In a landmark announcement at its ‘IBM Think’ event in Mumbai, IBM revealed a strategic partnership with Bharti Airtel Ltd. This collaboration is set to dramatically enhance Airtel’s cloud offering, which was recently launched in August to provide Indian industries with secure, in-country data storage solutions. IBM’s advanced AI tools will now augment Airtel’s cloud services, making them more powerful and versatile.
IBM India and South Asia Managing Director, Sandip Patel, highlighted that this partnership is specifically designed to appeal to sectors requiring ‘mission-critical applications’ – such as banking, healthcare, and government agencies. These regulated industries, often slower to adopt new technologies due to stringent compliance needs, will find Airtel’s AI-enabled cloud services more attractive and reliable.
Further emphasizing the scale of this alliance, Airtel MD Gopal Vittal stated, “This partnership will see us expanding our availability zones in India from four to ten, hosted within our state-of-the-art, sustainable data centers.” He added that the companies also plan to establish two brand-new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in key Indian cities: Mumbai and Chennai. This announcement follows Airtel’s recent deal with Google regarding its data center in Visakhapatnam, underscoring a broader push towards strengthening India’s digital infrastructure.