Vodafone to invest £1.18bn in 10-year Microsoft partnership to combine AI and IoT expertise

Vodafone and Microsoft have joined forces in a 10-year collaboration partnership to develop a new AI and IoT connectivity platform and revamping Vodafone’s global data centre cloud strategy. 

Vodafone will invest £1.18 billion over the next decade in  cloud and customer-focused AI services developed with Microsoft.  Microsoft will use Vodafone’s fixed and mobile connectivity services.

Microsoft will invest in Vodafone’s managed IoT connectivity platform, which will become a separate, standalone business in April. The new company will attract seek to new partners and customers, driving growth in applications and expanding the platform to connect more devices, vehicles, and machines.

The digital services generated by the new partnership will AI technology to provide a differentiated customer experience across multiple channels .

“Vodafone has made a bold commitment to the digital future of Europe and Africa”

Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group chief executive(main pic), 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.”

“This new generation of AI will unlock massive new opportunities for every organisation and every industry around the world,”

“This new generation of AI will unlock massive new opportunities for every organisation and every industry around the world,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft (main pic). “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 five key areas of collaboration are: 

• Generative AI: To increase customer satisfaction, the companies will apply Microsoft Azure OpenAI to deliver a hyper-personalised experiences across all Vodafone customer touchpoints, including its digital assistant TOBi ( Vodafone employees will also be able to leverage the AI capabilities of Microsoft Copilot to transform working practices, boost productivity and improve digital efficiency.

• Scaling IoT: Microsoft intends to invest in Vodafone’s new, standalone global IoT-managed connectivity platform, which connects 175 million devices and platforms worldwide. Vodafone also plans to become part of the Azure ecosystem making the IoT platform available to a vast developer and third-party community using open APIs.

• Africa digital acceleration: Microsoft intends to help further scale M-Pesa, already the largest financial technology platform in Africa, by housing it on Azure and enabling the launch of new cloud-native applications. The companies are also launching a purpose-led program that seeks to enrich the lives of 100 million consumers and 1 million SMEs across the African continent. The goal is to enhance digital literacy, skilling and youth outreach programs, as well as offer digital services to the underserved SME market. The partnership aims to boost financial services innovation, building a community of certified developers.

  

• Enterprise growth: Vodafone will extend its commitment to distributing Microsoft services, including Microsoft Azure, security solutions and modern work offerings such as Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile, as part of its strategy to become Europe’s leading platform for business. This enables business customers to deploy Microsoft’s cloud-based services at pace with low adoption and running costs, as well as support the estimated 24 million SMEs across Europe through the provision of a managed platform that grows with their business.=

Cloud transformation: Vodafone will accelerate its cloud transformation bymodernising its data centres on Microsoft Azure. This will improve its responsiveness to customers, while simplifying and reducing the operational costs of its IT estate. As a result, Vodafone will be able to replace multiple physical data centres with virtual ones across Europe, simplifying and reducing the operational costs of its IT estate, as well as reducing energy requirements and helping deliver against its sustainable business strategy.

Luc Vidal, Head of M2M/IoT Business and Mobility at international connectivity enabler, BICS  commented:

“Vodafone’s partnership with Microsoft shows the sustained growth we are seeing for IoT services and will likely only fuel increased attention in ‘connectivity twins’. They’re the missing piece enterprises need to virtually clone IoT devices, including their connectivity components, for a single real-time view of their end-to-end IoT solutions, along with all device and application components. Digital twins turn device-centric information into a business visualization allowing more efficient decisions.”

“As the volume of IoT devices continues to ramp up, these connectivity twins will be essential for enterprises to troubleshoot problems faster, better predict downtime and maintenance, facilitate end-to-end security, and improve overall service quality. Without these, businesses deploying IoT will effectively be blind, lacking real control over their systems and devices.

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