Microsoft, Jio empowering MSMEs in India, says Satya Nadella

New Delhi, Oct 26 (KNN) Microsoft is empowering Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in India in their Cloud journey with Reliance Jio, said the company's CEO Satya Nadella.

Mukesh Ambani on the occasion of RIL’s 42nd annual general meeting in August this year had called teaming up with Microsoft “a unique and first-of-its-kind partnership that brings the capabilities of two large companies focused on creating significant value to Indian enterprises — small and large.”

As per the partnership, Jio will leverage the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to develop innovative cloud solutions focused on the needs of Indian businesses.

"Organisations today need a distributed computing fabric to meet their real world operational sovereignty and regulatory needs," Nadella said during the company's earnings call after posting $33.1 billion in revenue with $10.7 billion in net income (an increase of 21 per cent) for its first quarter of fiscal year 2020.

"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," Nadella added.

Microsoft along with Jio will offer small businesses with cloud-based productivity, collaboration, and business applications including Office 365.

“To run their (MSMEs) business, a bundle of connectivity, productivity and automation tools costs a micro and small business between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 per month currently. For a similar service, customers abroad pay over 1,000 dollars per month. Today we are taking the bold step of giving these applications along with our connectivity to small businesses for 1/10th the cost starting at Rs 1,500 per month,” Mukesh Ambani had said.

Jio will set up data centres in locations across India, consisting of next-generation compute, storage and networking capabilities, and 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 the states of 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 Nadella.

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