MADRID – Telefónica Tech, Telefónica's digital business holding company, today announced the signing of a Collaboration Agreement with Microsoft on Azure Private Edge Zone. The integration combines Telefónica' Private 5G connectivity with Microsoft's Edge Computing capabilities on customer premise, to drive the digital transformation of our clients and to enable the automation and control of their industrial processes.

Within the Industry 4.0 and digital transformation strategy, the joint vision of both companies is to facilitate the deployment of industrial 5G communications and computing solutions on premise under an integrated architecture.

This model accelerates the adoption of new business processes, included within the concept of "Smart Factory", where the digitization of equipment, intensive use of computing and artificial intelligence to facilitate business decision-making and the security of data, which never leaves enterprise premises, are key points.

This approach allows expanding the ecosystem of available solutions and creating a reference model in the industrial market, migrating traditional services to a single and efficient model, and incorporating new technologies and innovative solutions within it.

From an operational point of view, this proposal will enable industrial customers to deploy private connectivity and computational capabilities on premise in an integrated manner, with an end-to-end vision, and guaranteeing the highest levels of security, efficiency and performances which are needed to run mission critical and business critical applications.

"This collaboration agreement between Telefónica Tech and Microsoft, by taking advantage of the capabilities and experiences of both companies, will allow us offering to our clients a framework for the creation, deployment and operation of industrial solutions and their private communications in an integrated way inside and outside the factory. This framework is addressing the needs of those enterprises willing to deploy demanding industrial use cases over secure and performant private connectivity, focusing on simplicity, replicability and scalability," says Gonzalo Martín-Villa, CEO of IoT and Big Data at Telefónica Tech.

"Together with Telefónica Tech, we can enable enterprises to leverage 5G to accelerate transformation and drive innovation across industrial scenarios within their own private networks," said Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president, Azure for Operators at Microsoft. "Partners like Telefónica Tech are critical in helping us meet the on-premises needs of our industrial customers. We look forward to working together to help our customers leverage this platform to drive transformation in their businesses and the industry as a whole in the near future".

Telefonica