February 13, 2025

Within the Cloud Cultures collection, leaders from 12 totally different international locations share how they’re tackling a few of the world’s most complicated challenges.

Cloud expertise performs an essential function in how organizations all over the world are modernizing and innovating. Equally essential is the imaginative and prescient that enterprise and expertise leaders deliver to the method. Formed by tradition, traditions, and values, it’s our lived expertise that usually varieties the muse for innovation. Know-how helps deliver the imaginative and prescient to life. Within the Cloud Cultures series, leaders from 12 totally different international locations throughout the globe share how they’re combining cultural influences with cutting-edge expertise to speed up progress and deal with a few of the world’s most complicated challenges. Season 3 showcases how Microsoft Azure prospects in 4 distinctive international locations are harnessing a typical power—the ability of connection—and the cloud to create options that deliver folks, ecosystems, and economies collectively for mutual profit.  

I’m excited to share a couple of highlights from Season 3 that showcase how Azure prospects are bridging native customs and wealthy traditions with superior applied sciences like AI, adaptive cloud, and Web of Issues (IoT) to create extra linked communities. 

Bounce to discover particular episodes: 

Spain: Utilizing Azure to attach communities by infrastructure, inclusion, and sports activities 

Neighborhood connection permeates nearly each facet of Spanish life, and organizations like Ferrovial, Grupo Social ONCE, and LALIGA are utilizing expertise to deepen that connection. Ferrovial, a world infrastructure firm, makes use of an adaptive cloud strategy and Microsoft Azure AI to construct and keep infrastructure like highways and airports, together with deploying sustainable options like exact pesticide utility for railway tracks. Grupo Social ONCE promotes inclusivity and social fairness by using 75,000 folks, 60% with disabilities, by totally different initiatives. For instance, its ILUNION Lodges use cloud expertise to boost accessibility by automating operations and increasing entry to and utilization of AI to their workers.  

However in Spain, like many international locations all over the world, nothing brings folks collectively fairly like soccer (soccer). Particularly LALIGA, one of many largest leagues on this planet and residential to beloved powerhouse groups. For LALIGA, delivering a premium experience to their 25-million-person fan base is a prime precedence. On this episode, LALIGA shares how reworking its digital ecosystem has enriched fan connections, strengthened the LALIGA model, and supplied higher participant insights.  

The league captures 3.5 million information factors per recreation from 19 cameras on the pitch, monitoring gamers and the ball each 25 seconds. Utilizing Microsoft Azure Machine Studying and Microsoft Azure Databricks AI, they quickly analyze and process this data, sending it to broadcasters to boost the viewing expertise and golf equipment to enhance staff efficiency. Moreover, digital platforms enabled by Azure provide fans access to track live stats like “Aim Likelihood”, which calculates the precise likelihood of every participant scoring nearly in actual time, vote for MVPs, take part within the LALIGA Fantasy recreation, and revel in customized experiences, rising LALIGA’s social media group to greater than 228 million international followers. 

South Africa: Preserving languages, fueling youth employment, and conserving wildlife with cloud and AI 

The welcoming spirit in South Africa serves as a reminder that change is feasible. Organizations all through the nation are on a mission to deliver a mosaic of views, experiences, and skills collectively within the pursuit of balancing progress and preservation. One instance is how Lelapa AI—a startup providing AI transcription, textual content evaluation, and text-to-speech capabilities for African languages, together with 11 from South Africa—is expanding access to information and helping preserve local languages. One other is Youth Employment Service (YES) South Africa, the place leaders shared how they’re utilizing Azure to achieve operational efficiencies and scale new studying paths to 165,000 younger folks.

Maintaining a tally of the longer term is very essential for conservation efforts. That’s why Peace Parks Foundation has spent greater than 25 years selling a steadiness between folks and nature. On this episode, Brad Poole, Chief Operations Officer, and Wayne Brider, Data and Communication Know-how Supervisor at Peace Parks drive by a recreation reserve to exhibit why preserving wildlife all through expansive territories is uniquely difficult, notably when it requires managing ecosystems that stretch throughout worldwide boundaries.  

