Reliance Industries (RIL) on Monday announced partnership of its subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm with Microsoft in the technology space, including creation on cloud solutions. As per the partnership, Jio will leverage the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to develop innovative cloud solutions focused on the needs of Indian businesses. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India will also have access to a range of cloud-based productivity, collaboration and business applications including Office 365, enabling them to compete more effectively in the Indian marketplace.
“This is a unique and first-of-its-kind partnership that brings the capabilities of two large companies focused on creating significant value to Indian enterprises — small and large. By working together to develop innovative and affordable cloud-enabled digital solutions built around Jio’s world-class digital infrastructure and Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, we will accelerate the digitization of the Indian economy and make Indian businesses globally competitive,” said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries during 42nd AGM on Monday.
Jio will also set up data centers in locations across India, consisting of next-generation compute, storage and networking capabilities, and Microsoft will deploy its Azure platform in these data centers to support Jio’s offerings. Further, 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.
The company will initially set up two data centers, which can house IT equipment consuming up to 7.5 MW of power, in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. These are targeted to be fully operational in calendar year 2020, added a press statement by Jio.
Due to the solutions developed by Jio through the Microsoft Azure platform, Indian startups will have access to efficient and affordable cloud infrastructure and platform services. Jio will further execute 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.
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“We have an incredible opportunity to apply advances in technology to help organizations across India innovate and grow,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “The combination of Jio’s leading 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.”
Written with IANS inputs
