- The joint solutions of both companies will enable Spanish public administrations and companies in regulated sectors to respond to the needs of digital sovereignty.
- Telefónica Tech and Microsoft meet the most demanding legal and technical requirements for cloud trust principles, guaranteeing them with Microsoft’s Confidential Computing technology and Telefónica Tech’s cyber threat monitoring and management capabilities.
- Telefónica Tech will provide professional and managed advisory, implementation, and operational services to deploy and operate the cloud services, which will be marketed through Telefónica Empresas.
Microsoft and Telefónica Tech strengthen their strategic alliance to offer specific confidential hybrid cloud solutions to public administrations and companies in regulated sectors, with a focus on offering monitoring and encryption services to ensure the security and privacy of their data in Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Microsoft and Telefónica Tech will offer public sector organizations, including Defense, and companies in regulated environments the possibility to benefit from the best infrastructure and cloud computing services to advance their digital transformation plans, while complying with data protection provisions and recommendations defined by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).
Microsoft provides the highest privacy guarantees and meets the needs of digital sovereignty through a unique set of technologies and certifications. The company has National Security Scheme high-level certification for Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 and is contractually committed to legally oppose access to its enterprise and public sector customers’ data by any government. Microsoft has also announced the EU Data Boundary initiative to enable the company’s customers to store and process their personal data within the EU. This commitment applies to Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 cloud services.
For its part, Telefónica Tech will provide consulting, implementation and operation services that will enable the deployment of maximum security cloud services within the scope of public administrations and companies in regulated environments, ensuring at all times compliance with the requirements of information privacy, quality of service and regulatory compliance.
Telefónica Tech will complement the joint offer of both companies with value-added services, such as intelligent management of communications and infrastructure or monitoring and management of cyber threats from its Cybersecurity Operations Center, in order to ensure a fast and secure adoption of cloud services by different organizations and institutions. It will offer, in turn, specialized consulting services for the design, deployment and operation of Big Data platforms on Microsoft Azure Cloud capabilities, accompanying public administrations and companies in regulated environments in the definition and implementation of their data and artificial intelligence strategy, and contributing to the development of specific use cases.
In addition, specific solutions will be offered for the Defense sector that combine the 5G connectivity solutions offered by Telefónica with Microsoft cloud services, enabling innovation in environments with high security and compliance requirements.
A boost in the collaboration between Microsoft and Telefónica Tech
All these services will be implemented in Microsoft’s current cloud environments and will be complemented by the upcoming availability of the new Cloud Region that Microsoft will open in Spain and that will leverage Telefónica’s current infrastructure, as already announced in February 2020. In this way, they strengthen and expand the relationship between the two companies to help accelerate the digital transformation of public and private entities of all sizes, helping them to innovate, grow and securely migrate their businesses to the cloud.
José Cerdán, CEO of Telefónica Tech, assures: «We believe that the alliance between Microsoft and Telefónica represents a giant step forward in enabling the digital transformation of the public sector and, in general, of the country. The combination of Microsoft’s technology with Telefónica’s service, management and control capabilities guarantees sovereignty and privacy as well as scalability and evolution of infrastructure and citizen services, all with the highest level of quality«.
Alberto Granados, president of Microsoft Spain, remarks: «We at Microsoft have long demonstrated our commitment to meeting and exceeding the data protection requirements of the European Union. This joint value proposition with Telefónica to provide confidential hybrid cloud solutions responds to the needs of digital sovereignty and is evidence that we continue to advance this commitment.»
Regarding this alliance, Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, points out: «The proposal of confidential public cloud solutions together with hybrid cloud designed specifically for public administrations and companies in regulated sectors in Spain, responds to the important objective of digital sovereignty and constitutes a very relevant advance to accelerate the digitalization of our economy.»
Microsoft was the first hyperscale cloud provider to achieve certification for compliance with the high level of the National Security Scheme in 2016, demonstrating the company’s commitment to delivering cloud products with the highest security requirements. This certification is available for all three Microsoft public clouds: Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365. It has also been the first to provide Azure Confidential Computing services working with Intel and AMD. These Microsoft cloud services add in-use protection to existing protections for data in transit and at rest, ensuring maximum privacy. In addition, the company offers advanced encryption services that complement the base encryption measures, allowing the implementation of encryption systems using keys provided and managed by the customer or a third party, in this case Telefónica, and managed and dedicated hardware security module (HSM) services.
Telefónica Tech, through its capabilities and experience, accelerates the implementation of technology through its Cybersecurity, Cloud, IoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain services. It has 12 specialized Digital Operations Centers (DOC) with 24×7 services from where more than 30,000 servers are managed and more than 100 million cybersecurity events per year are monitored. It also has more than 3,000 expert professionals with the highest certifications in cloud services and cybersecurity who serve the Telefónica Group’s 5.5 million B2B customers in 175 countries.
