Microsoft Industry Clouds: More (and Less) than Meets the Eye

• “Industry clouds” could help customers design and implement systems for healthcare, retail, financial services, manufacturing, and nonprofits on Microsoft cloud services.
• Most deliver sample applications, workflows, data models, and a partner ecosystem, not integrated, ready-to-use solutions.

In Oct. 2020, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare was released, followed by announcements in Feb. 2021 of four other vertical “industry clouds” for retail, financial services, manufacturing, and nonprofits. Leveraging the Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Microsoft 365, and Azure services, Microsoft provides prepackaged bundles of vertically focused functionality and data models. However, though such componentry could speed implementation of finished solutions, customers should not think of industry clouds as ready to use out of the box.
 

What Microsoft Industry Clouds Are (and Are Not)

Microsoft industry clouds provide toolkits or solution accelerators consisting of industry-specific software components, AI models, connectors, workflows, and data models hosted in Dataverse. Building on existing capabilities of Microsoft’s cloud platforms (Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Azure, and the Power Platform), these industry clouds could accelerate the development of solutions for customers in these industries.