Unlocking potential with Microsoft Industry Clouds

Over the past year, we’ve witnessed a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry. In a new study we conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the majority of respondents say the pandemic has turbo-charged their own digital journeys with 72 percent reporting an acceleration of their industry’s pace of transformation.

In the industries my team and I serve, this is driving real structural change – change that will outlast the pandemic. In healthcare, for example, telehealth and virtual care appointments are becoming the expectation for outpatient visits. In the U.S. government, state and local agencies are turning to new capabilities like AI-assisted bots, to enable government continuity and deliver much-needed support and information to the public and employees. In financial services, people are putting aside their physical wallets in favor of digital ones – and financial services firms are harnessing the power of data and AI to manage risk.

As we look forward, there is also a permanent shift in mindset about the use of technology. The pandemic proved that digital transformation is no longer just a competitive edge, but critical for business resilience. In talking with customers every day, what I’ve heard from them is that those that had already begun their digital transformation journey felt better equipped to respond to swift changes. And in our study with the EIU, overwhelmingly, business leaders cited digital preparedness as key to their ability to adapt to COVID-19.

In addition, the EIU research found that the mass move to remote work also led to a heightened focus on employee engagement — so much so that empowerment topics like skill-building, well-being, and creating lasting benefits for society at large now lead the transformation agenda for many organizations.

As industries continue to rely more heavily on digital tools and the cloud – 50 percent of the study respondents said cloud technology specifically played a critical role in their COVID-19 operations – our customers have been clear that they need cloud services tailored to the needs and challenges of their specific industry.

We want to ensure that every organization in every industry has the digital capability required to succeed going forward. That’s why we’ve been doubling down on our long-standing commitment to provide a depth and breadth of specialized support for industries. One of the ways we are doing this is through our Microsoft industry clouds.

Adapt and thrive

We’ve been delivering a cloud designed specifically for the U.S. government since 2014, and in the past year we launched new industry cloud offerings for healthcare, retail, financial services, manufacturing, and the non-profit sector. By designing clouds that meet unique industry needs, we can help amplify business resiliency and performance for entire sectors.

Organizations are already leveraging these capabilities for their industry-specific scenarios. With the expertise of partner Avtex, Mary Washington Health System is deploying a solution built on Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare that helps securely connect providers digitally with patients who have canceled or deferred important elective procedures. Solutions like this allow patients to reconnect with their healthcare providers and restart those procedures that have been delayed — while also helping providers recover in a post-pandemic world.

While the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services is currently in public preview, North American customers like Manulife are already taking advantage of some of its capabilities. As capabilities become more broadly available to customers, lenders will be able to use the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services’ Loan Manager feature to speed the time to close loans by streamlining workflows and increasing transparency through automation and collaboration — a critical function in the current remote-everything world.

We are excited about the potential of these new services to help businesses make faster and more intelligent decisions and build their own technology solutions.

A launchpad for innovation

Through these industry clouds, we aim to empower everyone to deliver value faster, adapt quickly to changing conditions, build for the future and do all of this with security at the core. We accomplish this in the following ways:

1. Purpose-built. Our Clouds are developed through close co-innovation with customers, partners, and industry experts – including doctors, bankers, former infantry platoon leaders, and former National Security Council staffers – to bring the power of Microsoft technology to solve industry-specific challenges.
2. Work as one seamless solution. They integrate cloud services across the breadth of our offerings – Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Power Platform – underpinned by a common data model, with new capabilities and customization unique to each industry.
3. Flexible and scalable. Our industry clouds are designed to be modular so organizations can start with what they need most today – and are extensible as their needs adapt and grow. They also enable new cross-industry workflows, an incredibly important capability as the boundaries between industries continue to blur.
4. Empower people. Every organization relies on the hard work and ingenuity of individuals to achieve its goals. With our industry-first approach, we are putting specific solutions in the hands of people closest to the problem. This helps organizations with whom we partner to act faster and make more intelligent decisions — ultimately providing better experiences.
5. Commitment to security, compliance, and trust. Our latest offerings incorporate industry-recognized standards from edge to cloud, with more than 90 certifications and more than 35 industry-specific compliance offerings. Additionally, our approach to customer data underscores our commitment to trust — customer data belongs to our customers, not to us.
6. Integrate the power of partnership. Our unmatched ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of partners are key to the value equation. They extend our trusted Clouds’ capabilities further - with their unique expertise - and offer tailored, high-value solutions.

This is just the next step of our journey to build industry-specific digital capabilities that are mission-critical for every organization to adapt to a constantly changing new reality. We are committed to helping our customers fully leverage the host of long-term benefits presented by digital transformation - to increase agility, build resilience, accelerate innovation, and contribute to lasting and positive societal impact.

To learn more about the Microsoft industry clouds, visit our industry solutions site.