Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella announced a new three-part initiative to ensure that Microsoft's cloud computing resources serve the public good. As part of this social marketing action the recently formed Microsoft Philanthropies will donate $1 billion of Microsoft Cloud Services, measured at fair market value, to serve nonprofits and university researchers over the next three years.
Microsoft's three-part commitment focuses on ensuring the cloud can serve the public good in the broadest sense by providing additional cloud resources to nonprofits, increasing access for university researchers and helping solve last-mile Internet access challenges.
"Microsoft is empowering mission-driven organizations around the planet with a donation of cloud computing services, the most transformative technologies of our generation," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who on Wednesday will speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Now more than 70,000 organizations will have access to technology that will help them solve our greatest societal challenges and ultimately improve the human condition and drive new growth equally."
In September 2015, 193 heads of state and other world leaders unanimously adopted 17 sustainable development goals to achieve by 2030. This ambitious agenda, which includes ending poverty, ending hunger, and ensuring affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all, will only be achievable with the benefit of significant inventions and technology innovations. The scale and computational power enabled by cloud computing will be essential to unlocking solutions to this list of some of the world's seemingly unsolvable problems.
"We're committed to helping nonprofit groups and universities use cloud computing to address fundamental human challenges," said Microsoft President Brad Smith. "One of our ambitions for Microsoft Philanthropies is to partner with these groups and ensure that cloud computing reaches more people and serves the broadest array of societal needs."
