Microsoft Takes on Amazon, Snowflake in Cloud Data Services
New products have attracted customers like ABN Amro and Procter & Gamble and helped the software maker generate more accurate financial forecasts.
Microsoft Corp. released one product and unveiled another designed to warehouse, analyze and keep track of data, taking on Amazon.com Inc. and Snowflake Inc. in a growing market for cloud-based tools that help companies do more with reams of information.
Microsoft widely released its Azure Synapse Analytics tool and announced a preview of a new product called Purview, which is meant to help companies keep up with data security and compliance needs. ABN Amro Bank NV is using Synapse to figure out what financial services products are best targeted at which customers, and Wolters Kluwer NV, which helps develop medical software, built an artificial intelligence system that better predicts which patients will get a rapidly spread hospital-borne infection. Companies like FedEx Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co. are also using the new software, Jason Zander, Azure executive vice president, said in an interview.