Vodafone and Microsoft have announced a significant 10-year strategic partnership for enhancing digital services and customer experience for over 300 million businesses, public sector entities and consumers across Europe, the UK and Africa. The carrier is investing $1.5 billion (approx. £1.18 billion) over the next decade in cloud and AI services developed with Microsoft. The partnership's core areas include generative AI, scaling IoT (Internet of Things), accelerating digital initiatives in Africa, enterprise growth, and cloud transformation.
Margherita Della Valle, CEO of Vodafone Group, said:
“Today, Vodafone has made a bold commitment to the digital future of Europe and Africa. This unique strategic partnership with Microsoft will accelerate the digital transformation of our business customers, particularly small and medium-sized companies, and step up the quality of customer experience for consumers.”
One of the key aspects of this partnership is Microsoft's investment in Vodafone's managed IoT (Internet of Things) connectivity platform. This platform, which is due to become a standalone business by April 2024, is a significant part of Vodafone's service offering. The investment from Microsoft is not just financial, rather, also a strategic move to harness Vodafone's extensive fixed and mobile connectivity services.
Commenting on the partnership, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said:
“This new generation of AI will unlock massive new opportunities for every organisation and every industry around the world. We are delighted that together with Vodafone we will apply the latest cloud and AI technology to enhance the customer experience of hundreds of millions of people and businesses across Africa and Europe, build new products and services, and accelerate the company’s transition to the cloud.”
Apart from IOT, Microsoft will also integrate Microsoft Copilot as well as Azure cloud services into Vodafone's customer service "TOBi" to offer hyper-personalised experiences. Vodafone also plans to widen it's distribution of Microsoft's services that includes Azure, Microsoft Teams Mobile, and more, targeting 24 million SMEs in Europe. The carrier will also modernize it's data centers on Microsoft Azure enhancing customer experience and reducing IT costs.
Whether or not the partnership will actually be beneficial to the customers remains to be seen as tech partnerships are often focused on optimizing internal processes.
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