Microsoft will expand its partnership with ABB after the Swiss engineering firm designated Azure as its public cloud of choice, the companies said in a release. They will work together in areas including robotics, marine and ports, electric vehicles and renewable energy, with ABB customers gaining access to Microsoft’s cloud services, the companies said.
“Building on our installed base of more than 70 million connected devices and more than 70,000 digital control systems, the next step is to develop one of the world’s largest industrial cloud platforms,” ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said in the release.
As ABB standardizes its platform on Azure, it plans to take full advantage of Azure services such as IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite, “to capitalize on insights gathered at every level,” including devices, systems and entire enterprises, he said.
With a market cap of $50 billion, ABB is a leader in power and automation technology for utility, industry, transport and infrastructure customers. It’s the world’s second largest producer of robotics. ABB has 26,000 employees in the U.S. and 135,000 worldwide.
At the same time it’s enlarging its partnership with Microsoft, ABB is busy dealing with investors’ calls to split up its business.
