Microsoft partners with Starlink for its Azure Space cloud

Luxembourg, 21 October 2020. – Microsoft partners with SpaceX’s Starlink to provide satellite connectivity to its cloud computing platform Azure Space, the company announced.

“Our new partnership with SpaceX Starlink will provide high-speed, low-latency satellite broadband for the new Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC),” Tom Keane, Corporate Vice President Azure Global, said in a blog post on 20 October.

“Microsoft designed the MDC to support high-intensity, secure cloud computing in challenging environments, such as situations where critical prerequisites like power and building infrastructure are unreliable,” Keane said. “The MDC provides organizations with capability to deploy a complete datacenter to remote locations, or to augment existing infrastructure with a field-transportable solution.”

“With Azure Space we have ambition to make space connectivity and compute increasingly attainable across industries including agriculture, energy, telecommunications, and government,” he said. “Our approach is to supply a multi-orbit, multi-band, multi-vendor, cloud-enabled capability to bring comprehensive satellite connectivity solutions to meet the needs of our customers”.

SpaceX is to work with Microsoft, “where it makes sense”, “co-selling to our mutual customers, co-selling to new enterprises and future customers,” SpaceX’s Chief Operating Officer Gwynn Shotwell said in a video published by Microsoft.

With the launch of its cloud computing platform Azure, Microsoft recently announced partnerships with several satellite operators in the Geosynchronous, Medium and Low Earth Orbit (GEO, MEO, and LEO). SpaceX’s Starlink constellation operates in Low Earth Orbit and currently has nearly 800 satellites in place.