Microsoft chasing Europe startups for cloud business

Bloomberg

Microsoft Corp. is doubling down on its attempt to back Europe’s next big software startups, in order to win over future business to its cloud platform. The US company is set to reveal on Monday a
new Berlin-based, four-month program focusing on supporting
companies that have raised early-stage financing and are building software for some of the fastest-growing areas in computing, including connected factories and vehicles, AI, blockchain databases and computer vision.
Participants in the new Microsoft accelerator will receive $500,000 of Azure cloud-computing credits, along with access to outside investors, Microsoft sales teams, and technical experts. The Berlin outpost of the “Microsoft for Startups” accelerator will include product development help, management coaching and access to the Redmond, Washington, software giant’s developers and sales staff.
Microsoft faces increasing competition to win over innovative companies at a time when rivals including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and Oracle Corp. are also arming promising startups with developer tools, database software and cloud-computing platforms.
“Startups represent tomorrow’s workloads,” said Charlotte Yarkoni, a corporate vice-president in Microsoft’s cloud growth and ecosystems group. “Not every startup gets a plane ticket to Redmond,” she says, but the company wants to be “present in their technical communities.” Tellmeplus, whose predictive maintenance software can be installed alongside factory robots, in cars or on windfarms, is one of
10 European startups chosen for Microsoft’s new Berlin accelerator.
“Things are changing,” said Tellmeplus co-founder Jean-Michel Cambot, who co-founded software maker Business Objects, which was sold to SAP SE for $6.8 billion. “Microsoft has a good reputation, but it was not like that some time ago; they weren’t so easy to access. In the past everything was decided out of the US.” Microsoft’s accelerator program in Berlin previously focused on helping a mix of fledgling business and consumer apps,
such as travel portals and sellers of online piano lessons.
Under prior acceleration programs in Berlin and other cities, the company brought groups of startups into its offices for coaching and sales help. But younger companies with less mature products weren’t always ready to take advantage of connections made by Microsoft’s sales staff, said Zack Weisfeld, who heads Microsoft’s global accelerator programs. The program is separate from Microsoft Ventures, which has taken equity stakes in startups.
Participants in the new program –- 23 companies applied — include Nyris, which can identify objects in photos and video, counts Daimler Trucks among its customers, and is pitching Volkswagen and Porsche.