With Solair, Microsoft Builds Out IoT Capabilities in Supply Chain, Business Process Automation

Microsoft has acquired Solair, an Italian company founded in 2011 that provides (IoT) services to customers in such industries as manufacturing, retail, food and beverage, and transportation. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Integrating Solair's technology into the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite will enable Microsoft to deliver better IoT solutions for enterprises, Sam George, partner director, Azure IoT, wrote in a blog post. Built on Microsoft Azure, Solair's IoT customization and deployment solutions are aimed at helping businesses that utilize IoT to run more efficiently and profitably, George stated.

James Brehm, founder & chief technology evangelist, James Brehm & Associates, an IoT and machine-to-machine consulting and market research firm, agrees with this assessment. Brehm & Associates has been advising Solair for about a year and half.

"Microsoft hasn't had a dynamic play in the IoT space as of yet. Although they have Azure, a fantastic hosting platform for it," says Brehm. "Some of their competitors, the Amazons, the Rackspaces, have had a lot of the application enablement services geared toward their platforms."

Born out of PLM

Solair's biggest strength, in addition to its Microsoft-native architecture, is that it was built from the ground up and born out of a PLM strategy, Brehm says.

"So if I'm an original equipment manufacturer and I'm building a connected product, the whole Solair platform was designed [to connect] products to the Internet as well as connecting them to the business rules and business processes that are being used within an organization," he says.