Microsoft And Rolls-Royce Announce Partnership For Next Generation Of Intelligent Engines

Microsoft Corporation MSFT announced over the weekend at the Hannover Messe industrial fair it has entered into a new collaboration with Rolls-Royce.

As part of the collaboration, Rolls-Royce will integrate Microsoft's Azure IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite into its service solutions to support its next generation of intelligent engines.

Rolls-Royce will "tackle some of the greatest airline operational challenges" by integrating Microsoft's Azure IoT suite to collect and aggregate data from sources. The company will use the Cortana Intelligence Suite to uncover data insights.

"Data sets such as engine health data, air traffic control information, route restrictions and fuel usage data will be collected to detect operational anomalies and trends and then provide intelligent performance feedback on the findings," Microsoft noted in its press release. "Using Azure Stream Analytics and Microsoft Power BI dashboards, the goal is to uncover data insights that will enable airlines to improve their operational performance and increase fuel efficiency."

"Our customers are looking for ways to leverage the digital landscape to increase efficiency and improve their operations," said Tom Palmer, senior vice president, Services, Civil Aerospace, at Rolls-Royce. "By working with Microsoft we can really transform our digital services, supporting customers right across engine-related aircraft operations to make a real difference to performance."

"Rolls-Royce has always been a pioneer in engine services, and this collaboration will create a new digital engine for Rolls-Royce to deliver an even better service to its customers across its world-class engine fleet through Microsoft Azure," said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure at Microsoft.