Azure, Microsoft’s Cloud platform, represents 200 products and services that help customers build, deploy and manage their applications — including Microsoft’s flagship solutions such as Office and Teams. An impressive 95% of Fortune 500 companies run on Microsoft Cloud, and demand continues to grow.
Success Story
Microsoft
Blue Yonder Control Tower
Microsoft Cloud Supply Chain partners with Blue Yonder to maximize service and reliability
The company
The business challenge
Microsoft manages more than 200 data centers in 34 countries, and it’s adding 50 to 100 new data centers every year. The global supply chain also includes traditional functions such as manufacturing and transportation, provided by third parties. Across this geographically distributed network, Microsoft needs to ensure uninterrupted, high-quality, reliable service.
The solution
To achieve end-to-end visibility and control of its Cloud supply chain, Microsoft relies on Blue Yonder’s Control Tower (LCT). Enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), this solution monitors conditions across Microsoft Cloud’s complex global network in real time and supports an immediate, synchronized response when disruptions occur.
“We chose Blue Yonder Control Tower because it’s extremely strong, highly visual and built on Microsoft Azure. It displays our entire global network and flags exceptions across our supply chain, much of which is outside the boundaries of our company. Blue Yonder Control Tower provides real-time, end-to-end visibility across our external suppliers, transportation partners, distribution centers, channel partners and data centers, allowing us to orchestrate them effectively.”
–General Manager, Microsoft Cloud Supply Chain Strategy and Transformation
Machine intelligence drives fast, optimized decisions
“We’ve been focusing on integrating decision science and machine intelligence, because the cloud moves at a speed that humans can’t keep up with. If we rely on human planners or analysts, we can’t make decisions at the speed that’s necessary. The AI and ML capabilities of Luminate Control Tower help us make complex decisions faster and at a higher level of quality.”
Building a more resilient, predictable, agile supply chain
“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the weaknesses in the world’s supply chains, as well as the need for a rapid, coordinated response when the unexpected happens. LCT enables early detection of any supply constraints and the resulting impacts on manufacturing, for improved contingency planning. It helps us strategically balance our inventory to reduce working capital. And it improves our ability to allocate capacity to meet demand. In short, it allows us to run a very resilient, predictable and agile supply chain — and plan for the unexpected.”
Delivering on a core customer commitment
“Our vision for our supply chain is that we enable Microsoft Cloud to function as a utility. It’s like when you walk into your kitchen and turn on your light switch. You don’t wonder if the power’s going to go on, you know it’s going to be there. Our supply chain has to support extreme scale and speed. We have to be dependable even when demand surges. Blue Yonder helps us deliver on that promise.”
Solution benefits
Blue Yonder's Control Tower provides a real-time, unified view of events and sends critical alerts when an exception occurs anywhere in the global network. Microsoft’s Cloud supply chain can confidently predict any impacts on service levels before executing a response. Microsoft’s Cloud supply chain can make fact-based, optimal decisions faster by leveraging Blue Yonder’s proprietary AI and ML to ingest huge volumes of data, recognize patterns and anticipate outcomes. Blue Yonder's Control Tower scales easily and seamlessly across Microsoft Cloud’s large and complex world-wide supply chain, no matter how many facilities and partners are added in the future.
“Once you have a solid visibility solution, you get to do really cool things. Because all that data essentially becomes a digital twin of your supply chain, and then you can model things, end to end, and predict where your supply chain issues are going to be. We’re grateful to Blue Yonder for helping us build a world-class supply chain that’s agile, resilient and innovative — so we can deliver the most reliable and trusted cloud out there.”
–General Manager, Microsoft Cloud Supply Chain Strategy and Transformation
