Indian telco Bharti Airtel announced that it has signed a strategic partnership deal with IBM to upgrade its recently launched Airtel Cloud service to enable enterprises in regulated industries to better scale AI workloads across multiple environments.
Under the partnership arrangement, customers of Airtel Cloud – which was launched by Airtel subsidiary Xtelify in August – will be able to deploy the IBM Power systems portfolio as-a-service, including the latest-generation IBM Power11 autonomous, AI-ready servers for mission-critical applications in regulated industries like banking, healthcare, government and others.
The Power11 hybrid platform also supports critical enterprise workloads including IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Linux and SAP Cloud ERP.
Meanwhile, Airtel added, IBM’s software stack for AI inferencing, built on IBM watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI, will give Indian enterprises the ability to run AI inference across hybrid cloud environments, including on-premise, in the cloud, across multiple clouds and at the edge.
Airtel said these capabilities will be coupled with IBM’s enterprise-grade cloud platform with IaaS and PaaS offerings, as well as IBM’s automation portfolio designed to accelerate the use of generative AI in core enterprise workflows. Customers will have access Red Hat’s hybrid cloud solutions, including Red Hat OpenShift Virtualisation, Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI.
“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 and MD of Bharti Airtel, in a statement.
Vittal added that as part of the deal, Airtel will also extend the footprint of its availability zones in India from four to ten, hosting these in its own data centres. “We will, together, also establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai soon,” he said.
“Enterprises today need to balance modernisation with the growing regulated technology and AI requirements,” commented Rob Thomas, SVP and chief commercial officer at IBM. “Through our partnership with Bharti Airtel, clients across India can leverage IBM’s innovative cloud offerings designed for workloads that address their strategic business priorities.”
