Bharti Airtel, one of India’s leading telecommunications providers, has formed a strategic partnership with technology giant IBM to strengthen and expand its cloud services for enterprises. The collaboration integrates Airtel Cloud Platform with IBM’s AI-ready and secure hybrid cloud technologies, focusing on sectors such as banking, healthcare, and government.
This partnership is aimed at accelerating AI adoption, modernizing legacy applications, and providing high-performance cloud computing while ensuring compliance with Indian data residency norms.
The core objective of the partnership is to incorporate IBM’s advanced infrastructure into Airtel’s cloud ecosystem. This includes the latest IBM Power11 AI-ready servers, which will allow Airtel Cloud customers to scale AI workloads and modernize enterprise applications efficiently. The collaboration ensures that all data remains compliant with Indian regulatory requirements, enabling enterprises to safely adopt advanced AI solutions.
A key goal of this initiative is to establish a “sovereign cloud” environment in India, providing carrier-grade reliability and security for mission-critical applications. By combining Airtel’s extensive network capabilities with IBM’s enterprise-grade hybrid cloud software, including IBM WatsonX and Red Hat OpenShift AI, the partnership is poised to boost generative AI adoption across Indian businesses.
This integration is expected to enhance operational efficiency and provide enterprises with robust, scalable cloud services capable of handling demanding AI and computing workloads.
As part of the collaboration, Airtel is immediately expanding its cloud availability zones in India from four to ten, hosted in next-generation sustainable data centers. This expansion significantly increases Airtel Cloud’s capacity, enabling enterprises to access high-performance computing resources closer to their operations, reducing latency and improving reliability.
To further enhance cloud resilience and security, Airtel and IBM will establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai. These MZRs distribute cloud infrastructure across geographically dispersed physical locations, ensuring:
High availability during regional failures
Strong data security and redundancy
Enhanced resilience for mission-critical enterprise applications
The introduction of MZRs underscores Airtel’s commitment to providing robust, disaster-resilient cloud services for Indian businesses.
Bharti Airtel Vice President and Managing Director Gopal Vittal emphasized the value of the collaboration:
“Through this partnership with IBM, we are adding significant capabilities to our cloud platform to address the unique requirements of several industries, enabling migration from IBM Power systems and ensuring AI readiness. The expansion of availability zones and upcoming MZRs in Mumbai and Chennai will further strengthen our enterprise offerings.”
Similarly, Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM, highlighted the importance of combining modern AI technologies with regulatory compliance:
“Enterprises today must balance modern technology adoption with evolving regulatory and AI requirements. Together with Bharti Airtel, we are helping Indian customers leverage innovative cloud solutions to achieve real transformation in the AI era.”
The Airtel-IBM partnership offers multiple benefits for businesses in India:
AI-ready cloud infrastructure for high-performance workloads
Secure and compliant data handling meeting Indian regulations
Scalable enterprise solutions across banking, healthcare, and government sectors
Resilient cloud architecture with multizone redundancy
Enhanced generative AI capabilities through IBM WatsonX and Red Hat OpenShift AI
This collaboration positions Airtel as a leading provider of enterprise-ready cloud services in India, capable of supporting AI-driven transformation for businesses of all sizes.
Conclusion
Bharti Airtel’s partnership with IBM marks a major milestone in India’s cloud and AI landscape. By integrating AI-ready infrastructure, expanding availability zones, and establishing multizone regions, Airtel is offering enterprises a secure, scalable, and high-performance cloud environment. This initiative ensures Indian businesses can adopt advanced AI and hybrid cloud technologies with confidence, while meeting local regulatory and data residency requirements.
With this collaboration, Airtel not only enhances its cloud capabilities but also empowers Indian enterprises to innovate, scale, and transform in the era of AI and digitalization.