August 12, 2019
The alliance will accelerate innovation to create more affordable offerings for Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) and startups
India’s SMB market is one of the world’s largest, and continues to grow significantly. It plays a key role in economic growth and job creation
Businesses will gain access to best-in-class technologies like data analytics, AI, cognitive services, blockchain, IoT and edge computing
Jio to install one of the world’s largest blockchain networks across the country over the next 12 months with tens of thousands of nodes
American multinational technology company, Microsoft Corp, has entered a strategic partnership with Reliance Jio to accelerate the digital transformation of India’s economy and society, as per an announcement on August 12. The 10-year strategic alliance will create affordable offerings for Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) and startups. By combining the world-class capabilities of both companies, this partnership will yield connectivity, computing, and storage solutions, along with other essential technology services and applications.
India currently has one of the world’s largest SMB markets, which will directly benefit from this partnership. Grassroots enterprises play a vital role in India’s economic aspirations, both in terms of enterprise income and job creation. Access to a wide range of cloud-based productivity, collaboration, and business applications will be instrumental in enabling these SMBs to compete more effectively in the Indian marketplace. They will gain access to a new range of solutions for one-stop IT capabilities, allowing front-end applications on mobile devices, desktops and other tools.
The partnership will allow Jio to build new custom solutions on Microsoft Azure for existing users of Microsoft technology platforms. There is great potential for the two to leverage each other’s offerings, in order to provide businesses with affordable access to revolutionary technologies like data analytics, AI, cognitive services, blockchain, IoT and edge computing. Similarly, Microsoft’s speech and language cognitive services provides user support in 13 Indian languages, with the flexibility to add more languages down the line, while internal workforces can leverage Microsoft 365’s cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools.
Currently, Jio is en route to installing one of the largest Blockchain networks across the country over the next 12 months. There are many ways in which these new offerings create more avenues for greater innovation, deeper customer relationships, and exponential growth for their businesses.
In a country as diverse as India, the power of digital can be a strong uniting factor for its 1.3 billion people. This strategic alliance will facilitate solutions around connectivity, computing, storage and technological services, ultimately redefining how process efficiency can be optimised across the board.