Microsoft Announces Azure-focused Partnership With India’s Jio

Microsoft is announcing a new Azure and cloud-focused partnership with one of India’s biggest companies, Reliance Jio. Microsoft’s partnership with Jio is one of the latest additions to the list of large companies joining Azure.

The 10-year-long partnership between Microsoft and Jio will see Jio moving all of its non-networking applications and services to the Microsoft cloud. It will also be moving its internal and workforce to Microsoft 365.

Microsoft wants to reach all the small businesses in India and make its cloud offerings more accessible via Jio as part of the partnership. Microsoft says the company will offer a comprehensive technology solution for small to medium-sized businesses in India, ranging from connectivity to compute and storage offerings. The cloud services will be offered to these businesses for as little as $21 (Rs 1,500), reports TechCrunch.

Jio will also be building new custom solutions on Microsoft Azure for larger enterprises in the country. The company will also be leveraging Microsoft’s speech and language cognitive services for its device ecosystem, providing support for 13 different Indian languages.

The partnership is another big win for Redmond, providing the cloud for one of India’s biggest companies is a big deal, and it’s only one of the few large partnerships Microsoft has struck in the last year or so.