Azure IoT’s adaptive cloud approach for intelligent factories is on display at IMTS 2024

By Jason Palmer – Key Program Manager for Azure Edge and Platform

Manufacturers face significant challenges at the edge, including legacy systems, complex operations, fragmented data, and inconsistencies that impede their ability to consistently scale and apply AI. An adaptive cloud approach enables customers to overcome these obstacles by integrating diverse solutions and data, applying AI universally, streamlining app development and deployment, and enhancing security across all operations. A unified framework for IoT, edge, and multi-cloud environments enables manufacturers to drive efficiency and innovation across multiple use cases.

IMTS 2024 (Chicago, September 9-13)We’ll show you how Azure, partners, and industry standards can accelerate industrial transformation with an adaptive cloud approach. We’ll explore how manufacturers can scale intelligent factory initiatives, overcome key workplace modernization challenges, and learn from real-world applications. By centralizing infrastructure management, standardizing integrations, and enabling consistent deployment patterns across platforms, manufacturers can use common patterns to enable collaboration between IT and OT. We’ll also show you how AI can accelerate and scale these processes. For those who aren’t attending the event, we’ll provide this blog and online resources to provide additional insights.

Scaling Intelligent Factory Initiatives with an Adaptive Cloud Approach

An adaptive cloud approach can help manufacturers scale digital transformation initiatives like automation in a secure manner. It helps organizations succeed in the modern era by using a framework that aligns information technology (IT) solutions to meet manufacturing production needs. This approach helps IT and OT maximize resources with widely adopted standards, optimize production with repeatable solutions, and efficiently manage complex environments with a common architecture.

Many key workplace modernization challenges can be addressed with an adaptive cloud approach.

• Helps IT departments to: Troubleshoot equipment issues remotelyBy centralizing infrastructure management and providing IT visibility to individual plants, IT maintenance staff can increase efficiency and reduce support costs.
• Simplifies the complexity of integration. By leveraging a single management framework for all edge infrastructure (provisioning, management, monitoring, and updates), enterprises can reduce deployment costs and achieve interoperability of data across solutions.
• Unlocking the Abilities Deploy any application or workload across multiple orchestration and edge platforms. Increase adoption of repeatable software patterns and solutions across the workplace.
• Build a foundation Faster innovation at lower cost. By using a single management framework, a unified data plane, and common industry and technology standards from edge to cloud, enterprises can deploy new innovations faster and at lower deployment costs.

Watch this video See how appliance manufacturers are putting an adaptive cloud approach into practice.

Partners leverage an adaptive cloud approach for faster results.

By taking an adaptive cloud approach, our partner ecosystem can help customers achieve modernization outcomes faster and at scale, across both brownfield and greenfield environments. When partners take an adaptive cloud approach, they benefit themselves and their customers. The benefits include:

• Reduce deployment costs and infrastructure integration complexity: Simplify edge provisioning, management, monitoring, and updates by leveraging a single control plane for all edge infrastructure.
• Reduce data integration complexity: Achieve interoperability of edge and cloud data with readily available data services.
• Unlock the ability to deploy any application or workload across multiple orchestration and edge platforms; Increase adoption of repeatable software patterns and solutions across the workplace.
• Activating Production AI at Scale Increase uptime, throughput, and quality, and realize operational efficiency and cost savings.

Microsoft works with five types of industry partners to improve the competitive environment for everyone and build a strong partner ecosystem.

• Industrial Automation Partners seek to connect, modernize and activate existing customer OT solutions to digitally transform operations.
• Connectivity partners collect, normalize, and contextualize edge data across hundreds of protocols for dedicated systems and gateways.
• System integrators connect and integrate existing customer IT and OT solutions with our platform to drive long-term success.
• Independent software vendors are cloud-based and build industry-specific solutions that include end-to-end analytics and industrial AI services.
• OEMs gain a faster path to modernizing their customers’ production lines with assets that can connect and work with Azure services.

