Microsoft has acquired FieldOne, a company that manages the activity of field workers, but has kept the details secret. Four months ago, the companies entered into a “multi-year agreement” that will allow FieldOne to access Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft to used FieldOne’s tools under a single package.
More software revenue for Microsoft
With FieldOne in the fold, Microsoft has become the go-to provider for yet another type of business software and is able to expand its portfolio further. However, in the future, the company can lay down new standards for what field software can be by integrating it with sophisticated tools like the Cortana personal digital assistant, which comes under the recently announced Cortana Analytics Suite, says a report from VentureBeat.
In a blog post, Bob Stutz, corporate vice president of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, wrote, “Field service businesses are aggressively trying to move away from a reactive break-fix model to predictive service based model.”
The acquisition will help Microsoft in enabling companies to identify their potential of predictive service by holding together the powerful combination of FieldOne, Azure IoT and Cortana Analytics. This suggests that the firms can utilize the information that “effectively provide servicing proactively while streamlining the provisioning of service to significantly reduce costs,” Stutz said.
An embarrassing month for Microsoft?
Prior to this news, Microsoft has faced a lot of challenges this month as the CEO of the biggest software company by revenue showed the exit door to four senior executives. Further, the tech firm had to write down $7.6 billion in relation to its purchase of Nokia, which was acquired for $7.2 billion.
Microsoft has also stated that it will lay off 7,800 employees over the next few months. In an internal email, CEO Satya Nadella said the change is a reorientation of Microsoft’s policy to “three customer segments,” in which he noted that the company could make “unique contributions.” He said the company is determined to offer best management, security and productivity experiences to its customers.
FieldOne debuted in 2001 and is headquartered in Mahwah, N.J. Its customers include names such as Climatec, Mitsubishi-Hitachi Power Systems and Carl Zeiss. FieldOne’s software is compatible with on-premises data centers or as a cloud service. Mobile apps are also available for field service workers. Other companies in field service management are Jobber, mHelpDesk, ServicePower and Wintac. Various other recent acquisitions made by Microsoft to ramp up its enterprise offerings are Aorato, Datazen and Revolution Analytics.
