Swisscom has bolstered its cloud portfolio for its small-to-medium enterprise (SME) business segment by teaming up with Microsoft Azure.
The SME cloud services are provisioned through the recently established Microsoft Switzerland business unit that was founded as a means to support the SME sector.
While Swisscom had an existing relationship with Azure, it's now offering cloud solutions that are tailored specifically for SMEs. The product is being sold through local Swisscom partners that serve as the point of contact for customers and as the middlemen between Azure and Swisscom. The offering also includes Microsoft Premier Standards as a standard feature.
In its Monday press release, Swisscom used architectural firms as an example of a vertical that would benefit from a cloud solution that is designed for SMEs. With detailed blueprints, interactive elements and 3D software, architectural firms need a large amount of processing power and storage, some of which can become too much for their own servers and IT staff.
By working with Azure and Swisscom, architectural firms can offload their storage and processing needs to cloud. With more employees "working from anywhere" during the coronavirus pandemic, SMEs can access their data, applications and services to support their mobile work.
In addition to eliminating the need for costly internal IT infrastructure investments, the cloud capacity can be accessed on an "as needed basis." Instead of relying on IT teams, operation and maintenance are the responsibility of Azure's cloud experts.
“Not all clouds are equal –the SME market is heterogeneous and so are its needs. We are committed to offering every SME the optimal solution, whether that be Swisscom Cloud, Microsoft Azure or a combination of the two," said Swisscom's Reto Baschera, head of the SME division.
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According to research by the European Union and Eurostat, SMEs create around 85% of new jobs and provide 66% of the total private sector employment , contributing 3.9 billion Euros to the European Union.