The January - February installment of the Microsoft Power & Utilities News

Welcome to our January - February installment of the Microsoft Power & Utilities News.

Electricity was in the air at DistribuTECH in San Diego, CA earlier this month and it was great to see so many of you there! We would like to thank our friends at Electric Light & Power for the opportunity work with them to support not only DistribuTech, but the Executive Conference as well. The Cloud was with us as we toured the DistribuTECH Expo with our customers and met with OSIsoft, Bentley, Intel, and Schneider Electric to explore how we are delivering cloud-based Utility solutions to the market. Our partner Motion Computing unveiled their latest innovations in tablet computing for Utility and industry field workforces with upgrades to their F5 and C5 Tablet Series Windows computers. These are truly state of the art devices packed with significant upgrades, so check them out!

Also at the show, we announced our global collaboration with AutoGrid Systems. In case you are not familiar with AutoGrid, they are a leader in big data analytics for the electricity and energy industry with their energy data platform (EDP) and associated suite of analytics applications including demand response, forecasting, customer engagement, software defined power plants, revenue assurance and predictive asset maintenance. Our collaboration with AutoGrid will make it easy for Utilities and Energy service providers to develop and operationalize big data and smart grid analytics solutions such as demand response applications on our cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.

Our team in Germany just completed a fantastic week at E-World Energy & Water in Essen, Germany wh ere they welcomed customers and partners to our booth, and shared Microsoft’s vision and technology solutions for the energy sector. Our customers engaged us in lively discussions and were truly amazed on the innovative solutions we are bringing to market concerning Azure Machine Learning and Azure big data scenarios around making drone usage for maintenance purposes more efficient and potentially automated. Our customers were dazzled by our partner offerings with demonstrations by ITVT with their comprehensive customer solutions based on Dynamics CRM, Ferranti with their MECOMS solution based on Dynamics AX, Blue-Zone with their field service solution based on Dynamics CRM online and Azure, and Intel with our joint IoT story.

Next up, we will be at HANNOVER MESSE, April 13–17. Please join us for a digital transformation tour and learn how to build on existing systems and infrastructure for big impact, improve efficiency and reduce costs, pursue new business opportunities with smart, connected products and new service offerings, increase business agility, and enable collaborative innovation internally and externally with mobility and cloud-based solutions. Please contact us at hmi2015@microsoft.com if you would like a briefing at the show. We hope to see you there!

In other news, as part of the next era of Windows, Microsoft introduced Surface Hub, a simple, intuitive Windows interface designed for groups with ink and touch at its core. It’s engineered to make meetings more productive with built-in sensors and wireless content sharing. Another intriguing feature for our industry is Microsoft HoloLens, the holographic computing platform enabled by Windows 10. You can see the possibilities in this video and you can also view the full Windows 10 on-demand presentation here.

We also recently launched our new Cloud Platform roadmap site, a valuable asset for your business that provides a comprehensive view of the wide range of improvements and developments across cloud services, server offerings, and converged system appliance offerings.

In case you missed last month’s webinar on The Innovation Challenge: Creating the 21st Century Utility, please access the on-demand version here. We explored how Utilities are reimagining themselves from a megatrend perspective covering the IoT, Cloud, Big Data, Mobility and Social in order to survive in this era of deep and accelerating rate of change.

There’s lots of news below, so read on and enjoy!

Sincerely,

Jon C. Arnold, Managing Director, Microsoft Worldwide Power & Utilities

Inside Microsoft

The next evolution of Power BI: Transforming the business of business intelligence: We have written before about the incredible power of Power BI and how Power & Utility companies are gaining the benefits of this incredible tool. Today we are announcing the next evolution of Power BI that we believe will fundamentally transform the business of business intelligence.

Transforming to a Digital Business:  Transforming to a digital business is now considered a requirement for virtually every enterprise. But this is much more than simply digitizing traditional processes as businesses are rethinking products, services and even entire business models in a mobile-first, cloud-first, all-digital world. Power & Utility companies have realized that "getting closer to the customer" is crucial to meeting and exceeding customer expectations whether it’s information about outages, new programs, services or just elevating the customer care experience through digital transformation initiatives.

How Microsoft is evolving field services:  In the recent Daily PennEnergy Power Newsletter, our video on how we are evolving field services is featured. It’s a quick look at how Windows devices are empowering field services crew to access and update real-time data and corporate files, whether they are out on a work site or on the plant floor.

Partner News

‘Goin Mobile’ at DistribuTECH with Motion Computing:  Read more about our partner Motion Computing’s latest innovations in tablet computing for Utility and industry field workforces with upgrades to their F5 and C5 Tablet Series Windows computers.

OpenText Excellence in Enterprise Procurement with Oracle EBS and Microsoft Office 365:  We wrote in our last newsletter about OpenText’s support for Office 365. Now there’s a great video demo showing how OpenText enables true “collaboration in context” in an enterprise procurement scenario by integrating Office 365 and Oracle E-Business Suite with Extended Enterprise Content Management.

Accenture and Microsoft launch new hybrid cloud platform: Introducing the Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure, a powerful hybrid cloud platform designed to bring new capabilities, economics and innovation to the enterprise.

Industry Events

Microsoft at HANNOVER MESSE:  April 13–17, 2015, Digital Factory Hall 7

Hannover Exhibition Ground, Hannover, Germany: We invite you to re-imagine your industrial future with Microsoft at HANNOVER MESSE 2015.  Based on the Internet of YOUR Things, Microsoft and select partners will be showcasing an end-to-end integrated industry of the future. Please join us for a digital transformation tour and learn how to build on existing systems and infrastructure for big impact, improve efficiency and reduce costs, pursue new business opportunities with smart, connected products and new service offerings, increase business agility, and enable collaborative innovation internally and externally with mobility and cloud-based solutions. We can set up an exclusive briefing / booth tour to get you started on your digital transformation journey. Please contact us at hmi2015@microsoft.com if you would like a briefing at the show. The opportunity awaits at HANNOVER MESSE!

On-demand webinar: The Innovation Challenge: Creating the 21st Century Utility: Access the on-demand webcast where Microsoft explores how Utilities are reimagining themselves from a megatrend perspective covering the IoT, Cloud, Big Data, Mobility and Social in order to survive in this era of deep and accelerating rate of change.

New Customer Stories

Lithuanian water company ramps up front line activity with mobile data collection: Vilnius Water, the largest water company in Lithuania, abandons Android open source mobile data collection in favor of Nokia and Windows. The move was driven by a need for greater efficiency and flexibility. Its front line inspectors are now benefiting from simple and much more efficient data collection which in turn is driving the business forward.

Electricity Supplier Cuts Email Operating Costs by 40 Percent with Software Upgrade: Rapid growth at Saudi Electricity Company meant the organization needed a versatile and easy-to-manage messaging environment. It chose to upgrade its Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 solution to take advantage of the enhancements in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Since the implementation, the organization has achieved many of its goals, including a more streamlined messaging infrastructure.

AGL puts energy into action with the Cloud: Discover the difference Office 365 is making to leading energy provider AGL Energy Limited (AGL) and some of the leading edge activities it’s doing to drive innovation.