Airtel’s data centre unit inks pact with US firm CenturyLink

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel’s wholly-owned data centre unit, Nxtra Data Ltd., signed a pact with a US firm CenturyLink to provide managed hosting, IT Infrastructure, IT services and cloud services to enterprises and government organisations in India to increase customer base.

“It [tie-up] will not just increase our customer base but we can go back to our existing customer base and offer them a whole new level of services and product,” Neil Pollock, chief executive officer, Nxtra Data, told ET.

The partnership combines Nxtra’s India data centre management expertise with Century-Link’s hosting, managed services and cloud capabilities. They will be sharing revenue under the partnership for the Indian market.

“We have learnt lessons from partnering in the past and didn’t do a reseller agreement. This is absolutely a revenue sharing (model) where we both take reasonable margins that the market will tolerate,” said Pollock.

Nxtra Data manages 10 data centres in Noida, Manesar, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, and Bubhaneshwar across 200,000 sq. ft. of floor space. The company has more than 200 customers in India.

CenturyLink, on the other hand, offers network and data systems management, Big Data analytics and IT consulting. It operates more than 55 data centres in North America, Europe and Asia. It also provides broadband, voice, video, data and managed services over a 250,000-routemile US fibre network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network.

CenturyLink, which has 2000 people in India, mainly in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR, will now have onground presence or customer facing presence after its partnership with Bharti’s data centre arm.

The tie-up “addresses the IT needs of Indian enterprises. We are offering access to the same highly secure managed IT solutions and consistent experience available across CenturyLink’s global footprint, taking advantage of Nxtra’s data centres throughout India and engaging our mature India operations,” said Girish Varma, president, Global IT Services &New Market Development, CenturyLink.