The Record - Issue 18: Autumn 2020

26 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om MAR K E TWATCH PepsiCo has entered into a five-year partnership with Microsoft to accelerate product innovation, meet rising customer demands and create new consumer experiences. As part of the new agreement, Microsoft will become PepsiCo’s preferred cloud provider to accelerate its infrastructure, enterprise resource planning, and data estate consolidation and modernisation. PepsiCo will roll out Microsoft 365 and Teams to its 270,000 employees worldwide. Microsoft says that “Microsoft Azure will provide PepsiCo with greater agility and the ability to derive new insights from its data estate to fuel product innovations, customer intimacy and sustainability goals”. “As a global leader in convenient food and beverages, our commitment to the timely delivery of PepsiCo products has never been more important,” said Seth Cohen, chief information officer at PepsiCo. “Through our partnership with Microsoft, we aim to improve service delivery capabilities to meet rising demand for essential goods while driving new innovations to make our operations and workforce stronger and more resilient for the future.” PepsiCo partners with Microsoft to accelerate product innovation DILAX sensors monitor public transport occupancy in real time In response to the Covid-19 protection measurements in public transport, technology company DILAX is providing a proven and tested solution to measure and monitor occupancy levels of trains and buses in real time. “Our customers are frequently asking us for such solutions now,” said Julia Beumer, head of sales at DILAX. “For accurate real-time information, every door of a bus or train needs to be equipped with a counting sensor. This would be an effective and affordable investment. Installing counting sensors in all vehicles in a public transport fleet would also help providers make operations more efficient, more convenient and more sustainable.” Volante Technologies drives cloud expansion Volante Technologies is accelerating its global cloud expansion using new investments. In August 2020, the company raised $35 million in growth capital in an investment round led by Wavecrest Growth Partners, with strategic participation from BNY Mellon, Citi Ventures, Poste Italiane, and Visa. Volante is confident that the next wave of digital innovation will be supercharged by the shift to cloud. As such, the funds will be used to drive Volante’s cloud offerings and its reach into new geographies, market segments, and industry verticals to address the steepening demand for modern cloud-based solutions.