Reliance Jio Infocomm and Microsoft have signed a 10-year agreement aimed at accelerating the digital transformation of the Indian economy that will span the broad ecosystem of parent firm Reliance Industries, including its existing and new businesses.
The partnership combines the capabilities of both companies to offer a detailed set of solutions comprising connectivity, computing, storage solutions, and other technology services and applications essential for Indian businesses.
They aim to enhance the adoption of leading technologies like data analytics, AI, cognitive services, blockchain, Internet of Things, and edge computing among small and medium enterprises to make them ready to compete and grow, while helping accelerate technology-led GDP growth in India and driving adoption of next-generation technology solutions at scale.
Through the partnership, Jio will provide its internal workforce with cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools available with Microsoft 365 and will migrate its non-network applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Also, Jio’s connectivity infrastructure will promote the adoption of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform within its growing ecosystem of startups, as part of Jio’s cloud-first strategy.
Jio will set up data centres in locations across India, consisting of next-generation compute, storage and networking capabilities, and Microsoft will deploy its Azure platform in these data centres to support Jio’s offerings. These are targeted to be fully operational in calendar year 2020.
Jio will be executing on its vision of integrated speech and computer vision solutions for Indian customers by working together with Microsoft to develop solutions that support major Indian languages and dialects, which will promote the adoption of technology across all cross-sections of Indian society.
“This is part of our efforts to further deepen the use of technology on scale to all Indians,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. “This will be a showcase to the world to demonstrate tech-enabled value creation that is both exponential and inclusive.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the combination of Jio’s connectivity and digital solutions with Azure, Azure AI and Office 365 will bring powerful tools and platforms for compute, storage, productivity and more to millions of businesses in the country.
