Reliance and Microsoft to come together for cloud infrastructure

In the 42^nd annual general meeting (AGM) held recently, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries announced that RIL has entered into a partnership with Microsoft.

Microsoft Technologies will power the data centers setup by the Indian conglomerate in India. Making the announcement, Mukesh Ambani said, “Today I am privileged to announce that Jio and Microsoft have entered into a globally unique long-term alliance to accelerate the digital transformation of our country.”

As per reports, Reliance Jio will completely shift all its internal workforce to Microsoft Office 365. This will include all the cloud-based collaboration tools. Also, RIL will port all the current software applications that are used within the company to Microsoft Azure Cloud.

It is said that as a part of this agreement, Jio is planning to set up datacenters in various parts of India, consisting of next-generation compute, network and storage capabilities. In order to support Jio’s offerings, Microsoft will deploy its Azure platform in these datacenters.

With an aim to be fully operational in year 2020, the initial two datacenters that can house IT equipment up to 7.5 MW of power, are to be put up in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Along with this, chairman Mukesh Ambani announced free connectivity for startups. The firm is planning to take away the cost of connectivity and cloud infrastructure completely for budding startups.

In the AGM recently held, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft announced through a video message, that this long- term partnership combines the power of their technology including Azure, Azure Al and Office 365 with Jio’s digital solutions and connectivity. He added that the two firms will come together to offer comprehensive technology solutions to SMBs (Small and medium businesses) across India.

Back in 2016, Jio shook the entire Indian telecom industry by launching free voice calls and cheap data plans. This led to a massive price war all over India. It is possible that Ambani’s ideology with the upcoming Azure partnership is price- conscious on a similar note.