Vodafone and Microsoft announce a 10-year strategic partnership to promote AI, digital services and cloud services

Vodafone and Microsoft have announced a 10-year strategic partnership to improve digital services for more than 300 million consumers, businesses and public sector organizations across Europe and Africa.

This collaboration will focus on transforming Vodafone’s customer experience with Microsoft’s generative artificial intelligence, scaling Vodafone’s managed IoT connectivity platform, and developing new digital and financial services, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe and Africa. In addition, the partnership will involve a complete overhaul of Vodafone’s global data center strategy with the move to Microsoft Azure.

Over the next decade, Vodafone plans to invest $1.5 billion in cloud and artificial intelligence services developed jointly with Microsoft, which will also use Vodafone’s communications services. An important aspect of this partnership is the investment in Vodafone’s managed IoT communications platform, which is set to become a separate business by April 2024. This new structure aims to drive growth by connecting more devices, vehicles and machines.