Microsoft is expanding in the communications market with the introduction of their Azure Communication Services. This new service is a fully managed communication platform for integrating calls, chats and SMS into business organizations and their applications.
Azure Communication Services allows users to develop new communication solutions or integrate them into existing applications, avoiding high costs, complexity, or time wastage. Voice and video calling, as well as chat services will be available immediately, while SMS and phone numbers will be released in October.
Over the past few years, Microsoft has gained a wealth of experience in this area, thanks to the large success of their Teams service. Azure Communication Services also uses the same secure platform that runs Microsoft Teams and is built natively on Azure.
Scott Van Vliet, corporate vice president for Intelligent Communication at the company, commented: “Azure Communication Services is built natively on top of a global, reliable cloud – Azure. Businesses can confidently build and deploy on the same low latency global communication network used by Microsoft Teams to support over 5 billion meeting minutes in a single day.”
In addition, at its annual Ignite conference, Microsoft announced that it is bringing satellite data to the cloud with a new Azure Orbital service that will be launched as a preview service. The terrestrial station service allows satellite operators to communicate and manage their satellites directly, processing data and scaling operations with Microsoft Azure.
Furthermore, Microsoft has partnered with AT&T to help companies expand their deployment in the IoT market. Their goal is to enable businesses to seamlessly connect machines and equipment to the cloud using a highly secure network connection around the world, avoiding the need of having to use the public Internet
“Our goal is to meet businesses where they are and provide solutions to help them be resilient and move their business forward in today’s market,” writes Van Vliet.
