New Spain data center becomes test bed for Microsoft and Telefonica’s expanded partnership

Kareem Anderson

Microsoft recently announced that it’s leveraging a new “global strategic partnership” with Telefonica to jointly develop “go-to-market plans” for regions the company does business.

Last year during Mobile World Congress 2019, Microsoft took the veil off its newfound relationship with the international telecommunications giant, Telefonica.

Highlighted during this year’s announcement was Microsoft’s opening of a new datacenter region in Spain. Microsoft’s new data center comes at a time where the company looks to help expedite Spain’s “digital transformation.”

With a data center in Spain, Microsoft will no be able to more reliably deploy its Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Power Platform apps to businesses in the region.

To help jumpstart the proliferation of Microsoft’s cloud service provisions in the area, Telefonica S.A. will start leveraging Microsoft technologies internally, according to a joint press release from the companies.

As part of Telefónica’s digital transformation, the company will use the Microsoft cloud for its own internal operations, pursuing efficiency, flexibility and scalability improvements, optimization of operations and cost reductions. Telefónica has also deployed Microsoft 365 to its global employee base to enable more seamless communication and collaboration across the 14 countries in which it operates. As a strategic partner for its multi-cloud strategy, Microsoft will train hundreds of Telefónica employees on Microsoft Cloud services.

Beyond the high minded rhetoric and internal dogfooding is a plan from both Microsoft and Telefonica to address the evolution of “critical sectors such as government, health, education, travel, manufacturing, retail, finance, insurance and more,” in Spain, while also addressing the social and economic transformation that is currently taking place.

More concretely, Microsoft and Telefonica customers will be empowered with low latency security and bandwidth support of 5G, edge computing and Industry 4.0 technologies once the rollouts begin.