Microsoft Azure (Microsoft)

The company has a long track record of innovative technology solutions. For example, 3M helps its customers optimize parking operations by automating fee collection and other processes. To improve support for this rapidly expanding segment, 3M needed to automate its own data collection and reporting. The company had recently purchased the assets of parking, tolling, and automatic license plate reader businesses, and required better insight into these acquisitions. Chad Reed, Global Business Manager for 3M Parking Systems, says, “With thousands of installations across the world, we couldn’t keep track of our software and hardware deployments, which made it difficult to understand our market penetration.” 3M wanted a tracking application that sales staff could use to get real-time information about the type and location of 3M products in parking lots and garages. So that it could be used on-site with potential customers, the solution would have to provide access to data anytime, anywhere, and from an array of mobile devices. Jason Fox, Mobile Application Architect at 3M, upped the ante by volunteering to deliver the new app in one weekend. For Fox and his team, these requirements meant turning to the cloud instead of an on-premises datacenter. “My first thought was to go directly to the cloud because we needed to provide access not only to our salespeople, but to resellers who didn’t have access to our internal network,” says Fox. “The cloud just seemed like a logical choice.”

High cost of hosting dedicated servers regardless of usage of the systems and resources Time required to have application provision for each new instance for end user clientsTime and resources required to manage servers, back up, and IT infrastructure in data center End user clients requiring storage of data in their own countries End user clients asking for on-demand scalability of resources on servers End user clients asking for secured certified data center with required compliances as per their IT security policy 

As one of the biggest megatrends of the 21st century, urbanization affects both recent and established industrial countries. In the European Union, already more than 70 percent of the population live in an urban area. In Germany, the uninterrupted urban growth is likely to pose huge challenges for many municipalities in the future, in areas like traffic, energy, environment and health. For this reason, innovative solutions in terms of city planning and city development are required. Additionally, increasingly demanding citizens expect a high quality of life and improved citizen services. To address those challenges, traditional routes must be tested, old infrastructures modernized and administrative processes organized more efficiently.

Cisco designs and sells broad lines of products, provides services, and delivers integrated solutions to develop and connect networks around the world, building the Internet. Over the last 30 plus years, they have been the world’s leader in connecting people, things, and technologies - to each other and to the Internet - realizing their vision of changing the way the world works, lives, plays, and learns.Today, Cisco has over 70,000 employees in over 400 offices worldwide who design, produce, sell, and deliver integrated products, services, and solutions. Over time, they have expanded to new markets that are a natural extension of their core networking business, as the network has become the platform for automating, orchestrating, integrating, and delivering an ever-increasing array of information technology (IT)–based products and services.Subsidiaries/ Business Units: - Jasper - OpenDNS - CloudLock

IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation that manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware, and software, and offers infrastructure, hosting, and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is intent on leading the development of a global data field.

Huawei is a global leader of ICT solutions. Huawei's strategy in the enterprise domain focuses on close cooperation and integration with partners to deliver a wide range of highly efficient customer-centric ICT solutions and services that are based on a deep understanding of customer needs. In line with their portfolio covers enterprise networking, unified communications & collaboration (UC&C), Cloud Computing & data center, enterprise wireless, network energy and infrastructure services.

Amazon Web Services has developed the managed cloud platform AWS IoT to let connected devices easily and securely interact with cloud applications and other devices. AWS IoT can support billions of devices and trillions of messages, and can process and route those messages to AWS Endpoints and to other devices reliably and securely. With AWS IoT, your applications can keep track of and communicate with all your devices, all the time, even when they aren’t connected.On top of this platform, AWS also offers a variety of analytics solutions by AWS or third-party suppliers that can help meet all kinds of needs related to data analysis.

Hitachi is a highly diversified company that operates eleven business segments: Information & Telecommunication Systems, Social Infrastructure, High Functional Materials & Components, Financial Services, Power Systems, Electronic Systems & Equipment, Automotive Systems, Railway & Urban Systems, Digital Media & Consumer Products, Construction Machinery and Other Components & Systems.Year founded: 1910Revenue: $94.0 billion (2014)TYO: 6501

Cognizant is a provider of information technology, consulting and business process services. Its customers are primarily corporations from the Forbes Global 2000, and it targets customers in the financial services, health care, manufacturing, retail, and logistics sectors. Year founded: 1988 Revenue: $14.8 billion (2017) NASDAQ:CTSH