News › ZEISS • part­ners with Microsoft

• bet­ter pati­ent care through data-dri­ven healthcare
• enhance qua­lity and effi­ci­ency in manufacturing

Today, ZEISS Group and Micro­soft Corp. announ­ced a multi-year stra­te­gic part­ner­ship to acce­le­rate ZEISS‹ trans­for­ma­tion into a digi­tal ser­vices pro­vi­der that is embra­cing a cloud-first approach. By stan­dar­di­zing its equip­ment and pro­ces­ses on Micro­soft Azure as its pre­fer­red cloud plat­form, ZEISS will be able to pro­vide its cus­to­mers with enhan­ced digi­tal expe­ri­en­ces, address chan­ging mar­ket needs more quickly and increase its productivity.

Lever­aging Azure high-per­for­mance com­pute, AI, and IoT ser­vices, ZEISS will work with Micro­soft to pro­vide ori­gi­nal equip­ment manu­fac­tu­r­ers (OEMs) with new qua­lity manage­ment solu­ti­ons, enable micro­chip manu­fac­tu­r­ers to build more powerful, energy-effi­ci­ent micro­chips and deli­ver new digi­tal health­care solu­ti­ons for impro­ved cli­ni­cal work­flows, enhan­ced tre­at­ments, and device main­ten­ance. Fur­ther­more, ZEISS will create a seam­less expe­ri­ence for its cus­to­mers through one digi­tal plat­form and manage all digi­tal ZEISS pro­ducts through one cloud-native plat­form to enhance con­ti­nuous and agile pro­duct development.

Microsoft’s dat­a­cen­ter regi­ons around the globe help meet the regio­nal needs of ZEISS’ cus­to­mers while deli­ve­ring against hig­hest secu­rity, pri­vacy and resi­li­ency stan­dards. ZEISS will build on Microsoft’s expe­ri­ence in soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment to grow its own digi­tal capa­bi­li­ties while hel­ping Micro­soft enhance its cus­to­mer-dri­ven pro­duct inno­va­tion through deep indus­try insights.

Con­nec­ted qua­lity plat­form dri­ves indus­trial efficiency

Initi­ally, ZEISS will enable its solu­ti­ons in the Indus­trial Qua­lity & Rese­arch seg­ment to be run on a con­nec­ted qua­lity plat­form built on Azure, allo­wing direct inte­gra­tion into the customer’s pro­duc­tion pro­cess. The plat­form will help gain busi­ness insights and fos­ter col­la­bo­ra­tion across domains, assets and pro­ces­ses that have tra­di­tio­nally been mana­ged in siloed, pro­prie­tary systems.

ZEISS pro­vi­des metro­logy and qua­lity assu­rance solu­ti­ons deli­ve­ring meaningful infor­ma­tion on parts dimen­si­ons, com­po­nent beha­vior and defect detec­tion. Real-time and large-scale ana­ly­sis of data that is coll­ec­ted at all stages of the manu­fac­tu­ring pro­cess is key to effi­ci­ent and effec­tive qua­lity assu­rance, tightly inte­gra­ted with today’s and tomorrow’s IoT-enab­led pro­duc­tion processes.

Qua­lity is also a key objec­tive of a new ZEISS audit trail solu­tion, initi­ally focu­sed on highly regu­la­ted manu­fac­tu­ring indus­tries, such as medi­cal tech­no­logy which is par­ti­cu­larly sen­si­tive to qua­lity assu­rance. The solu­tion will allow cus­to­mers to iden­tify root cau­ses and react quickly on qua­lity issues to reduce down-time and keep pro­duc­ti­vity up. The soft­ware will allow cus­to­mers to track, trace, visua­lize and ana­lyze pro­cess and pro­duct data with the help of Azure AI ser­vices to iden­tify fail­ure root cau­ses more quickly.

