Microsoft and Cognite extend partnership to build industrial data operations platform on Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service

Long-time partners Microsoft and Cognite have successfully delivered digital transformation value to industrial customers in energy, industrial carbon management, manufacturing, and renewables globally. In a landmark new collaboration, Cognite and Microsoft are excited to announce an expansion of their strategic partnership to bring enterprise data operations to the generative AI era, from the shop floor all the way to the top floor. For the first time, enterprise and industrial—information technology (IT), operational technology (OT), and engineering technology (ET)—converge for data operations and AI value.

Cognite, world leader in industrial DataOps software, is collaborating with Microsoft to integrate its flagship product Cognite Data Fusion with Microsoft’s data platform Fabric, to deliver a unified enterprise DataOps solution that spans the full enterprise, with vertical industry capabilities for industrial (such as engineering technology (ET) and OT) data workloads enabled through industrial copilots. Data will be available through both Cognite Data Fusion and Microsoft Fabric for customers to leverage Cognite Data Fusion for driving decisions in asset centric scenarios, for example Asset Performance Optimization, and Fabric to generate insights to run their business.

By combining Cognite’s industry-specific capabilities with Microsoft’s enterprise-scale, AI-focused data platform, this partnership is delivering a state-of-the-art platform that significantly accelerates time to value and scalability for industrial use cases, while addressing the complexities of industrial and enterprise data fragmentation, technology, security, and compliance in the age of AI. By leveraging the strengths of the two companies, we are set to advance the digital transformation of industries worldwide.

“Our collaboration with Microsoft is more than a convergence of platforms; it’s about aligning our vision of empowering industries to drive productivity through digital transformation. Cognite’s robust industrial data operations and contextualization capabilities, combined with the scale and intelligence of Azure, will unlock new frontiers in industrial AI. Our customers have asked us for IT, OT, and ET convergence on DataOps—we are pleased to now offer that together with Microsoft Fabric.”

Moe Tanabian, Chief Product Officer of Cognite

“At Microsoft, we are pleased to work with industry leaders like Cognite to extend our platforms into specific domains and business processes that are critical to industries like Energy with complex industrial requirements. We are pleased to see Cognite integrate their industrial data operations platform, Cognite Data Fusion, with Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365, and the Microsoft OpenAI Service to unlock value in industry verticals such as Industrial Carbon Management.”

Matthew Kerner, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Cloud for Industry

Cognite understands industry requirements and is a strategic partner for industrial data operations

The world’s asset intensive industries are going through an unparalleled period of change, moving towards a digital industrial future enabling energy transition and more efficient and sustainable industries.

Cognite has carved out a segment in the industrial sector worldwide as a purveyor of digital transformation, particularly within energy and manufacturing. Its core product, Cognite Data Fusion, is a result of its deep industry insight, offering a platform that not only organizes complex data from a wide variety of industrial (such as OT and ET) sources, but also turns it into actionable intelligence.

The importance of Cognite Data Fusion in industrial data management can be attributed to a number of unique capabilities:

• Sub second performance for real time decision making.
• Out-of-the-box connectivity with close to 100 different industrial systems and software.
• Processing of industrial (OT) data types, engineering diagrams and piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), 3D (for example computer-aided design (CAD), point clouds, and photogrammetry), and large-scale and high frequency timeseries data.
• Data contextualization with particular focus on industrial data.
• Flexible support for industrial data modeling, including industry standard data models (for example, CHIFOS, ISO15904, and more.)
• High performance industrial knowledge graph as a way to unify industrial data in well defined data models for ease of access and real-time data consumption.
• Built-in tooling to support industry-specific needs, including support for data science, AI, and computer vision.
• Software development kits (SDKs) and connectors accelerating the development of industrial applications; both low code and no code and traditional software development.

Furthermore, a unique value proposition of Cognite lies in its user-centric approach for industrial domain experts. Cognite Data Fusion stands out for its intuitive interface, allowing users across an organization to leverage industrial data without the need for deep technical expertise. This is even further enhanced by infusing the latest AI services from Microsoft into interfaces and in new offerings like the industrial Cognite Data Fusion copilots that were developed by Cognite in partnership with Microsoft leveraging Azure OpenAI Service, building applications that utilize this contextualized data and provide decision making is even simpler and faster. This democratization of industrial data is pivotal, enabling swift, informed decision-making across all levels of a business.