Here are some examples of partners taking an adaptive cloud approach to benefit their customers:

• DXC Technology, A trusted Microsoft partner for over 30 years, they excel in enterprise and operational technology with extensive global reach. They understand that customers need a future-ready, scalable architecture to quickly realize value from their data, which is essential for accelerated industry transformation. DXC builds fully integrated solutions and managed platforms, leveraging industry-leading modular accelerators to help customers create secure solutions while saving costs and time. DXC is embracing an adaptive cloud approach to drive momentum in AI-based use cases and to push the boundaries of innovation and performance.
• Rockwell Automation A global leader in factory automation and industrial digital transformation. With 100 years of industry expertise, Rockwell excels at delivering scalable solutions for modern manufacturing operations. Working with Microsoft, Rockwell is building an integrated technology stack that connects IT and OT to create agile, replicable, and scalable solutions for the factory of the future. This adaptive cloud approach enables high-value solutions to be rapidly deployed, seamlessly managed, and easily replicated across multiple plant sites and lines. Generative AI pilots help manufacturers make smarter, faster decisions, increasing throughput and efficiency and accelerating operational modernization.
• Advantech A global market leader in hardware, IoT intelligent systems, and edge software. Their solutions enable smarter machines, optimize production processes, and drive digital transformation across industries. Recognizing the need for seamless integration of digital and physical operations, Advantech leverages Microsoft’s adaptive cloud to facilitate IT/OT convergence.

To learn more about partners taking this approach, watch the video below. Avanade, Tata Consulting, mesh systemand maybone wolf.

Learn how IMTS takes an adaptive cloud approach

Talk to Azure and manufacturing experts

Come to the Microsoft booth to see the “Intelligent Factory at Scale” demo and talk to an adaptive cloud approach expert. At the Microsoft booth, you’ll see a fluid pump demo built with Rockwell Automation hardware and software, and an adaptive cloud approach that allows you to cost-effectively, seamlessly, and quickly iterate on solutions across other lines or plants.

Day and time: September 9th^Day – 15^Day10am – 6pm

where: McCormick Place, North Building, 3rd Floor, Booth #236205

Join Microsoft and DXC for the IMTS Automation Phase Presentation

This presentation provides guidance to help manufacturing companies use a foundational architecture that can apply AI across the enterprise, including on the shop floor. It introduces a framework for factories around the world to align information technology (IT) patterns to meet the manufacturing production needs of the future of scalable, automated, and secure factories. Learn how customers and partners are benefiting from a modern digitalization strategy.

Day and time: Tuesday, September 10th^Day At 3:30 pm

title: Intelligent factories at scale: One framework, many uses

where: McCormick Place, North Building, 3rd Floor, Booth #236008

speaker: Jason Palmer, Microsoft James Miller, senior program manager, Edge and Platforms at DXC Technology, and vice president and chief technologist for Cloud Infrastructure and ITO Services.

Join us in the Microsoft Theater for partner-led presentations.

Azure’s adaptive cloud approach and DXC’s Intelligent Boost enable manufacturers to accelerate the transition from the shop floor to the boardroom by extending cloud scalability, security, and application portability to the edge. Learn how to optimize IT and OT resources and iterate solutions across lines and factories.

Day and time: Tuesday, September 10th^Day At 1 o’clock in the afternoon

title: Large-Scale Intelligent Factory Leveraging Azure and DXC

where: McCormick Place, North Building, 3rd Floor, Booth #236205

speaker: James Miller, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure and ITO Services, DXC Technology

4 Ways to Learn More Without Attending IMTS

• Watch this free webinar Learn how an adaptive cloud approach can unify distributed teams, distributed sites, and extended systems.
• see Presentation We’ll talk about an adaptive cloud approach to HMI and how manufacturers can prepare their workplaces for AI.
• Read it Accelerating Industry Transformation ReportLearn about the latest trends, technologies, and priorities for manufacturing companies looking to efficiently manage their data in preparation for AI.
• For a deeper and more hands-on experience with Azure’s adaptive cloud approach in manufacturing scenarios. Explore Jumpstart Manufacturing Operations Demo and Test Environment Learn how to implement a modern cloud-to-edge strategy with Azure Arc. Azure IoT OperationsAKS Hybrid, AI Services.