Good morning, and welcome
to our "Azure for Operators" event.
It's fantastic to have so many leaders
of this industry here working here virtually to talk
about how, together, the cloud and the next generation
of networks will define what happens next.
The role of digital technology
and connectivity in every aspect of work
and life has never been more important.
We've seen years of digital transformation in mere months.
At Microsoft, we have a long history of working
with operators, but we believe the opportunity we have
together in front of us, right now, is unprecedented.
We're living in an era of intelligent cloud
and intelligent edge, which is being driven
by massive technology shifts in distributed computing,
ambient intelligence, and multi-sense,
multi-device experiences around us.
Consider that there will be more than
50 billion connected devices by 2030,
more than double the number today.
and the size of the global datasphere
will reach 175 zeta bytes by 2025, up from 40 today.
And as you know, 5G networks will cover
one third of all the mobile connections within five years.
Our work with all of you will play a critical role
in creating new, transformative experiences
for people and organizations everywhere
across every industry in this new era.
There are three principles that guide our approach to Azure
for operators and everything we will show you
today ladders up to these three principles.
First, we wanna partner with you to bring
the power of the cloud and edge to your network.
Today, Azure's realtime operating system's
already been deployed to more than six billion IOT devices.
And we understand the growing demands
these edge devices put on your networks.
We believe that digital technology
can automate and accelerate not only the 5G core network
but also expand the reach of programmable networks.
It can also deliver new solutions at the network edge
that offer step-change advancements
in cost, speed, security, and enable you to serve
your customers with new low-latency computing needs.
To enable this, we are expanding our offerings
for operators introducing new solutions
at the network edge, many of which you'll hear about, today.
Second, we wanna take an ecosystem-wide approach,
bringing the scale of our developer
and partner ecosystem to you.
As an example, more than one million developers
have discovered or tried Azure Cognitive Services, alone,
processing more than 10 billion transactions each month.
5G opens new frontiers for developers
with enhanced mobile broadband,
up to 10 times faster reliable low-latency communication,
and very high device density,
up to one million devices per square kilometer.
This will unlock new use cases that increase in value
as they're incorporated into developer applications.
We are ready to help you expose capabilities
like end to end network slicing,
to every developer community out there
as they create the next wave of edge applications.
And for core networking solutions,
we wanna create a more diverse set of services
within the network solution providers
to spur faster innovation across the industry.
Interoperability underlies our approach
and we believe that it'll be key
to driving innovation across the ecosystem.
Third, we wanna help you create additional value
by helping you reduce cost and increase your revenue.
Operators are expected to spend more
than one trillion dollars upgrading their networks to 5G,
and there is a critical need to reduce total cost
of ownership and monetize these investments.
With our recent acquisitions of Affirmed and Metaswitch,
we're adding technology and expertise
to create a software-based cloud native alternative
to traditional network infrastructure.
We will enable you to deliver existing services
such as ROIC as well as value added services
with greater cost efficiency,
lower capital investment than ever.
These three principles guide our work together.
Let me share two recent examples.
Just last week, we expanded our partnership with Telstra
to help them develop new IOT and AI solutions
at scale in critical areas like asset tracking,
supply chain management, and smart spaces.
And AT&T has used Azure's Sphere, our solution
for secure IOT, to build a new guardian device
that securely connects IOT devices via AT&T network,
bypassing the need for wifi.
Our business model is aligned with your success,
meaning our technology is always in service
of your customers, your service and network.
And I look forward to many more scenarios we can unlock
together in this new 5G, low-latency compute world.
Let me hand it over to Julia
to show you how we can do this together.
Thank you all so very much.