Microsoft and Vodafone jointly announced a comprehensive 10-year strategic partnership through official statements on their respective websites. This collaboration leverages their unique capabilities to provide scalable digital platforms to over 300 million businesses, public sector organizations, and consumers across Europe and Africa.
In this partnership, the companies will collaborate to enhance Vodafone’s customer experience by implementing Microsoft’s generative AI, expanding Vodafone’s managed IoT connectivity platform on a hyper-scale, creating innovative digital and financial services tailored for businesses, with a specific focus on SMEs across Europe and Africa, and restructuring the global data center cloud strategy.
Vodafone plans a $1.5 billion investment over the next decade in collaborative cloud and AI services with Microsoft. Microsoft, in turn, will leverage Vodafone’s fixed and mobile connectivity services. As part of the collaboration, Microsoft will also invest in Vodafone’s managed IoT connectivity platform, set to become an independent business by April 2024. This move aims to attract new partners, customers, and foster platform expansion. The partnership will create digital services utilizing cutting-edge generative AI technology for a personalized customer experience, all guided by Vodafone’s ethical and privacy-focused AI framework.
Vodafone Group Chief Executive, Margherita Della Valle, expressed: “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.”
Microsoft Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella, stated: “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.”
The companies have identified five key areas of collaboration in Generative AI, Scaling IoT, Africa Digital Acceleration, Enterprise growth, and Cloud transformation.
