One of the largest tech companies in the world is empowering United Arab Emirates (UAE) nonprofits by offering a new system of credits for its Microsoft Azure
cloud service.
Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s answer to the cloud: it’s a
wide platform of services which allows for things like Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS), website hosting, storage services, data management implementations
and much more. MS Azure utilization takes place in the cloud, where individual
clients send data to Microsoft to be stored off-site, and services are
delivered through the internet.
In an Oct. 24 press
release, Microsoft discussed how these cloud services help
businesses and organizations to innovate, and to gather and use business
intelligence for dramatic improvement.
The new mission to supply groups in the Emirates is part of
Microsoft’s Public Cloud for Public Good initiative, where — according to
Microsoft’s top management — the company will donate $1 billion in cloud computing
resources by 2019 to some 70,000 nonprofits and NGOs around the world.
“We are committed to helping nonprofit groups to use
cloud computing to solve basic human challenges,” Brad Smith, president and chief legal officer at Microsoft, said in a press statement. “One of our
ambitions for Microsoft Philanthropies is to partner with these groups and
ensure that cloud computing is accessible to a greater number of people and
meets the widest range of societal needs.”
Some of the Microsoft products in the cloud include Office
365, a cloud extension of Microsoft’s traditional office software solutions, as
well as Dynamics CRM, which helps with customer relationship management, and
Power BI for business intelligence and analytics
Nonprofits will be able to access Microsoft data centers,
and to run applications in the cloud.
On Monday, Gulf News Journal spoke with Jaime Galviz, chief
operating officer at Microsoft Gulf, about the Microsoft Azure program.
Galviz said eligible nonprofits will get a $5000 annual
credit towards Microsoft Azure.
“This will allow many small
nonprofits to tap the cloud in new ways that they might not otherwise be able
to afford, and help offset costs for many medium-large nonprofits who are
considering, or are already using, Azure,” Galviz told Gulf News Journal.
He went on to say that qualifying nonprofits can renew their credits
annually, or turn to a pay-as-you-go system. Eligibility can vary, but groups can look up
eligibility requirements here.
“The Public Cloud for Public Good
forms part of Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and organization on
the planet to achieve more by investing in technology, employees and
partnerships, to drive greater inclusion and empowerment of people who do not
have access to technology and the opportunities it enables,” Galviz said.
He also talked about how the
resource will specifically help nonprofits.
“Today’s nonprofit needs
collaboration amongst its staff, scalability and flexibility to work securely
whenever, wherever and even on the go … to achieve that, they need to take
advantage of today’s technologies and drive impact in their daily operations,”
Galviz said. “NGO staff and volunteers can now connect, collaborate, track
tasks, edit reports and access information from anywhere; supported by
industry leading security and identity management services, allowing them to
spend more time on programmatic issues … these organizations will now be able
to save time, connect, problem solve and share knowledge across all resources
to get work done. Azure also gives nonprofits the flexibility to choose how
they deploy the cloud, whether on premise or hybrid, leveraging open source
technologies, or improving resiliency and scalability — thus moving at their
own pace to maximize value from existing investments and achieve their
mission.”
