Bureau Veritas teams up with Microsoft to launch testing services based on AI
Bureau Veritas, a world leader in testing, inspection and certification, and Microsoft, the leader in productivity platforms and services, announced on February 27 the conclusion of a global technical and business collaboration for the development of laboratory testing services based on artificial intelligence (AI).
Digital technology at the heart of Bureau Veritas’ strategy
Bureau Veritas has incorporated digital technology as a key factor to leverage its growth initiatives as part of its 2015-2020 strategic plan. Bureau Veritas has teamed up with world leaders to offer new services incorporating new digital technologies in the fields of asset construction, with digital twins of buildings or ships, the control of the supply chain, with the blockchain, and the enhanced inspection of industrial assets by advanced data analysis. By joining forces with Microsoft, Bureau Veritas will develop the use of artificial intelligence in its testing activities, while consolidating its technical approach by creating a data lab bringing together Bureau Veritas’ experts in AI.
“Digital technology is a major opportunity for our customers and for the development of our activities. This new collaboration with Microsoft aims to deploy artificial intelligence in our laboratories in order to deliver more efficient testing services to our customers, while optimizing the working conditions of our laboratory technicians at the same time. And the new data lab will provide us with a breeding ground for genuine experts in the use of data to create value that will contribute to the achievement of our ambitions in the realm of the digital transformation,”
Thomas Daubigny, Vice-President and Group Chief Digital Officer of Bureau Veritas declared.
Microsoft’s AI expertise as an enabler for Bureau Veritas’ digital transformation
This alliance is the result of a first collaborative initiative in oil condition monitoring for Bureau Veritas’ Commodities business. Bureau Veritas plans to extend the use of artificial intelligence in all its laboratories through this partnership. These augmented laboratory services will be applicable to all types of tests on commodities, consumer products and components, in order to check that they comply with standards, regulations or customer specifications, and to conduct independent risk assessments.
The Bureau Veritas Group’s engineers and technicians will use the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to boost their production capacity and to deploy new test processes. Microsoft will support Bureau Veritas in the use of these tools, but also to show the Group’s customers how progress in artificial intelligence is being used in laboratory testing.
“We are very proud that Bureau Veritas chose Microsoft to accelerate its digital transformation, in particular by creating its data lab. Thanks to artificial intelligence and the Azure Cloud, Bureau Veritas will be able to offer innovative new services to its customers, such as assistance with laboratory test procedures using machine learning, remote inspections that use visual recognition services and knowledge extraction, thanks to the semantic exploration of documentary content,” Laurent Curny, General Manager of Microsoft Services concluded.
About Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a platform of interoperable cloud computing services, including open-source, standards-based technologies and proprietary solutions from Microsoft and other companies. Instead of building an on-premise server installation, or leasing physical servers from traditional data centers, Azure’s billing structure is based on resource consumption, not reserved capacity. Pricing varies between different types of services, storage types, and the physical location from which your Azure instances are hosted.
Source: Bureau Veritas
