It's the data & network, stupid!

#Jio and #Microsoft just announced a remarkable deal for the Indian market (you can read it here https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/08/12/microsoft-and-jio-accelerating-indias-digital-progress). While there is enough being(or will be) written about the business aspects of this partnership, i felt a need to delve deeper into a few behind-the-scenes technology aspects of the partnership and why i feel this could be a winner for Reliance and Microsoft.

1) It's about Data not Data centers: The writing was on the wall. If Reliance had to survive (it is more used to thriving than surviving anyways) the onslaught of cloud providers and their takeover of the India's gig economy; and the data which comes along with that, they had to invest in data capture models. Almost all startups worth their salt run on one or the other cloud providers. These providers host data from every startup ecosystem and that's what's more important to Jio if they have to thrive in the new economy.

2) Reliance does an MSP act: My view is that whatever strategy they had with their Jio cloud, they would have never been able to match the deep technical know-how and deeper pockets of likes of Google, MS and AWS, who have been running these global DCs and apps at scale for decades now. There is a saying" There are no short cuts to experience". It's absolutely true for running hyperscale DCs and apps. I guess Reliance understood this and pivoted to partner with a Cloud Services Provider just like Rackspace did when it found itself in a similar situation a few years back. Now Rackspace; once a doyen of Data Center management & operations, provides services from multiple cloud providers as an MSP. I feel with this annoucement, they have also put a lot of smaller Indian regional and national ISPs on notice; shape up or ship out.

3) Cloud is the network. Period: Dare I say" Hand(s) that rocks the networks, controls the cloud". Anyone who has tried to upload a slightly bigger sized file online knows the problems associated with data transfer. At a fundamental level, cloud is nothing but a network of connected nodes. The faster you can make the network, the better the cloud will function. Increasingly, it has repercussions on data in/out charges which have become very significant with growing data usage. Petabytes of data need to flow in and out of cloud infrastructure and hence the networks will play a critical role in saving precious ? as well as bettering user experience for applications which need to be streamed live or need sub millisecond type latency (e.g: payments, security etc). Even the best underlying cloud infrastructure will fail if the networks don't play along. With its legs now in almost all gig economy baskets(IoT, OTT et al), Reliance's Fibre network along with its ability to tweak a single consistent global network based on end use cases can be the most lethal weapon it has against competition.

4) Microsoft is done with playing second fiddle in the cloud business: MS has accelerated its cloud business multi-fold in the last 3-4 years(both here as well as globally) but it was still playing second fiddle to AWS. With this announcement, it can ride the Jio wave(both literally and figuratively) and accelerate adoption of Azure platform across the entire ecosystem. If in doubt refer to #3 :). Add 100s of ecosystem partners, small and big, in the MS ecosystem and this can be a true multiplier effect to not just MS but also to the cloud adoption in general.

5) Enterprises will always buy IT but consumer could be the new Enterprise: AWS understood that developer would make the buying decisions and hence built an empire of cloud computing built around developers and their ease of spinning infrastructure. Unfortunately(or fortunately depending on whom you speak to), 95% of the IT buying still happens in the traditional enterprises. But scales are tilting and there is a new buyer who is rearing her head above these two traditional buyers and she's the consumer. She will increasingly start deciding the fate of the service providers. That's where Reliance(albeit a bit late) is starting to string together companies in its fold which will give it this new buyers on the plate. It's been one of the most active

This space will get hotter each passing day and I feel MS(and JIO) has got its act together with this remarkable announcement.