New Delhi, October 15, 2025: Bharti Airtel, one of India’s leading telecom providers, has announced a strategic partnership with IBM to enhance its recently launched Airtel Cloud. The collaboration aims to combine Airtel Cloud’s telco-grade reliability, high security, and data residency with IBM’s expertise in cloud solutions, AI inferencing infrastructure, and advanced software technologies.
Through this partnership, enterprises in regulated industries such as banking, healthcare, and government will be able to scale AI workloads efficiently across on-premise, cloud, multi-cloud, and edge environments. Airtel Cloud customers will gain access to the IBM Power Systems portfolio as-a-Service, including IBM Power11 autonomous AI-ready servers, supporting workloads like IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Linux, and SAP Cloud ERP. SAP customers on IBM Power will also be able to transition to SAP Cloud ERP on IBM Power Virtual Server.
Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman & MD of Bharti Airtel, said:
“Airtel Cloud is designed to be highly secure and compliant, setting new industry benchmarks as an agile and resilient cloud platform. With the IBM partnership, we are adding substantial capabilities for industries requiring IBM Power migration and AI readiness. We are also expanding our availability zones in India from four to ten and will soon establish two new Multizone Regions in Mumbai and Chennai.”
Rob Thomas, SVP and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM, added:
“Enterprises today need to balance modernization with regulated technology and AI requirements. Through this partnership with Bharti Airtel, clients across India can leverage IBM’s cloud offerings to drive strategic AI-enabled transformation.”
The collaboration leverages IBM’s software stack for AI inferencing, built on IBM watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI, allowing enterprises to run AI workloads across hybrid cloud environments. Customers will also have access to Red Hat hybrid cloud solutions including OpenShift Virtualization, OpenShift, and Red Hat AI, coupled with IBM’s automation portfolio to accelerate generative AI in enterprise workflows.
By deploying Airtel Multi Zone Regions, Indian enterprises can enhance resilience, meet data residency requirements, and keep mission-critical workloads operational at all times. The partnership is expected to accelerate digital innovation at scale for enterprises across India.