Microsoft has partnered with Ecolab, a global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies to address the ever-growing water scarcity across the world.
Under the plan, the companies said they will deploy recent and future developments in cloud computing and cutting-edge technology to speed up how worldwide industries tackle water scarcity.
Judson Althoff, President of Microsoft North America explains that Microsoft’s mission “is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” adding that “this will come to life in a powerful way through our collaboration with Ecolab”.
”We’re excited to assist one of the world’s leading water treatment technology and service providers in creating solutions that preserve our world’s most precious natural resources.”, he adds.
Christophe Beck, President of Nalco Water, an Ecolab company, explains that “our goal of helping customers reduce water usage requires that we capture real-time information from processes anywhere around the world, we need to be able to control those processes remotely, and deliver the intelligence that enables our service personnel in the field to manage those processes.”
With the demand for water management services growing, Nalco Water, the main water operation within Ecolab, is creating ways to monitor and control industrial processes on a global scale.
Beck said “connecting and controlling all of those operations within a plant to reduce water as a whole is the real challenge. That’s why we needed to work closely with Microsoft.”
The collaboration with Microsoft brings in the Azure cloud computing platform and advanced analytical capabilities that deliver Nalco Water’s water management solutions on a much larger scale and at a much deeper level than it ever has.
Ecolab will use advanced analytics tools such as Azure Machine Learning, Power BI and predictive analytics to get data-driven insights and intelligence from the aggregated data. And then Ecolab employees operating in 170 countries can act on those insights using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Power BI.