Airtel & IBM Cloud Regions in Mumbai & Chennai

New Delhi, Oct 15 (PTI) Bharti Airtel plans to set up two new multizone regions for Airtel Cloud in Mumbai and Chennai, in collaboration with US IT company IBM, the telecom operator said on Wednesday.

Bharti Airtel has signed a strategic partnership with IBM to augment its recently launched Airtel Cloud to jointly provide enterprise solutions.

Bharti Airtel Vice Chairman and Managing Director Gopal Vittal said the company is extending the footprint of Airtel Cloud availability zones in India from four to ten, comprising next-gen sustainable data centres.

“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. We will, together, also establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai soon,” Vittal said.

The multizone region for cloud services entails setting up several physical independent datacentres in a geographic location.

The statement did not disclose financial details of the company's expansion plan.

The development comes a day after Bharti Airtel announced a partnership with Google for setting up its USD 15 billion AI Hub in Andhra Pradesh, along with Adani group firm AdaniConneX.

Under the pact, Airtel and IBM will aim to enable enterprises in regulated industries to scale AI workloads, delivering interoperability across infrastructure, including on-premises, in the cloud, across multiple clouds and at the edge.

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 statement said.

IBM SVP and Chief Commercial Officer Rob Thomas said Airtel Multizone Regions will help Indian enterprises strengthen their resilience, address data residency requirements and keep mission-critical workloads and applications up and running at all times.

“Together, the Airtel and IBM partnership will enable Indian enterprises to accelerate digital innovation at scale,” Thomas said.