India’s leading mobile network operator Reliance Jio has joined hands with Microsoft, to accelerate the digital transformation journeys of Indian enterprises and help them become globally competitive.
Announced by Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani at the Reliance AGM 2019, the partnership will bring a network of Microsoft Azure cloud-powered data centres to India.
Ambani said that the customer base of Jio has crossed the 340 million users, with over 10 million new users signing up every month.
“Today I am priviledged to announce that Jio and Microsoft have entered into a globally unique long-term alliance to accelerate the digital tranformation of our country,” said Ambani.
“When we put these two pieces together, we now have the capabilities to develop India-native solutions including speech recognition, and natural language understanding for all major Indian languages and dialects.”
As part of the Jio-Microsoft partnership, the power of Azure, Azure AI, and Office 365 will be combined with Jio’s connectivity and digital solutions.
Over a conference call at the Reliance AGM, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said “Together, we will offer a comprehensive technology solution from compute to storage to connectivity and productivity for small and medium size businesses everywhere in the country.”
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There will be new cloud data centers in the country, so that more of Jio customers can use the tools and platforms required to develop their own digital capability.
Satya Nadella added that Jio and Microsoft will provide Office 365 to their customers so that more enterprises can empower their employees with modern workplace and productivity.
Furthermore, Mukesh Ambani also said that Jio will support the startups with cloud technology and connectivity at no cost.
Apart from the Microsoft partnership, the Reliance chairman announced that Jio’s IoT platform will be commercially available in beginning of 2020, and the launch of Jio Fiber Services on 5th September 2019.
The Premium JIOFIBER customers will be able to watch the movies at home on the same day they are released in theatres. Called Jio First Day First Show, the new service will be available in the middle of 2020.
