Bharti Airtel has announced a strategic partnership with IBM to enhance its Airtel Cloud platform. The collaboration aims to combine Airtel's secure and reliable cloud services with IBM's advanced infrastructure and software technologies, particularly those designed for artificial intelligence (AI) inferencing.

The joint initiative is expected to help enterprises in regulated sectors manage AI workloads more efficiently, providing flexibility across various environments such as on-premise systems, multiple clouds, and edge locations.

As part of the agreement, Airtel Cloud customers will gain access to the IBM Power systems portfolio as-a-Service. This includes the latest IBM Power11 servers, which are tailored for mission-critical applications in industries like banking, healthcare, and government. The platform will support enterprise workloads running on IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Linux, and SAP Cloud ERP. Additionally, SAP customers using IBM Power can benefit from support in transitioning their enterprise resource planning operations to SAP Cloud ERP on IBM Power Virtual Server.

Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman & Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, stated: "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 centers. We will, together, also establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai soon."

Rob Thomas, SVP and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM, commented: "Enterprises today need to balance modernization 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."

IBM’s software stack for AI inferencing—built on watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI—will allow Indian businesses to run AI inference across hybrid cloud setups. These features come alongside enterprise-grade infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) options as well as automation tools aimed at integrating generative AI into core business processes.

Customers will have access to Red Hat’s suite of hybrid cloud solutions including OpenShift Virtualization and Red Hat AI tools. The underlying architecture is designed not only for current needs but also future innovations involving AI and quantum computing.

By expanding its Multizone Regions in India from four to ten—including new regions planned for Mumbai and Chennai—Airtel aims to bolster resilience for Indian enterprises while meeting data residency requirements.

Statements regarding IBM's future direction are subject to change or withdrawal without notice.

Airtel serves over 600 million customers across 15 countries in India and Africa. It provides a range of consumer mobile services as well as enterprise offerings such as connectivity solutions, cybersecurity services, IoT platforms, data center services and digital payment solutions through its digital arm Xtelify.