Telefonica stepped-up its enterprise focus, partnering with Axiata Group’s B2B unit to expand the services available to business customers.

Under a strategic partnership agreement, Telefonica and Axiata Enterprise will develop and provision new digital cybersecurity, cloud, IoT and big data products for the agriculture; food; mining; energy; and transport industries.

They will also cooperate on other unspecified “strategic projects” and explore joint opportunities in the international telecommunications wholesale market.

Jacobo Garcia-Palencia, Strategic Alliances Group director at Telefonica, stated teaming with one of the top operators in Asia “will bring important benefits to both our groups”.

Axiata Enterprise CEO Gopi Kurup added the deal will “accelerate our ability to meet with growing demand” for enterprise services, which had been spurred by the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

The move is Telefonica’s latest to strengthen its enterprise offerings, coming on the heels of cloud deals with Microsoft in February and Google in June.

In a separate statement, Telefonica revealed the first fruit of its Microsoft deal, announcing Microsoft Azure-based cloud services called Servers Azure and Projects Azure targeted at small- and medium-sized businesses which lack the in-house expertise to manage their own cloud environments.