Microsoft Fabric drives AI-powered industrial decision making

Fabric is an end-to-end, unified analytics platform which can meet the demands of modern industrial applications in the age of AI. It is a part of the Microsoft Cloud services, which provides robust support for a variety of use cases—from data storage and management to advanced analytics and machine learning.

The importance of Fabric in decision making applications that combines enterprise, operational, and engineering data can be attributed to several key features:

• Complete analytics platform: Fabric can reshape how your teams work with data by bringing everyone together on a single, AI-powered platform built for the era of AI. Fabric combines the best of Microsoft Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Data Factory to create a single, unified software as a service (SaaS) platform with seven core workloads—each purpose-built for specific personas and specific tasks. By creating a single platform with tools for every data professional in a unified experience and architecture, Fabric can reduce the typical cost and effort of integration and simplify governance and billing.
• Open and lake-centric: Fabric’s unified, multi-cloud data lake, OneLake, is automatically wired into every Fabric workload and designed to help you simplify data management and reduce data duplication.
• AI-powered: With Copilot in Fabric, you can use natural language to create dataflows and pipelines, write SQL statements, build reports, or even develop machine learning models.
• Built for a data culture: Fabric was built to help foster a data culture—enabling anyone to quickly go from data sitting in a lake to stunning Power BI visuals embedded in a Microsoft 365 app. Fabric seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft 365 applications people use every day like Microsoft Teams, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and more to improve decision-making and drive impact.
• Support for operational and enterprise data: For many enterprise applications, the ability to incorporate process time series and event data in combination with other data sources is critical for operational efficiency and timely decision-making. Fabric’s streaming data storage and processing services accelerate the development of applications that can utilize the industrial operations data from platforms like Cognite Data Fusion for enterprise decision making.
• Unified data governance: Integrated with Microsoft Purview, Fabric provides tools for unified data governance, making it easier for organizations to manage, monitor, and secure data across various applications and platforms. This is crucial for maintaining data integrity and quality in complex industrial settings.
• Diverse ecosystem of partners: Microsoft has an industry leading ecosystem of partners that provides industrial applications on the Azure platform. Combining these data sources with the operational data from Cognite Data Fusion opens opportunities to optimize the end-to-end decision making for industrial workflows. The workflows span from “subsurface” data from Azure Data Manager for Energy (using OSDU compliant data and APIs) to the industrial operations data from data sources in Industrial Carbon Management, Hydrocarbon Production Operations, and beyond.

Microsoft and Cognite: A strategic partnership journey

Elevating the successful multi-year partnership between Microsoft and Cognite, the expanded partnership is structured around a visionary three-horizon approach, ensuring a progressive and strategic collaboration.

The partnership between Microsoft and Cognite is set to converge enterprise and industrial data operations, creating a scalable, AI-driven platform that meets the demands of modern industries. As Moe Tanabian of Cognite puts it, “Together with Microsoft, we are not just engineering a platform but pioneering an ecosystem that propels industrial data operations into a new era.” Matthew Kerner of Microsoft echoes this sentiment, “This is the beginning of a journey that will transform the industrial landscape, leveraging the combined strengths of Cognite Data Fusion and Microsoft Fabric to empower our customers.”

Stay tuned as we continue to innovate and lead the way in converged enterprise and industrial data operations, significantly accelerating time to value and scalability for both enterprise and industrial use cases, unlocking new possibilities and driving business and operational productivity through digital transformation.

Learn more

• Our teams, including our product engineers, will be at the CERAWeek 2024 from March 18 to 22, 2024 in Microsoft Agora House. Reach out to us during the event to see demos and discuss how we can deliver your needs with our integrated solution.  
• Learn more about AI Copilot for Industry with Cognite Data Fusion.
• Get started with Azure Data Manager for Energy today.
• Discover solutions with Microsoft Fabric.

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Source: Microsoft Industry Blog