Summary:
Bharti Airtel has entered a strategic partnership with IBM to enhance its Airtel Cloud platform with advanced AI and hybrid cloud capabilities. The collaboration aims to help Indian enterprises, especially in regulated sectors, scale AI workloads more efficiently while ensuring high security, data sovereignty, and operational resilience.
A Major Step in India’s Digital Transformation
Bharti Airtel, one of India’s leading telecom and digital infrastructure providers, has announced a landmark partnership with global technology major IBM to bolster its recently launched Airtel Cloud. The collaboration is designed to integrate IBM’s cutting-edge AI, hybrid cloud, and infrastructure solutions with Airtel’s secure, scalable, and India-resident cloud platform — setting the stage for the next phase of India’s digital transformation.
Through this partnership, Airtel and IBM aim to empower enterprises in highly regulated sectors such as banking, government, healthcare, and manufacturing to accelerate their adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and next-generation workloads. The alliance will allow Airtel Cloud customers to deploy IBM Power Systems as-a-Service, including the newly launched IBM Power11 servers that are engineered for AI inferencing and mission-critical applications.
Expanding Cloud Capabilities and Availability Zones
Airtel is significantly expanding its data center footprint to meet growing enterprise demand. The company plans to increase its availability zones in India from four to ten, hosted on its own next-generation, sustainable data centers. Additionally, two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) are being established in Mumbai and Chennai, enhancing resilience and enabling compliance with India’s stringent data residency requirements.
“Airtel Cloud is designed to be highly secure, compliant, and future-ready,” said Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Airtel. “With IBM’s partnership, we are adding substantial capabilities to serve industries migrating from IBM Power Systems while enabling AI readiness. This marks a major milestone in our cloud expansion strategy.”
Leveraging IBM’s AI and Hybrid Cloud Expertise
IBM will bring its software stack for AI inferencing — built on IBM watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI — to Airtel Cloud, giving enterprises the ability to run AI workloads seamlessly across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
The integration will also include IBM’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings, along with its automation portfolio designed to accelerate generative AI adoption across industries. Airtel customers will further benefit from Red Hat’s hybrid cloud solutions, including OpenShift Virtualisation and Red Hat AI, to improve interoperability and operational agility.
“Enterprises must balance modernisation with growing regulatory and AI requirements,” said Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM. “Through this collaboration, businesses across India can leverage IBM’s advanced cloud offerings to drive true digital transformation in the era of AI.”
Driving Enterprise AI Adoption and Future Innovation
The Airtel–IBM alliance is expected to significantly boost India’s enterprise AI ecosystem, enabling companies to scale workloads efficiently while meeting regulatory and security standards. By combining Airtel’s network infrastructure and IBM’s expertise in hybrid cloud and AI, the partnership will help businesses reduce latency, improve data management, and strengthen operational resilience.
Moreover, IBM’s hybrid cloud architecture is designed to pave the way for future technologies such as quantum computing, ensuring Airtel Cloud remains future-proof as India’s demand for AI-driven digital solutions continues to grow.
Part of a Larger AI Vision
The partnership aligns with Airtel’s broader strategy to become a key player in India’s AI and data infrastructure ecosystem. Recently, the telecom major also entered a separate collaboration with Google to establish India’s first mega AI hub and data center in Visakhapatnam, as part of a $15 billion investment plan (2026–2030) aimed at strengthening India’s digital backbone.
Together, these initiatives reflect Airtel’s ambition to create a secure, scalable, and intelligent cloud ecosystem that supports the country’s rapidly expanding digital economy — from small businesses to large enterprises — and cements its position as a leader in AI-enabled connectivity.
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