SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the elevator industry, breakdowns are bad for business.
FILE PHOTO: An advertisement is played on a set of large screens at the Microsoft office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., on January 25, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
So when Thyssenkrupp North America needed help predicting when to service its lifts, it turned to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), a partnership that illustrates how Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, has leveraged the cloud to grow its own business.
A 2014 meeting between the leadership of the North American operations of Germany’s Thyssenkrupp AG (TKAG.DE) and newly installed Microsoft CEO Nadella led to MAX, a predictive maintenance service built on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform, which has since been used to connect the elevators of 41,000 Thyssenkrupp customers to the cloud.
Before that meeting, the company’s relationship with Microsoft consisted largely of renewing its license for Windows software. Since then, Thyssenkrupp North America’s spending with Microsoft has more than doubled, CEO Patrick Bass told Reuters. “Our IT spend as a whole total is going down, and yet our capabilities and our total spend with Microsoft have substantially increased.”
Leveraging the cloud to enlarge its relationship with customers like Thyssenkrupp has been a key to Nadella’s strategy, and it has paid off: Microsoft shares are up 180 percent since Nadella took over, and its market cap edged above $800 billion for the first time earlier this month.
When it reports earnings on Thursday, the tech giant is once again expected to post banner results, fueled by its fast-growing Office 365 productivity suite subscription service and the Azure cloud computing business.
Its work with Thyssenkrupp illustrates the success Microsoft has had in moving from its traditional licensing model to an emphasis on partnerships
