Shares of Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, were trading in the green on Wednesday, 15 October, after the company announced that it has collaborated with IBM to offer the American IT firm’s services through its freshly created cloud platform as demand for processing capacity surges.

Airtel Cloud users will be able to install IBM’s products, including AI-ready servers for applications, in regulated industries such as banking, healthcare, and government.

In its regulatory filing, the company said, “Through this partnership, Airtel Cloud customers 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 will also support critical enterprise workloads including IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Linux and SAP Cloud ERP. Additionally, this partnership will help enable SAP customers on IBM Power with their enterprise resource planning transformation to SAP Cloud ERP on IBM Power Virtual Server.”

This comes only one day after Google announced that it would invest $15 billion over five years to establish an AI data centre in Andhra Pradesh. Airtel is also collaborating with Google to build a data centre in the port city of Visakhapatnam.

Bharti Airtel’s digital unit, Xtelify, launched its Airtel Cloud service in August.

IBM and Airtel will also build two additional Multizone Regions, or MZRs, in Mumbai and Chennai soon, according to Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel’s vice chairman and managing director.

MZRs refer to cloud infrastructure that is distributed across physical locations in different zones to ensure data and operations remain safe and uninterrupted in the event of a fault in any specific region.

This will assist Indian firms in meeting data residency rules while also keeping mission-critical workloads and apps operational at all times, according to the corporations.

Indian businesses have been attempting to enhance the availability of cloud platforms as the rise of artificial intelligence technology and some localised data storage requirements have increased demand for cloud services in the country.

Gopal Vittal said: “Airtel Cloud is designed to be highly secure and compliant, setting new industry benchmarks as an agile and resilient cloud platform. Today, 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. With this partnership, we are also extending the footprint of our availability zones in India from four to ten, hosting these on our own next-gen sustainable data centres. We will, together, also establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai soon.”

Rob Thomas, SVP and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM, said: “Enterprises today need to balance modernisation with the growing regulated technology and AI requirements. Through our partnership with Bharti Airtel, clients across India can leverage IBM’s innovative cloud offerings designed for workloads that will help them address industry-specific requirements address their strategic business priorities. Together, we will help clients drive true transformation in the era of AI.”

At 11:40 am, the shares of Bharti Airtel were trading 0.70% higher at Rs 1,960.30 on NSE. 

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