High-per­for­mance com­pu­ting enables more powerful, energy-effi­ci­ent microchips

The ZEISS Semi­con­duc­tor Manu­fac­tu­ring Tech­no­logy seg­ment (SMT) enables chip manu­fac­tu­r­ers world­wide to pro­duce smal­ler, more powerful, more afforda­ble and more energy-effi­ci­ent micro­chips which are used in essen­ti­ally every tech­ni­cal device today. Opti­cal litho­gra­phy app­ly­ing deep ultra vio­let (DUV) and even extreme ultra vio­let (EUV) light allows to manu­fac­ture chips at struc­ture sizes 4,000 times thin­ner than a human hair or, more sci­en­ti­fi­cally, at sin­gle-digit nano­me­ter sizes. Litho­gra­phy sys­tems include extre­mely com­plex and ultra-pre­cis­ely shaped asphe­ri­cal len­ses (DUV) and mir­rors (EUV). ZEISS SMT is a tech­no­lo­gi­cal lea­der in this field of the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. Espe­ci­ally the deve­lo­p­ment of next-gene­ra­tion, so-cal­led High-NA EUV sys­tems requi­res the most com­plex opti­cal cal­cu­la­ti­ons cal­ling for mas­sive com­pute power.

Using Azure high-per­for­mance com­pute capa­bi­li­ties, ZEISS is now able to dyna­mi­cally burst to the cloud to com­ple­ment its sophisti­ca­ted on-pre­mi­ses high-per­for­mance com­pu­ting clus­ter and handle peaks more effi­ci­ently. Such capa­bi­li­ties enable the deve­lo­p­ment of future lea­ding-edge EUV litho­gra­phy tools. Opti­cal litho­gra­phy and espe­ci­ally EUV tech­no­logy advance­ments are dri­ving digi­ta­liza­tion and are kee­ping Moore’s Law alive for many years to come.

Data-dri­ven health­care solu­ti­ons improve pati­ent care

ZEISS Medi­cal Tech­no­logy pro­vi­des com­pre­hen­sive solu­ti­ons for oph­thal­mic pro­fes­sio­nals and micro­sur­ge­ons, con­sis­ting of devices, implants, con­su­ma­bles and ser­vices. Through the part­ner­ship, ZEISS will con­nect its medi­cal tech­no­logy to Microsoft’s cloud and leverage Azure AI and IoT tech­no­lo­gies for new digi­tal ser­vices such as impro­ved cli­ni­cal work­flows, enhan­ced tre­at­ments, and device main­ten­ance in a secure envi­ron­ment that enables com­pli­ance with regu­la­tory requi­re­ments in the health indus­try. These solu­ti­ons will help improve the qua­lity of life of pati­ents and drive pro­gress, effi­ci­ency and access to healthcare.

Cloud-native ZEISS plat­forms enhance cus­to­mer expe­ri­ence and boost inter­nal productivity

ZEISS Digi­tal Inno­va­tion Part­ners and ZEISS Cor­po­rate IT alre­ady part­ner very clo­sely with Micro­soft and will fur­ther inten­sify and scale this part­ner­ship going for­ward. Tog­e­ther with Micro­soft, ZEISS Cor­po­rate IT has deve­lo­ped a cloud-native digi­tal inte­gra­tion plat­form run­ning on Azure to inte­grate all cus­to­mer-facing digi­tal ZEISS pro­ducts into ZEISS Enter­prise IT. ZEISS can apply the latest tech­no­logy deve­lo­p­ments and share its manu­fac­tu­ring and medi­cal tech­no­logy insights at the same time to sup­port Microsoft’s cus­to­mer-dri­ven pro­duct innovations.

ZEISS Digi­tal Inno­va­tion Part­ners builds on these inte­gra­tion capa­bi­li­ties and uses Azure cloud and DevOps ser­vices to enable a seam­less and coher­ent end-to-end digi­tal jour­ney for ZEISS cus­to­mers, for exam­ple qua­lity experts and eye­care pro­fes­sio­nals. The digi­tal cus­to­mer inter­ac­tion plat­form MY ZEISS will inte­grate various cus­to­mer-facing solu­ti­ons into one plat­form so that cus­to­mers can easily manage their ZEISS touch­points through one cen­tral web application.

»As a glo­bal lea­der in optics and opto­elec­tro­nics, ZEISS is com­mit­ted to digi­tally enable its cus­to­mers‹ busi­ness models, pro­ducts, and ser­vices. We are proud to join forces with Micro­soft in our quest to apply pre­cis­ion optics, IoT capa­bi­li­ties, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine lear­ning to the most deman­ding pro­ces­ses in health­care and manu­fac­tu­ring,« says Dr. Karl Lam­precht, ZEISS Pre­si­dent and CEO. »Impro­ving the patient’s life and doctor’s work and dri­ving indus­trial qua­lity assu­rance in the pro­duc­tion pro­cess have always been top of mind for us. We are taking our exper­tise to the next digi­tal level tog­e­ther with Micro­soft, a lea­ding inno­va­tor and pro­vi­der of digi­tal technologies.«

“Zeiss is dri­ving inno­va­tions across indus­tries to improve the qua­lity of indi­vi­dual lives and create indus­trial effi­ci­en­cies by over­co­ming data silos and inte­gra­ting digi­tal expe­ri­en­ces,” said Scott Gut­hrie, Exe­cu­tive Vice Pre­si­dent Cloud + AI at Micro­soft. “Harnes­sing the power of Microsoft’s cloud, AI and IoT ser­vices, ZEISS is trans­forming into a lea­ding digi­tal ser­vices provider.”

