Special Solutions - Microsoft analyzes the industry and tries to find individual solutions for customers. To fulfill customer needs, the company increasingly cooperates with other IT companies. CHEManager Europe spoke with Egbert Schröer, Industry Manager Manufacturing, Process & Utilities at Microsoft Germany, about this strategy.

CHEManager Europe: Microsoft is increasingly aligning itself toward the chemical industry. What are the reasons for choosing this strategy?

E. Schröer: Since years, Microsoft has invested in industry-specific knowledge and expertise. Instead of offering technologies, we look at the effects our technologies have on our customers. We analyze industries: What powers them, what is key to their success? And we boost the knowledge exchange between our partner and customers, for example at our worldwide Executive Briefing Center. Another strategic activity is our Empowering Excellence Roadshow where we exchange experiences with our customers and partners in technologies and strategic innovations. With our focus on specific industries, like the chemical industry, we can better support our customers in driving innovations and improving their competitive position. At our worldwide Microsoft Technology Center we show customers best practices and offer exclusive meetings and workshops demonstrating how these can be assigned and implemented successfully.

Does the chemical industry require different IT solutions in comparison to other industrial sectors?

E. Schröer: Yes, there are evident differences, because of several reasons: The need to handle scientific information and chemical structures and formulas affects especially the areas research and development and overall data management. The specific global and local regulations and compliance rules in handling chemical substances affect the collaboration with partners and suppliers and therefore the IT systems supporting this collaboration. As a result, we leveraged our SQL databases for scientific and chemical data and implemented these functions in Microsoft Office products. For example with Chem4Word, we simplified the authoring of chemical information in Word. Furthermore we implemented functions to handle compliance issues like Reach and security issues. As a technology partner of Elemica, the leading electronic trading platform of the chemical industry, we developed connection toolkits in our Biztalk server to improve the transactions and handling. The Elemica toolkit and Biztalk adapter for Elemica are delivered as a standard function of our product.

What about the relevance of the pharmaceutical industry?

E. Schröer: Similar to the chemical industry we focus on the pharmaceutical industry with specific teams and resources. Additionally, we have a specific partner ecosystem for the needs of the pharmaceutical industry as we have it for the chemicals industry. We use the synergies between the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, but we also power innovations in specific pharmaceutical needs for example in clinical trials. Furthermore, we implemented pharmaceutical specific activities like the Digital Pharma Initiative, where we push innovations and knowledge exchange in conferences and workshops at our Microsoft Technology Centers.

Does the economic downturn affect Microsoft's strategy?

E. Schröer: Of course we see effects in our global business. But these effects are not new, they only have more importance. Therefore, our overall strategy will not see substantial changes. Green IT, infrastructure optimization or consolidations of IT systems have already been key factors for the last years. And we developed structures and resources - for example our vertically-integrated industries focus - to support our partners and customers efficiently.
With the economic downturn the need to concentrate on these factors became more critical. Therefore we strengthened our investments in innovations and our efforts to fulfill especially the specific regional needs of our global customers and partners.

What does Microsoft's cooperation with the partners look like?

E. Schröer: With our Global Alliance Partners we developed multiyear agreements and plans for solution development and innovations. With regard to the needs of our customers we manage and break down the support and services of our Global Alliance Partners towards regional demands. With our Strategic Software Vendors we established specific research and development programs. That implements a concerted product roadmap with technical support and resources at our Microsoft Technology Centers especially for feasibility studies. Furthermore, we support our partners in software standardization and development of products which comply with international needs.

At Achema 2009 you presented selected solutions jointly with your partners. Could you give examples on the featured topics?

E. Schröer: The partner solutions at Achema covered mainly the areas Supply Chain Management, Project Management and Manufacturing Execution - process optimization is key along the supply chain. We received very interesting resonance on the chemical engineering solutions, based on Microsoft Visio, from our partner x-visual. Aspentech showed their manufacturing execution solution aspenone on Sharepoint Server - a way to use the solution for business intelligence that goes down well. Also the PI System from Osisoft which gives a real-time overview of all assets and manufacturing plants received great interest. The decision of Accelrys to use the Sharepoint Server as the central platform for their scientific business intelligence software attracted attention. Sharepoint Server is very common in the process industry and therefore it is very reasonable to reuse this platform for improved collaboration and workflows in scientific business areas.