This new initiative will make Microsoft products and services such as Microsoft Azure, Power BI, CRM Online, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite, more available to non-profit organizations, building upon similar programs already in place that grants non-profits access to the Office 365 suite of products.
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“Among the questions being asked in Davos are these: If cloud computing is one of the most important transformations of our time, how do we ensure that its benefits are universally accessible?”
The money will go towards up to 70,000 non-profit organisations and university researchers to further Microsoft’s mission of “empowering every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more”. It will help them resolve some of the greatest societal challenges thereby improving human condition and help focus on new growth. These advantages include intelligence, data, insights and analytics that are an integral part of the cloud computing services.
Furthermore, he would be discussing this matter with the Philanthropies division at World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
Expanding access to cloud resources for faculty research in universities. Now it supports 600 research projects.
Reaching new communities with last-mile connectivity and cloud services.
For the last thrust of the initiative, Microsoft Philanthropies and Microsoft Business Development will combine donated access to Microsoft Cloud services with investments in new, low-priced last-mile internet access technologies and community training. In turn, the company says, that will help nonprofits and non-governmental organizations utilize donated services where Internet connections were previously hard to come by.
For example, Microsoft Research has provided 700 wireless sensors, cloud technology and automated data stream technology to the São Paulo Research Foundation Biodiversity Research Program to help it understand how cloud forests work and study the impact of climate changes on the communities supported by those forests. Thus, this technology can be used as a replacement to purchased software and applications. The organization, which is a month old, aims at leveraging technology to tackle some of the world’s most critical issues, from poverty to education.
Microsoft hopes that by using Azure to better capture and analyze data, nonprofits can run more efficiently and universities will be able to accelerate research projects.
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“It is vital that the cloud serve the public good in the broadest sense”.
