MUMBAI – Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (Jio), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, and Google Cloud are embarking on a comprehensive, long-term strategic relationship with a goal of powering 5G in enterprise and consumer segments nationwide. In addition, Reliance will also take advantage of Google Cloud’s scalable infrastructure thereby enabling its retail business to achieve better operational efficiency, modernize and scale for growth, and deliver better performance and experiences to customers.

Jio and Google Cloud to unlock the transformational impact of 5G

To further Jio’s mission to digitize India with faster and better connectivity, Google Cloud will provide a complete end-to-end cloud offering for fully automated lifecycle management of Jio’s 5G network and services. Google Cloud’s deep expertise and innovation, combined with telco-specific capabilities for security, performance, and resilience, will help Jio’s 5G service to meet the demands of customers, thereby strengthening Jio’s position as one of the leading network and largest service providers in the country.

Edge Cloud infrastructure from Google Cloud provides an open, highly scalable and high-performing platform for supporting Jio, which in turn empowers hundreds of millions of Jio subscribers that are expected to use the 5G service. In addition, Jio and Google Cloud will collaborate to bring a portfolio of 5G edge computing solutions to help industries address real business challenges. Jio will explore building new services across gaming, healthcare, education, and video entertainment sectors. These services will use Jio’s 5G network, software and Google Cloud’s innovations in AI/ML, data and analytics, and other cloud-native technologies—delivered by Jio and powered by Google Cloud.

Retail Businesses to migrate to Google Cloud

As part of the partnership, Reliance will also augment its compute workload for retail business taking advantage of Google’s AI/ML, ecommerce, and demand forecasting offerings. This will help Reliance to rapidly grow its new commerce business to leverage Google Cloud with increased reliability and performance, as well as scale up as needed to respond to customer demand. Jio will also adopt Google Cloud’s scalable, serverless data analytics platform to advance its data-led innovation strategy.

“Cloud solutions is a key area where we are collaborating with Google. Jio will use Google Cloud’s cutting-edge technologies to power Jio’s 5G solutions and for powering the internal needs of key Reliance growth businesses like Reliance Retail, JioMart, JioSaavn and JioHealth,” said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited.

“We are delighted to announce a new 5G partnership with Reliance Jio to help Indian consumers connect to a faster and better internet and support businesses in their digital transformation and help Jio build new services in sectors like health. education and more. As part of this collaboration, Reliance will also shift its core retail businesses to Google Cloud infrastructure which will enable them to scale up and improve customer experience,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet.

Digital skills are becoming an essential component for employees to perform their jobs proficiently. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this digitisation journey to a certain extent for organisations as well as individuals.

India’s present workforce comprises only 12% digitally skilled employees, and the number of employees requiring digital skills in the country will need to increase nine-fold by 2026, according to a report commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The research surveyed over 500 digital workers in India, and 3,196 workers in total across six countries in the APAC region, including Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

Nearly 150 million workers in six APAC countries apply digital skills on the job, and those in need of such skills is poised to surge past 800 million by 2026, according to the report titled ‘Unlocking APAC’s Digital Potential: Changing Digital Skill Needs and Policy Approaches’.
About 70% of workers in India applied advanced digital skills in their jobs, it noted. And the top five digital skills in-demand in India are cloud architecture design (34%); software operations support (31%); website, game, or software development (28%); large-scale data modelling (28%); and cybersecurity skills (27%). Transitioning organisations from on-premises to cloud environments has been the most frequently used digital skill in India. This is reflected in the crucial role digitally-skilled employees play in transforming non-technology sectors like manufacturing.

Moreover, 76% of the digital workers in the country presently expect cloud computing to be an essential skill. Over 50% of digital workers in the manufacturing sector think they will require skills like cloud architecture design and the ability to create original digital content, to perform their jobs.

“A cloud-skilled workforce is instrumental in accelerating innovation and creating a competitive edge for India,” Rahul Sharma, President, AWS India and South Asia, said in a release.

In order to meet the projected demand of digitally skilled employees, the six APAC countries will need an estimated 5.7 billion digital skill sessions, and India will need a total of 3.9 billion digital skill sessions, over the next five years, as per the report..

“To meet the projected digital skill needs by 2026, each of the six APAC countries will require different policy approaches that address their unique challenges and skills priorities,” the report said.