Deutsche Telekom and Microsoft expand partnership to accelerate cloud computing initiatives

Deutsche Telekom and Microsoft announce an expansion of their partnership that will help customers of all sizes accelerate their cloud transformation initiatives.

By combining Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities with Telekom’s Cloud Migration Framework and telecommunications services, the companies enable customers to increase their productivity, build more agile and resilient operations and deliver new cloud offerings faster.

“We have agreed on the framework for joint strategic growth with our long-term partner Microsoft. We are delighted,” said Adel Al-Saleh, member of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management and CEO of T-Systems. “This partnership will enable us to enhance services for our customers. We will also be supporting each other with digitalization and network build-out.”

“The case for digital transformation has never been more urgent. We know that the next decade of economic performance for every business, whether large or small, will depend on the digital investments made today,” said Jean-Philippe Courtois, executive vice president and president, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing and Operations. “Through this strategic partnership, which combines the power of Deutsche Telekom’s network and Microsoft’s cloud, customers will have more opportunities to become resilient, accelerate innovation and ultimately drive success.”

The delivery of secure and powerful software applications requires a modern IT infrastructure. To accelerate business innovation, Telekom plans to migrate the majority of its internal IT workloads to the public cloud by 2025 and Azure is a central part of that strategy. Through a companywide training program, thousands of Telekom employees will learn how to maximize the benefits of Azure.

Moving mainframe workloads to the cloud is one of the targeted areas of the partnertship. Historically, mainframes were designed as scale-up servers to run high-volume online transactions and batch processing. Using cloud-based mainframes, businesses can deliver new services based on evolving customer demands without retrofitting legacy hardware. This means companies can drive scale, business continuity and energy efficiency while reducing operational and hardware costs.

Telekom will also offer its customers direct access to the Microsoft cloud through Azure ExpressRoute. By bypassing the public internet, customers will have increased agility through faster connectivity to better address regional compliance and data residency needs.