Delivering on the promise of the Internet of Things
Internet of Things (IoT) promises vast opportunities, but the question we often ask is when trillions of things can be connected, which things should you connect for business value? From a Microsoft Power & Utilities perspective, we believe that IoT is the answer to making our electric, gas, and water networks and related assets more efficient, more sustainable, and overall, “smarter.” 
We believe that Utility equipment, devices, and other assets can deliver much greater business value through data acquisition and sensors connected to Microsoft Azure Intelligent Systems Service (ISS) and Machine Learning (ML) for business insights and predictive analytics.
This will provide the opportunity for Utilities to analyze the behavior of their equipment and networks assets (e.g., power plants, wind farms, and electric distribution systems) from a holistic perspective, allowing better optimization of the assets, identifying potentially costly failures before they occur, and in the end, providing better customer service, faster and at a much lower cost than ever before.
We have continued to work with our partners and customers on these scenarios over the past year and we will accelerate these efforts by working more closely to integrate our Azure services with our Utility related partner solutions. Good examples of the work already underway are the Ventyx Asset Health solution running Azure and the machine learning work at Carnegie Mellon University with OSIsoft.
As a further demonstration of our commitment to IoT, we recently announced our membership in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) which is a collaborative group that extends across industry, academia and government. The IIC’s goal is to reduce customers’ required time and complexity for building intelligent systems through open interoperability standards and common architectures to connect smart devices, machines, people, processes and data.
To get more insight into these opportunities, please join us on September 30th for a free webinar to learn more from Larry Cochrane, Microsoft CTO for Power & Utilities; Ameen Hamdon, President & Owner, SUBNET Solutions Inc.; and Kristin Flandreau, Internet of Things Commercial Lead for Microsoft; about how Power & Utility companies can obtain business value from the energy IoT. If you are unable to join us, please register to access the on-demand webcast. May the Cloud be with You! – Jon C. Arnold