Microsoft struck a cloud-heavy 10-year deal with India-based mobile telecom operator Reliance Jio Infocomm to bolster the adoption of cloud-based services across that country. The agreement comes less than a month after Microsoft scored a similar deal with domestic operator AT&T.

The Jio deal will see the company set up data centers in India. These data centers will include compute, storage, and networking capabilities that will support Azure services targeted at the India market. The initial pair of data centers will consume up to 7.5 megawatts of power and are being constructed in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. They are schedule to be fully operational by the end of next year.

Jio, which is a subsidiary of India-based multinational Reliance Industries, will leverage those data centers and the Azure platform to develop services targeted at new and existing business customers. This includes providing startups with “affordable” access to those services. Published reports indicated that those cloud services would be priced at around $21 per month.

The deal will also see Jio provide small- and medium-sized businesses with access to cloud-based services including Windows 365, and large companies with the ability to access Jio services that take advantage of the Azure backing.

Perhaps most important is that the two firms are developing services that support major Indian languages and dialects that can support broader adoption across the country. India has around two dozen major languages and more than 700 different dialects.

“By working together to develop innovative and affordable cloud-enabled digital solutions built around Jio’s world-class digital infrastructure and Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, we will accelerate the digitization of the Indian economy and make Indian businesses globally competitive,” explained Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, in a statement.

The Jio deal also calls for the operator to provide its internal workforce with Microsoft’s cloud-based Windows 365 service. In addition, the operator will migrate all non-network applications to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

This last part is similar to the deal Microsoft signed with AT&T last month. That multi-year agreement, which is reportedly valued at more than $2 billion, will see Microsoft provide AT&T with cloud services in support of non-network applications and the carrier’s deepening push into the cloud.

AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan said that migration of most non-network workloads to the public cloud will be completed by 2024. The carrier noted that this will allow it to "focus on core network capabilities, accelerate innovation for its customers, and empower its workforce while optimizing costs."

Microsoft’s cloud business has been making steady strides in gaining ground on market heavyweight Amazon Web Services (AWS).

A recent Gartner report noted that Microsoft posted $5 billion in worldwide infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) revenue last year, which was a 60.9% increase compared to the previous year.

A different report from Synergy Research Group also pointed to Microsoft’s robust growth in the market. “Amazon is maintaining its leadership position in the market though growth at Microsoft is also noteworthy,” noted John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, in the report. “In early 2016, Microsoft was less than a quarter the size of Amazon in this market while today it is getting close to being half the size.”

And the India market looks ripe for bolstering that growth. Gartner forecasts that the country’s public cloud market will generate $2.4 billion in revenues this year, which is a 24.3% increase from 2018. That report noted that while the country will represent just 1.2% of the global public cloud market this year, it’s among nine countries that will post a growth rate higher than the global average.

“The shift from ‘cloud first’ to a ‘cloud only’ model is pushing organizations in India to increase their spending on public cloud services to advance their digital business initiatives,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner, in the report. “Disinvestments in new data centers are also one of the early signs of this move.”