SLT partners John Keells IT to bring Microsoft’s cloud technology Azure Stack to SL

Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (SLT), Microsoft, and John Keells IT (JKIT) have made a joint announcement that they would collectively unveil Microsoft’s cloud technology Microsoft Azure stack for the first time in Sri Lanka. 

Azure Stack is an extension of the Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform—providing a clear road map to the best hybrid cloud experience for businesses in the country. This will be one of the core innovations to help our customers at large to build and run best of breed applications on Azure Stack as well as in creating a multi-cloud environment to run their applications.

The three companies will explore joint development of cloud solutions on Azure Stack to support customers with specific use cases to satisfy regulatory requirements and for requirements at the edge including SLT’s content-streaming services. The partnership will allow customers to leverage Azure Service through the public cloud and maintain data sovereignty by hosting their data locally in the private cloud.

“The benefits of cloud computing have been difficult to achieve for organisations that are not ready yet to place data and applications in the public cloud,” said Sri Lanka Telecom PLC Chief Executive Officer Kiththi Perera. “Public sector organisations and financial institutions that want the flexibility of the cloud have struggled to implement private clouds or mix public and private clouds in a hybrid architecture. Thanks to Azure Stack and our partnership with Microsoft and John Keells IT, we can help organisations experience the power of Azure public cloud in an environment closer to them.”

“Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, bringing the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to on-premises environments,” said Microsoft Sri Lanka and Maldives Country Manager Hasitha Abeywardena. “We are truly excited to bring this technology to Sri Lanka and work with partners like Sri Lanka Telecom and John Keells IT to provide innovative, secure, scalable and agile cloud services.”

“Our partnership with Sri Lanka Telecom and Microsoft in bringing the Azure stack to the shores of Sri Lanka will pave the way in truly accelerating the transformation of Sri Lanka for the Digital era,” said John Keells Holdings Executive Vice President and Group CIO and John Keells IT Director/CEO Ramesh Shanmuganathan.  

“Companies that want to embrace the Cloud First, Mobile First world can definitely take advantage of the local availability of Azure Stack in starting their journey to the cloud and leverage the benefits of cloud in terms of agility, flexibility, security, elasticity as well as enhanced ROI/TCO. As a Microsoft Customer and a Partner, we have walked the talk and have extensive experience in cloud having embraced same for ourselves as early as in 2013. With our extensive experience on Azure as well as Azure Stack, we can definitely help you plan, adapt and transform your business by embracing the cloud using Azure Stack as well as Azure together with SLT and Microsoft to pursue a future-proof cloud strategy and realise the benefits of same.”

The much-awaited Azure Stack will be launched in Sri Lanka soon with this strategic partnership and will redefine the future of computing for the digital era and led by the most forward-thinking and disruptive minds in business and technology. This launch will pave the way for organisations to leverage the benefits of cloud with the assurance that your data will be within the shores of Sri Lanka.