On Thursday, Vodafone Business and Microsoft announced a new five-year strategic partnership intended to support small and medium-sized businesses across Europe, on their digital transformation journeys.
Together, the technology companies will deliver new end-to-end cloud-based services using 5G, edge computing, and IoT capabilities, to enable growth and make more innovative tools for hybrid work.
Mark Allinson, Strategy and Development Director at Vodafone Business said that for businesses to become truly digital, they need networks, security, cloud, and streamlined workflows. Allinson added that with Microsoft, the company plans to provide solutions that can rapidly be deployed and easily managed.
Supporting the new nature of work
The plan aims to support new ways of working and constantly improve business processes. The move, for Allinson, marks another step towards Vodafone’s goal of becoming an SME Champion and a platform-based business.
The new deal builds on the two companies’ existing relationships and will give customers an easy-to-use, flexible, secure, and future-ready cloud experience. The system may be used by organizations transitioning their operations to run outside of legacy infrastructure with professional and managed services that bring the cloud, network, and security together for optimized performances.
The combination of Vodafone’s global reach and leading position in emerging connectivity technologies with Microsoft’s leading cloud platforms will allow Vodafone customers to have direct Microsoft 365 access.
Co-innovating
The agreement says that the companies will collaborate to innovate new offerings in areas like the Internet of Things (IoT) and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) to bring the benefits of Mobile private Networks and 5G to life.
The first area of collaboration is Mixed Reality where Vodafone Business’ dedicated edge computing services combine with Microsoft’s software and HoloLens 2 headset to help organizations improve the remote working experience while creating a smoother onboarding and training experience for employees.
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