Maersk to use Microsoft to boost digital development system-wide

"On Azure, we are creating a marketplace of apps and digital products that improve operations and drive better business decisions," said AP Moller-Maersk digital chief Ibrahim Gokcen.

Mr Gokcen said Microsoft was supporting Maersk's high-value assets, such as carrier performance, equipment utilisation and supplier performance, reported American Shipper.

Said Microsoft: "Azure is the digital platform of record to power Maersk's app store and help fuel business model innovations."

Maersk said data increasingly drives its operational improvements, whether in relation to the performance of its fleet of almost 600 containerships, or the nearly four million repairs carried out on its containers each year.

Said Fortune Magazine: "Microsoft is battling Amazon Web Services, the leader in public cloud computing, for big-name customers. Public clouds like Azure and AWS are huge pools of computers, storage and networking for business customers to rent if they do not want to build more of their own data centres."

Damco, the logistics arm of the Maersk group, has been using the Azure platform for about 18 months, said Damco supply chain solutions chief Johanna Heinz.

The company has been injecting data from its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software into Azure so it can do analytics with the data or develop new transactional models.

She said Damco has primarily used Azure to develop applications for customers or in collaboration with them.