Powering global trade with real‑time intelligence: How MSC Is advancing its business with SQL Server 2025

Mediterranean Shipping Company is the world’s largest container shipping company, operating more than 1,000 vessels across global trade routes and relying on highly available, intelligent systems to keep cargo and commerce moving every day.

With real‑time data mirroring into Microsoft Fabric and built‑in AI, MSC can analyze live operational data and uncover insights faster.

SQL Server 2025 improves performance and reliability while reducing storage costs by 20%, enabling MSC to operate and innovate at scale.

As the world’s largest container shipping company, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) operates at a scale where technology directly shapes global commerce. With more than 1,000 vessels moving cargo across worldwide trade routes every day, MSC depends on data systems that are always available, highly performant, and increasingly intelligent.

The business challenge: Unifying a distributed data estate

MSC runs one of the most geographically distributed IT environments in the world. For years, data was generated and managed locally across countries and regions, making it difficult to consolidate information and derive insights at a global level.

From an operational standpoint, this decentralization created friction. Employees and shipping partners often worked on different systems, using different applications and devices, with limited real time visibility into the same data. As a result, it could take significant time to bring information together, align teams, and turn raw data into actionable insight.

This fragmentation also slowed down analytics. Traditional data consolidation processes meant insights were often based on data that was hours—or even days—old. For a business that depends on precise coordination across vessels, ports, partners, and customers, delayed visibility limited MSC’s ability to respond quickly and plan effectively.

“With traditional ETL processes, we were getting our data every six hours, sometimes even days later. That meant decisions were made with data that was not generated right away.”

Javier Villegas, IT Director for Database Administration and Business Intelligence Services, MSC

“With traditional ETL processes, we were getting our data every six hours, sometimes even days later,” said Javier Villegas, IT Director for Database Administration and Business Intelligence Services at MSC. “That meant decisions were made with data that was not generated right away.”

MSC recognized that to operate more effectively on a global scale, it needed to bring employees and partners onto a shared data platform—one that could unify its distributed data estate, synchronize teams, and provide real time visibility into the same operational data from anywhere in the world.

Why SQL Server 2025

MSC upgraded its data platform with SQL Server 2025 to modernize its mission critical systems and enable a more intelligent, real-time analytics foundation. A core capability is real-time data mirroring from SQL Server 2025 into Microsoft Fabric, which allows operational data to flow into analytics platforms in seconds rather than hours.

This real-time foundation enables MSC to analyze live operational conditions, identify patterns as they emerge, and shape decisions for tomorrow using today’s data.

Built in AI and smart search inside the database engine

What differentiates SQL Server 2025 for MSC is not just speed, but intelligence. AI is no longer an add on layered on top of data—it is embedded directly into the database engine.

“Now, with SQL Server 2025, artificial intelligence is part of the database engine. It’s not an add on anymore,” Javier said. “That opens a lot of opportunities for us to build new kinds of applications that were very complex before.”

With built-in support for vector data types, semantic search, and embeddings, MSC is exploring new ways to interact with its data. Instead of relying solely on rigid queries, teams can begin to search and explore data more naturally, uncovering insights that were previously difficult to access.

“What we would like to do in the future is being able to do smart searches in our databases,” Javier explained. “With AI, with vector search, with embeddings, the searching capabilities in the database engine will grow tremendously.”

These capabilities allow MSC to envision applications where users can ask richer questions, find relevant information faster, and gain deeper understanding from large and complex datasets.

For MSC’s developers, SQL Server 2025 enables a shift to event‑driven applications that respond to data changes in real time. With built‑in support for modern data types and change event streaming, teams can move beyond batch processing and keep analytics and downstream systems continuously in sync with live operational data.

Operational efficiency at global scale

SQL Server 2025 also delivers measurable efficiency gains across MSC’s database estate. Features such as backups on secondary replicas and enhanced compression reduce pressure on primary systems and lower storage costs.

“In SQL Server 2025, we have been able to reduce the storage cost by 20 percent using the new compression method,” said Sylvain Ferron, Head of Database Administration at MSC.

Performance enhancements such as optimized locking to allow more concurrent access to the database and query store on secondary replicas to improve query performance diagnostics further support MSC’s always on shipping applications, ensuring reliability at scale.

Business outcomes and the road ahead

By adopting SQL Server 2025, MSC is moving from delayed reporting to real time, intelligent decision making. Built in AI, smart search, and semantic capabilities position the company to build richer applications, improve analytics, and unlock new insights directly within its data platform.

“SQL Server plays a key role in powering our systems, enabling us to operate at scale and deliver on our promise to customers everywhere,” Javier concluded. “As we continue to innovate, we see SQL Server 2025 and Microsoft Fabric shaping the future of how we work with data.”

Discover more about Mediterranean Shipping Company on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube.