Microsoft, Jio Bringing Power Of Cloud To Small Businesses In India: Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that the company is empowering small businesses in India in its Cloud journey with Reliance Jio. "Organisations today need a distributed computing fabric to meet their real world operational sovereignty and regulatory needs," Mr Nadella said in an earnings call, after Microsoft reported a revenue of $33.1 billion and a net income of $10.7 billion (an increase of 21 per cent) for the first quarter of fiscal year 2020.

Reliance Industries had in August announced a partnership of its telecom arm Reliance Jio Infocomm with Microsoft in the technology space, including creation on Cloud solutions. As part of the agreement, Jio would leverage the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform to develop innovative solutions focused on the needs of Indian businesses.

"In India, we're bringing the power of Microsoft Cloud to millions of small businesses through our partnership with Jio, one of the largest mobile carriers in the country," said Mr Nadella.

Jio will set up data centres in locations across India, consisting of next-generation compute, storage and networking capabilities. Microsoft will deploy its Azure platform in these data centres to support Jio's offerings.

The initial two data centres, which can house IT equipment consuming up to 7.5 MW of power, are being set up in Gujarat and Maharashtra. These are targeted to be fully operational in 2020.

"Every Fortune 500 customer today is on a Cloud migration journey, and we are making it faster and easier," said Mr Nadella.

Due to the solutions developed by Jio through the Microsoft Azure platform, Indian start-ups will have access to efficient and affordable cloud infrastructure and platform services, enabling them to develop innovative products and services faster and more cost-effectively.

Small and medium businesses in India also will 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, the company said.

The Microsoft CEO said the company is re-imagining customers' data estates in the Cloud era with new limitless capabilities.

"Azure AI (artificial intelligence) now has more than 20,000 customers, and more than 85 per cent of the Fortune 100 companies are using Azure AI in the last 12 months," he said.