To enhance their potential to fight poaching and different wildlife crime in these trans-frontier conservation areas, Peace Parks companions with Cloudlogic to deploy Microsoft AI and Microsoft Azure IoT options within the wild. Movement-triggered cameras outfitted with AI-powered picture evaluation can detect poaching actions and ship real-time alerts to counter-poaching groups. Utilizing Azure for centralized information storage of photographs, rangers can cowl bigger areas with higher effectivity, reworking a beforehand sluggish and reactive system right into a extremely responsive, data-driven operation. 

Chile: Pioneering AI options in power, house exploration, and water conservation 

The expansion of Chile’s sustainable economic system is fueled by the nation’s huge array of pure sources and organizations that work onerous to domesticate expansive worldwide relationships. Colbún, a renewable power firm, is utilizing Azure AI to optimize plant upkeep and create prediction fashions that assist generate environment friendly and dependable renewable power from numerous sources like hydro, photo voltaic, and wind. And within the Atacama Desert, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is on the forefront of astronomical analysis, utilizing AI-powered information evaluation to assist astronomers to check hundreds of thousands of stars, detect anomalies, and uncover new discoveries resembling Earth-like exoplanets. 

The facility of partnership in Chile can be evident at Finca Casabermeja, a sustainable lemon farm in one of many driest areas within the nation. On this episode, Jairo Trad, founder and CEO of Kilimo, shares how they’re revolutionizing farming practices with modern, data-driven irrigation options that enhance water effectivity and agricultural productiveness. Utilizing Azure information and AI expertise, Kilimo delivers AI-powered suggestions that draw on satellite tv for pc, soil, and climate information to assist farmers optimize water utilization.  

Their AI utility makes use of Microsoft machine studying and Azure cloud expertise to transform huge quantities of knowledge into exact, actionable insights for farmers. With Kilimo’s assist, Finca Casabermeja has been in a position to scale back water consumption by 12% with out compromising crop yield—a big enchancment in operational effectivity that not solely enhances meals safety but additionally boosts the financial stability of farming communities. 

UAE: Advancing human ingenuity in agriculture, sustainability, and trade with Azure 

Within the UAE, a historical past of ambition and collaboration is accelerating innovation and progress. Organizations like Pure Harvest Good Farms, G42, and Emirates World Aluminum (EGA) are combining these traits with the area’s interconnected economic system to attain daring technological targets. Pure Harvest Good Farms is utilizing AI, machine studying, and IoT to enhance meals safety by farming high-quality, inexpensive produce within the desert. And on a world scale, G42 is harnessing the strong security capabilities and responsible AI standards of Microsoft by way of Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty to deal with complicated challenges, like enhancing medical outcomes for a couple of million Emiratis. 

At Emirates World Aluminum, sustainability is a core focus, utilizing aluminum’s infinite recyclability and pioneering the manufacturing of solar-powered aluminum. On this episode, Carlo Nizam, EGA’s first Chief Digital Officer, shares their digital transformation journey, which incorporates integrating public and private clouds by the Microsoft Azure Native resolution, using Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI for on-premises containerization, and Microsoft Azure Arc for constant administration throughout environments. This setup permits environment friendly, versatile, and inexpensive large-scale AI use circumstances, with generative AI supporting company capabilities and security initiatives, and slender AI enhancing industrial processes. EGA’s AI-driven high quality monitoring system can now examine 100% of all anodes in real-time up from solely 2%, considerably enhancing high quality management and effectivity. 

EGA exemplifies how an energy-intensive trade can obtain sustainability by human ingenuity and superior cloud applied sciences, setting a benchmark for the trade with their dedication to renewable power. 

Realizing success with the cloud and AI 

Distinctive cloud cultures emerge once we harness our strengths, embrace change, and create new pathways to success with expertise. I’m repeatedly impressed watching folks all over the world deliver their concepts to life with the assistance of Microsoft Azure. As we navigate the subsequent period of digital transformation, I can’t wait to see extra IT and enterprise leaders empower communities to thrive on the intersection of expertise and tradition. 

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