Microsoft Ignite 2021 announcements for manufacturers
Microsoft Ignite is kicking off and as usual it's packed with
announcements. This post gives folks in manufacturing a quick run down
of the most important stuff they need to read about. Enjoy!
AI
Knowledge management is increasingly a time sink for manufacturers and
between Microsoft 365 Search and Azure Cognitive Search, manufacturers
can reduce the burden. Now we will be able to use semantic search to
start driving searches based not just on keywords but what people
intended.
Digitising processes is important and we've been leveraging Form
Recognizer to deliver automated invoice processing for customers. Now
Form Recognizer can handle identification documents, meaning that you
could build your own system to speed up hiring processes and support
verification during deliveries etc.
Delivering AI models direct to the factory floor, your fleet, or your
offices can improve speed of predictions, reduce cloud billing costs,
and support processes with low connectivity to the outside world. Azure
Percept
is a new platform to help deliver edge AI solutions and development kits
will be available soon.
Decentralised, resilient compute hubs can help you run applications
anywhere and be multi-cloud.
Azure
Arc,
Microsoft's "Azure anywhere" solution will now include Azure Machine
Learning compatibility so custom build models can be deployed to your
compute hubs enabling you put models next to your applications that need
them the most.
Modernise
To help you get up to speed with the cloud whilst meeting important
compliance requirements, Microsoft has announced the Microsoft Cloud
for
Manufacturing.
This will help you deliver value from modernisation and innovation
efforts more easily.
Vendor lock-in, especially to on-premises databases and ERP solutions,
can make the cost of embracing new ways of doing things too prohibitive.
Microsoft are increasing the support via Azure Synapse Pathway to
migrate data transformation and extraction code to be ported out
quickly, giving you the flexibility to move your data to where you can
most put it to use.
The Azure Migration Program and Azure Migrate have also seen some work
to help businesses port on-premises solutions to cloud deployments,
allowing manufacturers to reduce capital costs, improve performance &
compliance, and improve the resiliency of their IT infrastructure.
Remote work is here to stay. Windows Virtual Desktop allows you to
securely host virtual desktops in the cloud so individual staff need
lower-specification devices to work from home with. Updates to this
technology are making it easier to scale your implementation, improve
it, and manage costs.
Dynamics 365 is an increasingly robust platform helping manufacturers
streamline operations. Along with work like the Supplier Management
tooling we can support, new stuff from Microsoft is coming out to
support Intelligent Order
Management,
reduced HR work, easier field service operations, and improved supplier
and customer management.
Doing repetitive processes on your desktop can become a thing of the
past with desktop based Robotic Process
Automation
shipping for free with Windows very soon. This combined with an offer on
their monthly automation license means that now you can also get advice
on reducing
bottlenecks in
processes too.
(I)IoT
Many products that manufacturers are building today are leveraging IoT
to provide telemetry or even to help develop new business models via
servitization. Getting the security right and being able to update the
firmware/software running on IoT devices is critical to delivering
quality service and meeting your compliance and legal responsibilities.
Device Update for IoT Hub will now allow manufacturers to better manage
IoT devices so they safe, up-to-date, and useful.
The semi-conductor space is collaborating with software companies to
produce increasingly more secure and optimised solutions for emerging
workloads like AI and blockchain. NXP and Microsoft announced further
progress with secure cloud-first
processors.
Downstream, of course, for electronics manufacturers, safer processors
like these can help you deliver better devices.