ifm signs agreement with Microsoft
Florian Deter, Managing Director Microsoft Germany, signs a cooperation agreement with Michael Marhofer, CEO ifm, at Hannover Messe 2024.
Microsoft Germany and ifm electronic have agreed to a partnership at the Hannover Messe today. The aim is to jointly develop ifm’s solutions for the Industrial IoT (IIoT) on the basis of Microsoft Azure. Thereby, the two companies aim to generate added value for their joint customers in their IIoT applications.
“By choosing Microsoft as a partner and Azure as the platform for our IIoT solutions, we want to make innovative technologies as easily accessible as possible for our customers,” says Michael Marhofer, CEO of ifm, on the occasion of the signing. “Digitalisation and the use of modern technologies play an important role in the transformation of the German industry,” says Florian Deter, Managing Director of Microsoft Germany and responsible for key account business.
The cooperation between ifm and Microsoft has already produced initial results. As part of the moneo IIoT cloud solution, the new remoteConnect module is based on Microsoft Azure. Users can thus implement secure monitoring and remote maintenance of machines and plants. In future, more and more ifm products will be developed so that they are ‘Azure ready’. This will not only affect the software products in the moneo IIoT suite, but hardware such as edge gateways or sensors will also be very easy to integrate into user operating environments based on Microsoft Azure. This seamless integration will also remove barriers for users when it comes to obtaining important information more easily and quickly from the data generated on the machines and plants by utilising AI applications. In future, for example, analyses of this data could be generated using natural language. The functionalities for IIoT applications would then be similar to the possibilities that Microsoft Copilot offers in many areas today.
The collaboration with Microsoft and the use of artificial intelligence will also drive ifm forward in other cases. Typical examples are after-sales services and support, where the aim is to find information very quickly and efficiently and make it available to the customer. Using the example of the exhibit featuring the moneo IIoT cloud solution at ifm’s trade fair stand, the two companies will show where the journey will take us in the future.