Microsoft Azure has just scored another big victory in the fierce cloud battle for big-name customers. The software giant has just signed new Azure customers, including wealth management firm UBS, logistic giant Maersk, Hershey's, Fruit of the Loom, and Geico. Microsoft made the huge announcement at this week's "Digital Difference" event in New York City.

The Redmond-based software company has been battling Amazon Web Services (AWS), the current leader in public cloud computing, for big-name corporate customers. Microsoft Azure and AWS are both leading cloud service providers that offer huge pools of computers, storage, and networking for business customers that has no plans to build their own data centers, the Geek Wire reported.

And this week, Microsoft Azure has just scored a huge victory. The software company's cloud computing service has just won another big cloud computing contract, which includes some of the biggest names in today's business world. UBS, Maersk, Hershey, Fruit of the Loom, and Geico, all have made some big announcement that they will be using Microsoft's cloud infrastructure in their own digital transformations.

First and big in the Microsoft Azure's list is the Danish-based Maersk, a global transport, and logistics giant. The Danish company has just announced that it will be using Azure cloud services to revolutionize its supply-chain management and global trade. Maersk is a big win for Microsoft with its 88,000 employees working and massive global reach (around 130 countries).

Another one is the Swiss-based UBS, which currently the world's largest wealth manager. The financial service giant is also turning to Microsoft Azure to power its risk-management platform and to run extensive computing on demand.

With Microsoft Azure, UBS will now be able to improve calculations time by about 100 percent and also saved 40 percent in infrastructure costs. Additionally, UBS also announced plans to move more business applications into the Azure cloud platform.

Microsoft has been pushing hard to compete with the likes of AWS in the public cloud computing, and the company is rolling their efforts into a new initiative, which they called Digital Difference. This big event, which focused on the rapid pace of cloud technology innovation, featured some IT discussions from Microsoft executives, technology researchers, Microsoft clients and technology partners.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has just announced a major update to its Azure Media Player, the company's cloud-based streaming technology. The newly released version Azure Media Players 2.1 will be adding monetization option to the company's streaming service, allowing its Azure customers to insert advertisements into their on-demand videos, the eWeek reported.

The software company has also added a new auto-scaling feature, allowing customers to monitor their streaming workloads and to better scale their Azure cloud resources. For more about the latest development on Azure Media Player, check out the company's announcement posted on Microsoft Azure website.

In addition to the big Azure Media Player update, Microsoft has also announced a major update for its Azure CDN. The Azure service will now gain support for Custom Domain SSL, a security-enhancing feature that safeguards data in transit. Microsoft has also enabled a one-click integration with other Azure services (Streaming Endpoint, Storage, and Web App), thus simplifying the process of configuring the CDN when used with other Azure services.

In other Azure-related news, Microsoft Azure is previewing a more simplified document protection with Azure Information Protection, a document classification and information protection service in which access restrictions travel with documents. For more about the new document protection feature, check out the Microsoft Enterprise and Security Blog.

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Tags Microsoft, Azure, Microsoft Azure, Cloud, Cloud Services, AWS, Amazon Web Services, Computing, Enterprise, Software, Cloud Computing