Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 10 | Page 9

NEWS Orange Business and Microsoft to boost industrial performance with IoT Orange Business Services and Microsoft are collaborating to deliver large-scale, end-to-end IoT solutions that boost the digital processes of companies in the manufacturing sector. Enterprises can use the Orange modular IoT solution, Datavenue, strengthened by Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, to transition to Industry 4.0 and optimise the entire manufacturing value chain. standard. This partnership is a remarkable opportunity for us not just to expand our business, but also to contribute more actively to the development of the IoT market around the world,” said Beatrice Felder, Executive Vice President, Customer Experience, IoT and Analytics, Orange Business Services. Through this collaboration, companies can take advantage of the combined expertise of Orange and Microsoft regarding data protection, as well as device and data management. This includes the opportunity to leverage Orange Business Services’ many IoT connectivity options, in particular LoRa. Use cases range from supply chain and smart inventory management to digital operations, such as predictive maintenance, employee safety and facility and equipment management. “This partnership between Orange and Microsoft is an important step in our growth strategy targeting the IoT and data analytics B2B market. By adding Azure IoT solutions to our Datavenue portfolio, we provide our customers with powerful software with the assurance that it will seamlessly integrate with Microsoft’s business applications, an industry T-Systems SA announces considerable investment in Microsoft Azure T-Systems South Africa announced at their InTouch 2017 event that they will be partnering with Microsoft to offer Azure services to enterprise customers across the South African market. T-Systems is already a global partner of Microsoft and, with this new step, will be focusing on complementing their existing solutions with Microsoft Azure cloud services to create additional value for customers. Rajan Padayachee, Head of Solutions, Projects and Portfolio, T-Systems South Africa www.intelligentcio.com Rajan Padayachee, Head of Solutions, Projects and Portfolio at T-Systems South Africa says, “Shortly after we announced our intention to bring our Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) to South Africa, Microsoft announced that they will be offering Azure from local data centres in South Africa. Considering our strong partnership with them, coupled with the substantial investments that many of our customers have already made in Microsoft services, T-Systems made the decision to invest in Microsoft’s local Azure cloud, with the intention to maximise our customers’ investments and build on our partnership with Microsoft.” Zoaib Hoosen, Managing Director of Microsoft South Africa supports T-Systems’ investment, stating, “T-Systems South Africa has been a longstanding partner of Microsoft for many years. We view this agreement as a reaffirmation of both our global and local partnership, and we give credit to the value that T-Systems’ brings, with both their extensive cloud experience and their existing partnerships with other entrenched business critical solution vendors.” INTELLIGENTCIO 9