Sandy Brownlee, a senior research assistant at the University of Stirling in Scotland, recently spoke with Microsoft’s Research’s Solution Architect and Technical Manager, Kenji Takeda, about how using Microsoft Azure allowed them to create a system that helped improve efficiency at airports such as Manchester Airport and London Heathrow Airport.
By using Microsoft Azure, he was able to store data on taxiways taken from services such as Flight Radar 24 and Open Street Map and create open tools, via GitHub, to model and improve aircraft taxiing to reduce pollution and improve the service overall.
One of the benefits of using Azure was the increased speed in processing. “So rather than spending several months waiting for my data to be ready so that I could get on and do things, I had it within a couple of weeks,” Brownlee said of his experience. His team even applied for an Azure for Research award which helped educate them on how cloud computing could speed up their work further and it did so by several months.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing system designed by Microsoft for creating and managing applications and services through the company’s enormous network of datacenters. The service has been implemented in a range of industries from fisheries and BlackBerry mobile to even the military and helped earn Microsoft a significant chunk of its profits during the last financial year due to its massive growth and increasing popularity.
Microsoft frequently launches new Azure features and services with one of the most-hyped recent developments being the rollout of the Azure Security Center which will provide integrated protection via security services such as Barracuda, F5, and Trend Micro, Fortinet, Check Point, Cisco, Imperva, Incapsula, and CloudFlare.
Have you ever worked with Microsoft Azure? How have you used it for business or in your personal life? Let us know in the comments below.
