Telefónica and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership to combine the power of Telefónica’s state-of-the-art networks, unique customer proposition and global reach with the Microsoft Azure AI platform to design services telcos will offer in the future.
Together, Telefónica and Microsoft will expand the use of Azure Cognitive Services for customer engagement and business processes, create new AI-powered, in-home experiences for customers, and explore the use of intelligent technologies to transform the network.
Today, Azure Cognitive Services power Aura, which is embedded in channels such as mobile apps, the company’s pay-tv service and its call centers in Brazil. With this new agreement, Microsoft and Telefónica will work to explore the extension of Aura and Azure Cognitive Services to all customer relationship channels, such as its contact centers in other countries, social media and web services, as well as employee- and supplier-facing channels.
Building on the success of Aura to control Telefónica services, the two companies will evaluate developing Telefónica’s Home as a Computer (HaaC) vision to use Azure Cognitive Services and Azure AI services with other Telefónica services. Furthering the HaaC vision, Telefónica and Microsoft will consider the creation of an ecosystem of Aura Living Apps built on Azure that will run on all Telefónica devices at home. The apps will allow customers to interact with their devices to do daily activities.
Finally, Microsoft and Telefónica will explore working together to identify opportunities using AI and disruptive technologies like blockchain, 5G and edge computing to transform services and build the network of the future. The two companies will collaborate through the creation of a joint working team to explore how AI and machine learning can be applied to optimize its network, reduce costs and, in turn, drive industrywide transformation. Together, they would create proof of concepts to demonstrate how these solutions can be used for predictive provisioning, demand capacity and more.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Together, we will apply the power of Azure and Azure AI to create new, innovative experiences for millions of Telefónica customers around the world and shape the future of Telefónica’s network.
Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, Chairman and CEO, Telefonica
Telefónica is applying cutting-edge technology to its ongoing transformation, pioneering virtualization and softwarization to develop smart, liquid networks ready to be powered by AI. Specifically, we are already using AI to enhance our customer relationships and are really excited to work with Microsoft to further harness the power of Azure AI.
