Today, Microsoft and TomTom have announced that they will be expanding their relationship to share more services with each other. As part of this collaboration, Azure is now TomTom"s preferred cloud provider, while Microsoft is also going to be leveraging map and traffic data provided by the Dutch company.
Location data and other services will be powering mapping services across "all of Microsoft", as per Anders Truelsen, Managing Director at TomTom Enterprise, which includes, but is not limited to, Cortana, Bing, and Windows. This will help enterprises to develop IoT, asset tracking solutions, and more, of which the provided services will be a key component.
Tara Prakriya, Partner Group Program Manager of Azure Maps and Connected Vehicles, mentioned that this partnership is an innovative step for Microsoft with regard to maps. She went on to say:
"TomTom hosting their services in the Azure cloud brings with it their graph of map data. Manufacturing maps in Azure reduces the latency to customer applications, ensuring we offer the freshest data through Azure Maps. Azure customers across industries end up winning when their geospatial data and analytics, TomTom data, and Azure Maps services are all running together in the same cloud."
TomTom will be hosting its data on Azure, providing a variety of services for current customers. For example, up-to-date maps and traffic information will enable farmers to overhaul distribution of goods by optimizing delivery routes, determining delivery range, and more. This is made possible due to the now native support for a number of location-based scenarios such as map-based dashboards.
Microsoft believes that Azure Map SDKs will be able to make use of TomTom"s services to strengthen its map-based application, ultimately providing important information to citizens regarding the cities they live in.