Danfoss, Baltimore, Md., entered into a collaboration with Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., to bring domain expertise in refrigeration and HVAC to the cloud.

With this collaboration, Danfoss extends its application expertise and becomes a recognized independent software vendor (ISV). The cloud-based services will enable food retailers to reduce food loss and energy consumption and optimize overall store performance.

The Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure will provide scalability and data security. Meanwhile, the Danfoss Cooling Cloud Suite enables around-the-clock full transparency. The cloud-based services increase operational efficiency by processing and analyzing data from refrigeration, HVAC, lighting and other assets. The data is managed in a secure way and delivers insight to the food retail store in easy-to-use user interfaces.

“We bring more than 80 years of domain expertise and leadership in cooling and refrigeration solutions to a world-class cloud solution,” says Dr. Jan-Hendrik Sewing, senior vice president electronic controllers and services division and global head of Danfoss food retail vertical. “The Danfoss Cooling Cloud Suite will help food retail stores focus on their core business by optimizing and automating current processes as well as providing actionable insights by benchmarking stores to identify top and low performers. This will lead to reduced operational costs and energy consumption and an increase in sales and marketing effectiveness.”

With the Danfoss Cooling Cloud Suite, food retailers will be able to eliminate up to 80% of the time used to manage issues with store equipment, as the connected assets are monitored and analyzed ensuring immediate action in case of compressor failure, refrigerant leaks or other issues. They will also realize up to 40% reduction in food loss, as temperature is automatically monitored and alarms are sent to the store if temperature thresholds are above limit. Finally, stores can realize above 30% total net savings energy consumption by peak load shavings and reducing energy consumption from lights, refrigeration, HVAC and other electrical appliances.

“With Danfoss’ application expertise, we see a great opportunity to add value in the food retail sector,” says Paul Maher, general manager of industry experiences at Microsoft. “With Danfoss, we bring one of the strongest IIoT use cases to date in refrigeration to our customers. The implementation brings tangible value to food retail today and other industries in the near future. We look forward to supporting our joint customers meet their efficiency and sustainability goals.”

“The collaboration with Microsoft will deliver tangible results to both existing and new customers of Danfoss and Microsoft. We will build on this collaboration and continue to invest in new cloud services to the industries we have served successfully for more than 80 years with the ambition to reduce food waste and energy consumption,” says Jürgen Fischer, president of Danfoss Cooling.