Swiss Impact Summary 2023
Achieving More for Switzerland
Switzerland is built on trust, and so is Microsoft. As the world moves to a new, data-driven economy and society, we remain committed to empowering every person and every organization in Switzerland on their digital transformation journeys
Home to the most competitive economy and some of the most innovative companies and universities in the world, Switzerland and Microsoft are both exceptionally positioned to lead how new technologies can transform businesses and solve some of society’s most pressing challenges.
Building on our 30+ year history and proximity to Swiss customers, regulators, and policymakers, we offer a deep understanding of the Swiss needs, laws, and regulations to meet local demands. We are committed to delivering the innovation and digital acceleration that drives broad economic growth, while ensuring a more inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and trusted future for everyone.
We support large companies, SMEs, start-ups, schools and educational institutions as well as the public sector on their digital transformation and local innovation capabilities journey.
To empower our customers, we offer an array of services, including cloud-based solutions and tools that enable them to drive productivity, competitiveness, and efficiency in a secure, trustworthy environment.
Our growth mindset pushes continuous evolution and innovation, to build resilience, impact, and relevance for our customers. With our team of more than 1,000 experts and our network of 4,600 partner organizations, we empower our customers of all sizes and from all industries to realize their full potential as they embark on their unique digital transformation journey to achieve more with less.
Expand opportunity
We support inclusive economic growth by building alliances, increasing access to digital skills, and helping customers of all sizes and industries digitally support their growth, thus driving growth for Switzerland
Skills for Switzerland
Together with Adecco and Campell & Jones we initiated Skills for Switzerland – a new learning program to enable people from all kinds of specialist areas to take part in digital training. Since its foundation, the program has been consistently growing: Close to 630’000 learners in Switzerland have engaged since 2020 to gain new digital skills. Nearly 10’000 of them have completed at least one learning path. The top three learning paths include AI fundamentals, creating PowerApps, and managing collaboration Teams.
Microsoft Technology Center
In 2022, we opened our Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) at our new headquarters at the Zurich Airport. The MTC delivers immersive industry experiences and deep technical engagement focused on driving business outcomes for customers. It is an innovation hub where new technology and industry-specific scenarios can be tested with customers. Since its opening, we have welcomed over 3400 guests.
Industry Clouds
With cloud solutions for Swiss hospitals, we support the healthcare sector in their critical services and processes, while meeting highest requirements for security and data privacy. Today, we also offer customized industry clouds for healthcare, financial services, retail, manufacturing, nonprofit, and sustainability.
Swiss Datacenters
In 2022, we reinforced our commitment to providing business continuity, data protection, and security in the cloud. We continued our expansion of the local cloud infrastructure, confirming our determination to invest in Switzerland and empower Swiss organizations to be more resilient, competitive, innovative and sustainable. We are supporting data backup with four of our own Swiss datacenters, delivering faster access to data and cloud services while addressing critical data residency requirements.
Protect fundamental rights
We unequivocally support the fundamental rights of people, from defending democracy, to protecting human rights, to addressing racial injustice and inequity. And, as education, healthcare, and other critical services become increasingly dependent on technology, access to broadband and accessible technology are also fundamental to a more equitable future – globally and in Switzerland.
Marriage Equality
At Microsoft, we have a well-established history of supporting marriage equality around the world. In Switzerland, we supported our LGBTQI+ employees on this issue by taking a public stance in the 2021 referendum and joining forces with some of our key customers and partners to advocate for marriage equality.
Account Guard
In Switzerland, we offer Microsoft AccountGuard—a cybersecurity service that provides additional protection for organizations that are essential to a strong democracy and are therefore exposed to increased risk and attacks—to 50 organizations. These organizations include non-profits. Human Rights organizations, healthcare organizations, and political parties.
Reuniting Families
The International Crescent Red Cross (ICRC) worked with the Microsoft Partner ELCA to help reunite refugees who have lost family members during a humanitarian crisis. Building on Microsoft security solutions based on privacy by design, the ICRC together with ELCA, digitized the registration process and helped to reconnect refugees to their families.
