Peregrine (retail, Australia), PTT (oil & gas, Thailand), RingMD (virtual health services provider, Singapore), The Yield (agriculture, Australia) and Trade Me (e-Commerce, New Zealand).
These companies rely on Azure’s growing collection of integrated cloud services – advanced analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), database, machine learning, bots, cognitive APIs, security, mobile, networking, storage, and web – to build, deploy and manage cutting-edge applications for their organizations.
In a new connected world shaped by the confluence of cloud, mobility and data, many organizations recognize the need to modernize their IT infrastructure to create new business models or risk being disrupted. This is especially critical in the current global economy where organizations need to be nimble and innovative to discover new growth opportunities and spark business transformation to stay relevant in the market.
The important role that cloud technologies play in the digital transformation journey of organizations has driven strong adoption of cloud services such as Azure in Asia Pacific.
Andreas Hartl, General Manager, Cloud and Enterprise Division, Microsoft Asia Pacific said, “A priority for many business leaders today is the ability to redefine their growth models to respond to new dynamics of the global marketplace. In this new digital world, cloud computing will be the foundation where organizations of all sizes create their digital future. Enterprises in the region that have tapped on the power of Microsoft Azure have managed to gain competitive advantages and scale at ease, resulting in new revenue streams and business models.”
Enabling Digital Innovations with Microsoft Azure
In Asia Pacific, many Microsoft customers are leveraging Azure as the cloud platform to develop cutting edge digital and data analytics capabilities. In fact, Microsoft has registered high triple-digit growth in IoT and advanced analytics services from its Azure portfolio.
Here are some examples of how customers in Asia Pacific are transforming their businesses with Microsoft Azure:
- Internet of Oysters: Unpredictable weather conditions can wipe out the yield for oyster farmers everywhere. In Tasmania, a day of lost production due to bad weather can cost an oyster farm more than US$90,000. The Yield, an agriculture technology company, worked with the Tasmanian Government and oyster farmers in 14 of the state’s estuaries, to deploy an IoT system that uses in-estuary sensors based on Azure’s cloud computing and machine learning capabilities. The IoT system provides farmers and regulators much-needed access to accurate, reliable and current data to help make better decisions faster in tending and farming oysters.
- Affordable Healthcare through Cloud: A trip to Indonesia changed the life of RingMD founder Justin Fulcher when he witnessed first-hand that many people did not have access to basic healthcare in emerging markets. He started RingMD to transform the healthcare industry in Asia Pacific by using a data-driven approach in delivering patient care. Using Azure, RingMD stored and analyze patient records of healthcare providers, where today, it securely manages 1.5 million patient records in more than 50 countries globally, while working with 10,000 healthcare providers. Insights from data help doctors and hospital administrators to make decisions, enabling healthcare providers to be more efficient while providing better quality of patient care.
- Trade More with Cloud: With 3.7 million active members generating 60 per cent of the web traffic originating from New Zealand, Trade Me is today the country’s largest online classifieds and auction site featuring everything from trinkets to houses. To accelerate its growth, Trade Me turned to data insights leveraging business analytics service Power BI and Azure Machine Learning to better understand customers, market trends and opportunities. These include an overview of type and volume of transactions, listing trends as well as site traffic analysis. Managers can then make more informed decisions, instead of acting merely on instincts.