Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, has partnered with IBM to offer the American tech firm’s services through its recently launched cloud platform.
Indian companies have been working to expand the availability of cloud platforms, as the growing prominence of artificial intelligence technology and some localised data storage requirements have boosted demand for cloud services in the country.
Through this partnership, Airtel Cloud customers will be able to deploy IBM’s offerings, such as AI-ready servers for applications, in regulated industries like banking, healthcare, government and others.
“With the IBM partnership, we are adding substantial capabilities to our Cloud platform to address the unique needs of several industries that require migration from IBM Power Systems and allow for AI readiness,” said Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Bharti Airtel.
Vittal added that with this partnership, Bharti Airtel is also expanding the footprint of its availability zones in India from four to ten, hosting these on its own next-gen, sustainable data centres.
The timing of Airtel-IBM partnership
The announcement comes just a day after Google stated that it would invest $15 billion over five years to establish an AI data centre in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Airtel is also partnering with Google to jointly establish the data centre in the port city of Visakhapatnam.
Earlier in August, Bharti Airtel’s digital unit, Xtelify, unveiled its Airtel Cloud service.
Rob Thomas, SVP and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM, said in in statement, “Enterprises today need to balance
modernisation with the growing regulated technology and AI requirements. Through our partnership with Bharti Airtel, clients across India can leverage IBM’s innovative cloud offerings designed for workload that address their strategic business priorities.”
IBM and Airtel will also establish two new Multizone Regions, or MZRs, in Mumbai and Chennai soon, Vittal said.
MZRs account for cloud infrastructure that is spread across physical locations in different zones, ensuring data and operations remain safe and uninterrupted in the event of faults in any specific region.