Volunteering for access
In a long-year tradition, a Microsoft team is using its volunteer days to support the paralympic race in St. Moritz with 120 other volunteers. The engagement was organized by Disability at Microsoft Switzerland, an employee network around the topic of disability and accessibility.
Advance sustainability
We’ve outlined ambitious climate commitments and detailed plans to achieve them, and we help our customers and partners drive their sustainability initiatives and energy transition, co-creating solutions that support the journey to net zero.
Tech for Sustainability
Microsoft Switzerland, together with partners EY and Global Compacts, initiated the Tech for Sustainability initiative. The initiative brings together people and organizations to co-create a positive sustainability impact enabled by driving and shaping critical key themes for technology and sustainability.
Climeworks Partnership
In 2022, Swiss company Climeworks and Microsoft take their collaboration one step further by Microsoft becoming Climeworks first long-term carbon removal supplier. The two companies signed a 10-year carbon removal offtake agreement, where Climeworks will permanently remove 10’000 tons of CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere on Microsoft’s behalf. This forward-looking commitment is one of the largest DAC agreements ever signed and proof of Microsoft’s conviction of both Climework’s technology and ability to scale.
UBS Digital Sustainability
In 2022, the Swiss based bank UBS will—in line with its sustainability goals—move certain technology platform workloads from its on-premises and private cloud servers to Microsoft Azure. In some use cases, this has resulted in the energy consumption of these workloads to be reduced by up to 30%.
Together, UBS and Microsoft also co-developed a Carbon Aware API, an open-source solution that provides recommendations on how to schedule workloads that require heavy compute power during times when clean, renewable or low-carbon sources of electricity are most available. They then provided their solution to the Green Software Foundation so it could be shared with large and small companies around the world.
Cloud for Sustainability
With our new Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability solution—available in Switzerland—we can help our customers record and manage emissions in order to achieve their sustainability goals more quickly. We partner with companies like ABB and their ABB Ability™ platform to get the data customers need to monitor and optimize their energy use and CO2 footprint, managing power systems, and making ongoing decisions to improve business efficiency.
Earn trust
Together with our 4,600 partners, we strive to give customers in Switzerland peace of mind through our commitment to privacy, cybersecurity, digital safety, the responsible use of AI, and transparency.
Innovate Switzerland
In 2022, together with partners, Microsoft Switzerland initiated the Innovate Switzerland community. The Innovate Switzerland Community wants to promote exchange among pioneers, advance the digital transformation with targeted proposals, and support Switzerland from the bottom up in building a responsible data economy. With the Innovate Switzerland Community, Microsoft also wants to promote discussion about the use of technologies such as cloud infrastructures.
Confidential Computing
Microsoft empowers Confidential Computing for Swiss businesses to more privacy and security. Together with the Swiss Microsoft Partner Decentriq and Intel, Microsoft is a founding member of the Confidential Computing Consortium, an alliance to accelerate the adoption of trusted execution environment (TEE) technologies and standards. Decentriq is changing the way enterprise customers create data ecosystems and analyze data with their partners by providing a secure and privacy-assured computing environment.
Upskilling Security
Microsoft launched its cybersecurity skills campaign in Switzerland. With this initiative, Microsoft is combating the cybersecurity skills shortage in Switzerland and is helping to ensure that there are enough skilled workers to ward off the cyber threats of today and tomorrow. The program provides various measures, including the promotion of women in IT security jobs, free cybersecurity training, and cooperation with local educational institutions.
Digital Defense Report
Our Digital Defense Report provides new details and insights on attacks and on increasing cyber aggression coming from authoritarian leaders around the world. The report also includes recommendations for how people and organizations can protect themselves from attacks.
You can read our full Swiss Impact Summary 2023 here:
Together, we can achieve more for Switzerland
We’re proud of our progress, but know there is much more to do and that it will require all of us working together. Join us.
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