UBS’ accolade of the world’s biggest wealth manager comes with some challenges, and the company is looking to Microsoft to solve them. Using Azure, the company is powering its risk management platform, which runs millions of calculations each day. According to Microsoft, Azure results in a 100% increase in circulation time, as well as 40% savings on infrastructure costs. In turn, this lets employees make faster, more informed decisions. “Increasing the agility and scalability of our technology infrastructure is crucial to the bank’s strategy,” said Paul McEwen, UBS Group Head of Technology Services. “With Microsoft Azure, we are building on the industry’s leading cloud platform in terms of innovation, technology, security and regulatory compliance, which is very important as a Swiss financial institution.”
The World’s Biggest Shipping Company
As if huge financial giants wasn’t enough, Microsoft has also managed to get shipping titan Maersk on board. With over a thousand vessels, office in 300 countries and the transportation of 17 million containers each year, it has a lot of data to sift through. Working with Microsoft, Maersk will now begin to tap into that data. It’s an approach that may net it millions of dollars. “If you’re shipping 100,000 Barbie dolls, for example, the industry average is that only 80,000 show up at the destination, and God knows where they went,” explained Maersk chief digital officer Ibrahim Gokcen to Fortune. “Some may have fallen off the ship, others may have been delivered to another port city and sat there and maybe got stolen.” With cloud-based tracking, companies can track goods more accurately, as well monitor temperature, humidity, and more. It’s just one of many ways Maersk is transforming into a modern company. “We needed to work with companies with proven track records in digital transformation, and that had worked with large industrial companies like us. In that landscape, Microsoft was the best option,” said Gokcen. Hershey, Geico, UBS and Fruit of the Loom seem to agree with him in that regard.
