Microsoft and Boeing team up to streamline aviation through big data and AI

Cortana is set to fly the friendly skies thanks to a new partnership between Microsoft and Boeing, bring the Microsoft intelligent assistant closer still to the domain of its namesake. Microsoft and Boeing announced a partnership today to move Boeing's suite of digital aviation offerings over to Azure, and the end result is that said servers are going to begin to get smarter, according to Microsoft. "Centralizing Boeing's digital aviation applications on Azure will allow Boeing to analyze a large set of data provided from multiple sources," a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch via email, explaining how the partnership is set to make Boeing's offerings better for airlines that use them. "Boeing could use the Cortana Intelligence Suite to help airline operators more effectively manage inventory, more efficiently schedule pilots and cabin crews, or proactively schedule maintenance that might otherwise delay a flight based on the data intelligence they gather from the cloud." That means that first, this is a very early partnership – the focus here is on the potential to expedite certain tasks in the future.