Bharti Airtel on Wednesday announced a strategic partnership with IBM to enhance its recently launched Airtel Cloud platform, aiming to strengthen its cloud and AI infrastructure offerings for enterprises in India.
The collaboration will combine Airtel’s telco-grade reliability, high security, and data residency with IBM’s leadership in hybrid cloud and AI technologies, enabling businesses in regulated sectors like banking, healthcare, and government to scale AI workloads more efficiently.
Under the partnership, Airtel Cloud customers will gain access to the IBM Power Systems portfolio as-a-service, including the AI-ready Power11 servers. These servers will support mission-critical workloads such as IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Linux, and SAP Cloud ERP, allowing enterprises to migrate seamlessly to SAP Cloud ERP on IBM Power Virtual Server.
Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, said the collaboration will expand Airtel’s data center footprint in India from four to ten availability zones, while two new multi-zone regions (MZRs) will be established in Mumbai and Chennai.
Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM, added that the partnership will help Indian enterprises modernize operations while meeting regulatory and AI requirements, driving digital transformation at scale.
The integration of IBM’s watsonx, Red Hat OpenShift AI, and automation tools will allow Airtel Cloud clients to deploy hybrid AI infrastructure across multiple environments — on-premise, in the cloud, or at the edge — making the platform more secure, sustainable, and enterprise-ready.
The partnership is expected to play a crucial role in India’s AI and data innovation ecosystem, providing enterprises with scalable, intelligent, and compliant cloud solutions.
