NASHVILLE, Tenn. (August 4, 2022) – Bridgestone Corporation (Bridgestone) today announced a collaboration with Microsoft to use Microsoft Azure to accelerate development and go-to-market strategies in support of Bridgestone’s digital transformation and sustainable solutions portfolio.

“Since our first collaboration announcement in 2020, Microsoft has been a valuable partner in both our European and Americas markets,” said Paolo Ferrari, Joint Global Chief Operating Officer, Bridgestone Corporation, and President & CEO, Bridgestone Americas. “We are excited to build on this collaboration with enhanced and expanded offerings that allow Bridgestone globally to develop new innovations and quickly deliver them to our customers aligned with the Bridgestone E8 Commitment.”

Advanced and predictive maintenance analytics deliver greater productivity and efficiency for customers. Using Azure will enable Bridgestone to create value for customers, primarily global fleet and OEM customers, by integrating advanced tire analytics to better understand tire wear and casing health to maximize tire retreading and inform when tire maintenance may be needed. Both companies will continue to use the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform to capture and analyze tire data in real-time as part of a fully integrated vehicle ecosystem.

“We know that uptime, driver safety, and total cost of ownership are paramount for Fleets, for example,” said Ferrari. “The Connected Vehicle Platform allows us to provide insights through each of these lenses, as well as others, using data directly from the tire to unlock value that otherwise remains trapped.”

Bridgestone will also build new cloud capabilities using Azure that further streamline and modernize the company’s core tire business and IT operations, including workplace productivity. Bridgestone will use Microsoft solutions to strengthen operational effectiveness and deliver increased flexibility and scalability across enterprise tools and platforms. Improved agility across core infrastructure will result in quicker expansion of tire-centric solutions to the customer, improved efficiencies and collaboration across the enterprise, more robust governance and security, and overall operational cost savings.

“As the world around us becomes more digital and data driven, it’s exciting to see how Bridgestone is working to provide new solutions and data analytics to their customers,” said Sanjay Ravi, General Manager, Automotive Mobility and Transportation for Microsoft. “Our long-standing relationship with Bridgestone has led to many successes and we look forward to supporting their journey in delivering new solutions that result in improvements, fleet management and overall business efficiencies.”

The Bridgestone E8 Commitment consists of eight values that Bridgestone has committed to creating together with employees, society, partners and customers to realize a sustainable society. The initiative with Microsoft will help Bridgestone deliver its “Efficiency,” “Extension” and “Economy” values.