Microsoft Launches Azure Location Based Services
According to Microsoft, advances in technology can solve many problems created in the industrial era as well as help make our sociatey safer, efficient, mor sustainable as well as inclusive.
For example, as enterprises are harnessing the power of the IOT or Internet of Things for connecting their physical assets to the cloud, they are dramatically reducing energy usage as well as consuming fewer natural resources.
While the breakthrough insights Internet of Things solutions can provide are significant, they will be more powerful when combined with location-based insights.
On November 29 Microsoft announced the launch of Azure Location Based Services – a new public cloud offering for enterprise customers, providing location capabilities built & integrated directly into Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
The location based service will be providing cloud developers critical geographical data in order to power smart cities as well as IoT solutions across industries including automotive, manufacturing, logistics, retail and urban planning, among others.
“Microsoft is making efforts to solve mobility challenges and bring government bodies, private companies and automotive OEMs together, using Microsoft’s intelligent cloud platform,” said Sam George Director – Azure IoT, Microsoft.
TomTom Telematics, the first official partner for the service, will be supplying critical location as well as real-time traffic data, providing Microsoft customers with advanced location as well as mapping capabilities. Also, Microsoft has announced that Azure LBS will be launched next year & will be available in more than 30 languages.
“We chose to partner with Microsoft because it has expertise in scaling globally with enterprise customers and shares a joint vision with TomTom to make location a fundamental aspect of the cloud,” said Anders Truelsen, managing director of BU Licensing at TomTom. “Mapmaking is in TomTom’s DNA. By building on top of Microsoft’s cloud, we believe this will make our data more accessible than ever and will empower developers to use our APIs to light up mapping scenarios for both consumer and commercial customers.”
The company will also be entering in a cloud with ICONIQ, which is a Chinese Electric Vehicle company. Microsoft is expected to be joined in by several partners in the year 2018, who will be showcasing various location, connected car as well as smart city-relevant technologies they are building on top of the Azure cloud.
However, Microsoft’s Azure Location Based Services will also be offering enterprise customers location capabilities integrated in the cloud in order to help any industry improve traffic flow.
Microsoft is providing an enterprise-ready location service for customers to build location of things applications as well as easily access useful insights through one dashboard, one subscription, & one bill.
Customers can benefit from TomTom’s hyper-accurate location data enabled by hundreds of millions of connected devices worldwide, providing the most up to date maps.
