Bharti Airtel Partners with IBM to Augment Airtel Cloud

Bharti Airtel, one of India's leading telecommunications providers, has announced a major strategic partnership with tech giant IBM, aimed at rapidly expanding and fortifying its cloud infrastructure for Indian enterprises. The collaboration centers on augmenting the recently launched Airtel Cloud platform with IBM's advanced AI and secure hybrid cloud technologies, specifically targeting regulated sectors like banking, healthcare, and government.

The core of the partnership involves integrating IBM’s powerful infrastructure, including the latest-generation IBM Power11 AI-ready servers, directly into Airtel's cloud ecosystem. This allows Airtel Cloud customers to access high-performance computing "as-a-service," enabling them to efficiently modernise legacy applications and scale AI workloads while ensuring all data remains compliant with strict Indian data residency requirements.

Major Capacity Expansion

The immediate physical impact will be a dramatic increase in Airtel's capacity. The company announced it is immediately expanding its availability zones across India, increasing the footprint from four to ten, all hosted within its next-generation sustainable data centers.

Furthermore, the companies will jointly establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai. MZRs provide cloud infrastructure spread across geographically separate physical locations, which significantly enhances resilience, guaranteeing high availability, and protecting data during regional failures.

Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman & Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, highlighted the strategic value of the collaboration, stating, " 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 at IBM, echoed this sentiment: “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 address their strategic business priorities. Together, we will help clients drive true transformation in the era of AI.”

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