Rockwell Automation unifies industrial data and operations for digital agility
Rockwell Automation and Microsoft have expanded their partnership to deliver cloud-based solutions that connect development, operations, and maintenance teams across the manufacturing sector. By leveraging the Azure cloud platform, they provide a singular, trusted data environment that eliminates data silos and allows for digital prototyping and secure collaboration without extensive investment in physical equipment. The partnership targets significant challenges in industrial digital transformation, including the need for increased digital agility, reduction of expensive IT infrastructure, and enhancement of collaboration between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) teams. Solutions co-developed by Rockwell Automation and Microsoft are already available through the Azure Marketplace, offering ready-made use cases for industries like Food & Beverage, Household and Personal Care, and Life Sciences. This initiative promises to simplify industrial transformation, accelerate business outcomes, and improve resilience for manufacturers by enabling real-time data access and secure sharing, as demonstrated by customers like Fonterra. Customers gain accelerated innovation, improved productivity, and optimized operations through these integrated, edge-to-cloud solutions with ongoing co-innovation.
- Organization
- Rockwell Automation
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Location
- United States
- Published
- October 2020
Why do we believe this deployment?Customer identity, provider attribution, maturity, and source checks
- Customer
- Rockwell Automation, Fonterra
- Provider
- Microsoft
- Maturity
- Production
- Linked source
- news.microsoft.com
The partnership targets significant challenges in industrial digital transformation, including the need for increased digital agility, reduction of expensive IT infrastructure, and enhancement of collaboration between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) teams
Primary read
Use case focus
Showing 3 of 3
- 1Unified Edge-to-Cloud Industrial Data Management
- 2Digital Prototyping for Manufacturing Operations
- 3IT-OT Data Sharing and Collaboration
- Rockwell Automation and Microsoft co-developed edge-to-cloud solutions connected via Azure.
- Implemented a unified data environment for secure, organization-wide data sharing.
- Enabled digital prototyping and collaboration without extensive investment in hardware.
- Provided solutions through Azure Marketplace, making industrial digital transformation accessible and scalable.
- Improved digital agility for manufacturing organizations.
- Reduced infrastructure and capital expenses by minimizing physical equipment needs.
- Accelerated time-to-value and increased productivity.
- Eliminated operational data silos and improved collaboration between IT and OT.
- Solutions now available for multiple industries, demonstrating broad applicability.
Architecture
The architecture connects edge devices and operational technology assets to the Azure cloud, enabling development, operations, and maintenance teams to access and share data securely through a single, unified environment. This cloud-driven approach allows digital prototyping, collaborative workflows, and secure ecosystem partner data exchanges, eliminating the need for costly on-premises hardware deployments. Solutions are published and managed via Azure Marketplace.
Sources & evidence1
- Customer explicitly identified
- Deployment status explicitly supported
- Independent source available
- Technical implementation details available
The same organization appears in newer AI deployment evidence.
- Same organization re-documented as recently as 2025.
Measures whether this deployment's public evidence persists — not whether the system is still in production.
AI-generated summary. Verify important details with the linked sources before relying on this case.
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