Software giant Microsoft Corporation recently announced it's joining forces with Japanese information technology company Fujitsu Ltd. to develop solutions for the manufacturing and agriculture sectors.

The partnership between both companies is aimed at providing solutions that combine Fujitsu's Eco-Management Dashboard service with Microsoft's Azure database services.

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Combining both the technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics will allow data to be collected from sensors by Microsoft Azure for evaluation through its advanced analytics and natural user interfaces.

"Leveraging the Fujitsu Eco-Management Dashboard solution alongside Microsoft Azure and the Fujitsu IoT/M2M platform, we are able to deliver real-time visualisation of the engineering process for big data analytics to improve the entire production process and inform decision-making," said Hiroyuki Sakai, Fujitsu's corporate executive officer, executive vice president, and head of global marketing.

"We are proud to partner with Fujitsu to enable the next generation of manufacturing business models and services enabled by IoT along with advanced analytics capabilities like machine learning," said Sanjay Ravi, Microsoft's managing director of the Discrete Manufacturing Industry.

"Fujitsu's innovation will drive new levels of operational excellence and accelerate the pace of digital business transformation in manufacturing."

The solution is based on Fujitsu's 2013 project that uses sensors and cloud computing technologies to monitor the chemical composition of liquid fertilizers used in growing lettuce.

Following the footsteps of Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Inc. recently introduced its new technology for big data analysis called "Amazon Machine Learning".

Amazon Machine Learning is a cloud-based service designed to help companies extract useful information from large amounts of data.

Big data analysis and the Internet of Things are not the only technologies to help manufacturers with their processes.

Artificial intelligence is also making its way into factories through robots that can learn physical tasks such as machine tending and circuit board testing.

TagsFujitsu, IoT, Big Data, Data analysis, Microsoft Azure, Eco-Management Dashboard, Database, Machine Learning