Airtel partners with IBM to expand cloud services

India's second-largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel has partnered with IBM to offer the American tech firm's services through its recently launched cloud platform, the companies said on Wednesday as demand for computing capacity grows.

Indian firms 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.


This comes just a day after Google said it would invest $15 billion over five years to set up an AI data centre in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Airtel is also partnering with Google to jointly establish the data center in the port city of Visakhapatnam.

Bharti Airtel's digital unit Xtelify unveiled its Airtel Cloud service in August.

IBM and Airtel will also establish two new Multizone Regions, or MZRs, in Mumbai and Chennai soon, said Gopal Vittal, vice chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel.

MZRs account for cloud infrastructure that is spread across physical locations in different zones to ensure data and operations remain safe and uninterrupted in case of faults in any distinct region.

This will help Indian businesses address data residency requirements and keep mission-critical workloads and applications up and running at all times, the companies said.