Over the past year, the urgency for entire industries to transform at scale has never been greater. In response, Microsoft have accelerated efforts to support and co-innovate with customers and partners – with industry-specific cloud offerings that can provide a launchpad for further innovations.
A big milestone in those efforts are three new industry-specific cloud offerings: Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit.
The Microsoft industry clouds are created by bringing together common data models, cross-cloud connectors, workflows, APIs, and industry-specific components and standards, with the breadth of Microsoft’s cloud services, including Microsoft 365 and Teams, Azure, Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and security solutions.
The financial services industry is deeply traditional and has been steadily disrupted the past few years by trends like e-commerce, fintechs and cryptos.
Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services brings together Microsoft solutions, unique templates, API’s and additional industry-specific standards, along with multi-layered security and compliance coverage to deliver differentiated customer experiences, improve employee collaboration and productivity, manage risk and modernize core systems. Using these capabilities, retail banks can create a 360-degree view of the customer with greater insight and suggested next best action, embed digital collaboration into their process workflows to create real-time visibility to status and streamline hand-offs, enhance insights to help reduce fraud – all with the scalable and hybrid deployment options financial services organizations require to modernize their systems. For example, a new feature called Loan Manager will enable lenders to close loans faster by streamlining workflows and increasing transparency through automation and collaboration – a critical function in the current remote-everything world. Public preview is planned for March 2021.
Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing
Manufacturers have been moving toward data-driven automation, IoT, machine learning and AI for years. If anything, 2020 showed just how critical those capabilities are. As factory floors ground to a halt, even the most sophisticated, just-in-time supply chains were impacted.
Available for public preview by the end of June, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is designed to deliver capabilities that support the core processes and requirements of the industry. These end-to-end manufacturing solutions bring together new and existing capabilities across the Microsoft portfolio as well as partner solutions that together can seamlessly connect people, assets, workflows and business processes, helping organizations become more resilient.
Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit
Nonprofits are addressing many of our world’s most pressing challenges, providing critical services and support to communities everywhere. Yet, nonprofits are often challenged with a patchwork of disparate systems and pockets of disconnected data. Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit creates a connected, intelligent platform to empower staff and volunteers to focus on the work that matters most – their mission.
Launching in public preview by the end of June, Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit connects the trusted cloud capabilities of Microsoft to the most common nonprofit scenarios such as constituent engagement, program design and delivery, volunteer management and fundraising, all brought together by the nonprofit common data model.