Indian telecommunications service provider Bharti Airtel has announced a strategic partnership with IBM to enhance its recently launched Airtel Cloud platform. The collaboration aims to combine Airtel's secure, compliant, and scalable cloud infrastructure with IBM's advanced hybrid cloud and AI technologies, enabling enterprises across regulated sectors to modernise and manage AI workloads more efficiently.
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Airtel and IBM Join Forces
"The partnership is expected to bring together the telco-grade reliability, high security, and data residency of Airtel Cloud with IBM's leadership in cloud solutions, and advanced infrastructure and software technologies designed for AI inferencing," Airtel said in an exchange filing on Wednesday, October 15, 2025.
Powering Regulated Industries with IBM
Under the 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 such as banking, healthcare, government, and others.
The Power11 hybrid platform will also support critical enterprise workloads, including IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Linux and SAP Cloud ERP. Additionally, the partnership will help enable SAP customers using IBM Power to advance their enterprise resource planning transformations to SAP Cloud ERP on IBM Power Virtual Server.
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Leadership Quotes
Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, said the collaboration significantly strengthens Airtel Cloud's capabilities to meet the evolving digital needs of industries that demand high compliance and security standards.
"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 centres. We will, together, also establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai soon," Vittal said.
Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of IBM, noted that the partnership will help Indian enterprises balance modernisation with increasing regulatory and AI requirements.
"Enterprises today need to balance modernisation 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 will help them address industry-specific requirements address their strategic business priorities. Together, we will help clients drive true transformation in the era of AI," he said.
The new partnership includes cloud reliability, high security, and data residency with Airtel Cloud, coupled with IBM's proven expertise in managing hybrid cloud environments for enterprises, said Sandip Patel, MD, IBM India, according to an ETTelecom report.
"I'm very pleased to share this important milestone in India's digital journey. Airtel cloud was launched in August this year and it has received very good reception in the market," said Sharat Sinha, CEO, Airtel Business, as mentioned in the report.
Now with the new partnership, Sinha reportedly said that the telco is creating a "very compelling proposition" for enterprises, particularly for regulated industries. "With a combined proposition of Airtel and IBM, we are enabling enterprises to modernise their infrastructure while harnessing the power of AI and hybrid cloud without compromise."
Driving AI Readiness
With IBM's software stack for AI inferencing, built on IBM watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI, clients in India will have the ability to run AI inference across hybrid cloud environments. Customers will be able to access Red Hat's suite of hybrid cloud solutions such as OpenShift Virtualisation and OpenShift AI, supporting interoperability across on-premise, cloud, and edge infrastructures.
"These capabilities are coupled with IBM's enterprise-grade cloud platform with innovative IaaS and PaaS offerings, as well as IBM's automation portfolio designed for accelerating the impact of generative AI in core enterprise workflows to drive productivity. Customers will be able to access Red Hat's hybrid cloud solutions, including Red Hat OpenShift Virtualisation, Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI. Beyond these capabilities, IBM's hybrid cloud architecture is designed to help clients enable future innovation in AI and quantum computing," Airtel and IBM said in a joint statement.
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Expanding Airtel Cloud's Footprint
By establishing Airtel Multi Zone Regions, the partnership will enable Indian enterprises to strengthen operational resilience, meet data residency requirements, and maintain high availability for mission-critical applications.
"Together, Airtel and IBM will aim to enable enterprises in regulated industries to scale AI workloads more efficiently, delivering interoperability across infrastructure, including on-premise, in the cloud, across multiple clouds and at the edge," the official release said.
