Airtel and IBM Partner to Expand AI-Ready Cloud Infrastructure

Jim Carroll

6 months ago

Bharti Airtel has formed a strategic partnership with IBM to strengthen its recently launched Airtel Cloud platform with advanced AI and hybrid infrastructure capabilities. The collaboration aims to deliver telco-grade reliability, strong data sovereignty, and interoperability across on-premise, multi-cloud, and edge environments—targeting regulated industries such as banking, healthcare, and government.

The agreement allows Airtel Cloud customers to deploy IBM Power systems as-a-Service, including the latest IBM Power11 AI-ready servers. These will support mission-critical enterprise workloads such as IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Linux, and SAP Cloud ERP. Airtel also plans to expand its cloud footprint from four to ten availability zones, hosted in its sustainable data centers, while introducing two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai to enhance availability and resilience.

The partnership integrates IBM’s watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI stacks to enable enterprises to run AI inference workloads across hybrid environments. This includes access to Red Hat’s OpenShift Virtualization and OpenShift AI platforms. The initiative is expected to advance modernization and AI adoption in India’s enterprise sector while maintaining compliance with strict data residency and operational continuity requirements.

Airtel Cloud to host IBM Power11 autonomous, AI-ready servers
Two new Airtel Multizone Regions to launch in Mumbai and Chennai
Red Hat OpenShift AI and IBM watsonx to enable hybrid AI inferencing
Designed to support regulated industries: banking, healthcare, and government
IBM Power Virtual Server to accelerate SAP Cloud ERP transformation

Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Bharti Airtel, said, “With the IBM partnership, we are adding substantial capabilities to our Cloud platform to address the unique needs of industries that require migration from IBM Power systems and allow for AI readiness.”