<p>London: Vodafone has agreed a 10-year partnership with Microsoft to bring generative AI, digital, enterprise and cloud services to more than 300 million businesses and consumers across its European and African markets.</p><p>The British company will invest $1.5 billion in customer-focused AI developed with Microsoft's Azure OpenAI and Copilot technologies, it said, and will replace physical data centres with cheaper and scalable Azure cloud services.</p><p>Microsoft will in turn become an equity investor in Vodafone's managed IoT (Internet of Things) platform when it is spun out as a standalone business by April 2024, and help scale Vodafone's mobile financial platform in Africa.</p><p>Vodafone's Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic said Microsoft's leadership in AI, underpinned by its OpenAI partnership, would transform the telco's customer services.</p><p>"That's the part that is really going to catch each and every one of our customers," he said on Tuesday, adding that a Microsoft AI-underpinned TOBi chatbot would provide more consistent and intelligent responses to queries.</p><p>Microsoft's Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff said Vodafone's strength in IoT and financial services were strategically important.</p><p>"The IoT assets are critical in helping us address the sustainability needs of so many of our customers in hard-to-abate sectors," he said.</p><p>Microsoft deploys "digital twins" to model manufacturing environments so that process improvements can be tested in the cloud.</p><p>"Vodafone's IoT stack allows us to go into those environments, model the environment, create large-scale data stores, and use AI to help customers meet their sustainability goals," he said.</p><p>Vodafone's M-PESA mobile money platform, which operates in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and other African countries, shared the same objectives as Microsoft in the region, such as building digital literacy.</p><p>"We are excited to bring generative AI capabilities to help customers make more intelligent financial decisions," he said.</p>
<p>London: Vodafone has agreed a 10-year partnership with Microsoft to bring generative AI, digital, enterprise and cloud services to more than 300 million businesses and consumers across its European and African markets.</p><p>The British company will invest $1.5 billion in customer-focused AI developed with Microsoft's Azure OpenAI and Copilot technologies, it said, and will replace physical data centres with cheaper and scalable Azure cloud services.</p><p>Microsoft will in turn become an equity investor in Vodafone's managed IoT (Internet of Things) platform when it is spun out as a standalone business by April 2024, and help scale Vodafone's mobile financial platform in Africa.</p><p>Vodafone's Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic said Microsoft's leadership in AI, underpinned by its OpenAI partnership, would transform the telco's customer services.</p><p>"That's the part that is really going to catch each and every one of our customers," he said on Tuesday, adding that a Microsoft AI-underpinned TOBi chatbot would provide more consistent and intelligent responses to queries.</p><p>Microsoft's Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff said Vodafone's strength in IoT and financial services were strategically important.</p><p>"The IoT assets are critical in helping us address the sustainability needs of so many of our customers in hard-to-abate sectors," he said.</p><p>Microsoft deploys "digital twins" to model manufacturing environments so that process improvements can be tested in the cloud.</p><p>"Vodafone's IoT stack allows us to go into those environments, model the environment, create large-scale data stores, and use AI to help customers meet their sustainability goals," he said.</p><p>Vodafone's M-PESA mobile money platform, which operates in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and other African countries, shared the same objectives as Microsoft in the region, such as building digital literacy.</p><p>"We are excited to bring generative AI capabilities to help customers make more intelligent financial decisions," he said.</p>