ZEISS and Micro­soft will also explore oppor­tu­ni­ties to col­la­bo­rate and co-inno­vate across other ZEISS seg­ments and units inclu­ding Con­su­mer Mar­kets, ZEISS Ven­tures and Cor­po­rate Rese­arch and Technology.

About ZEISS

ZEISS is an inter­na­tio­nally lea­ding tech­no­logy enter­prise ope­ra­ting in the fields of optics and opto­elec­tro­nics. In the pre­vious fis­cal year, the ZEISS Group gene­ra­ted annual reve­nue tota­ling more than 6.4 bil­lion euros in its four seg­ments Semi­con­duc­tor Manu­fac­tu­ring Tech­no­logy, Indus­trial Qua­lity & Rese­arch, Medi­cal Tech­no­logy and Con­su­mer Mar­kets (sta­tus: 30 Sep­tem­ber 2019).

For its cus­to­mers, ZEISS deve­lops, pro­du­ces and dis­tri­bu­tes highly inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for indus­trial metro­logy and qua­lity assu­rance, micro­scopy solu­ti­ons for the life sci­en­ces and mate­ri­als rese­arch, and medi­cal tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons for dia­gno­stics and tre­at­ment in oph­thal­mo­logy and micro­sur­gery. The name ZEISS is also syn­ony­mous with the world’s lea­ding litho­gra­phy optics, which are used by the chip indus­try to manu­fac­ture semi­con­duc­tor com­pon­ents. There is glo­bal demand for trend­set­ting ZEISS brand pro­ducts such as eye­glass len­ses, camera len­ses and binoculars.

With a port­fo­lio ali­gned with future growth areas like digi­ta­liza­tion, health­care and Smart Pro­duc­tion and a strong brand, ZEISS is sha­ping the future of tech­no­logy and con­stantly advan­cing the world of optics and rela­ted fields with its solu­ti­ons. The company’s signi­fi­cant, sus­tainable invest­ments in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment lay the foun­da­tion for the suc­cess and con­tin­ued expan­sion of ZEISS‹ tech­no­logy and mar­ket leadership.

With over 31,000 employees, ZEISS is active glo­bally in almost 50 count­ries with around 60 sales and ser­vice com­pa­nies, 30 pro­duc­tion sites and 25 deve­lo­p­ment sites. Foun­ded in 1846 in Jena, the com­pany is head­quar­te­red in Ober­ko­chen, Ger­many. The Carl Zeiss Foun­da­tion, one of the lar­gest foun­da­ti­ons in Ger­many com­mit­ted to the pro­mo­tion of sci­ence, is the sole owner of the hol­ding com­pany, Carl Zeiss AG.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion at www.zeiss.com

About Micro­soft

Micro­soft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion for the era of an intel­li­gent cloud and intel­li­gent edge. Its mis­sion is to empower every per­son and every orga­niza­tion on the pla­net to achieve more.

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WE Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons for Microsoft

(425) 638‑7777 ecnahnemoc.ediwdlrow-ew@trr qua­lity and effi­ci­ency in manufacturing

Pres­se­kon­takt

ZEISS Gruppe
Jörg Nitschke
Pressesprecher
ZEISS Gruppe
+49 7364 20–3242
moc.ssiez@ekhcstin.greoj

ZEISS Indus­trial Qua­lity Solutions
Bernd Balle
+49 7364 20–8148
moc.ssiez@ellab.dnreb

ZEISS Semi­con­duc­tor Manu­fac­tu­ring Technology
Fre­de­ric Franz
+49 7364 20 62838
moc.ssiez@znarf.cirederf

Carl Zeiss Medi­tec AG
Sebas­tian Frericks
+49 3641 220–116
moc.ssiez@cetidem.srotsevni