IBM, Airtel join hands to power Indian enterprises in 5G era

MUMBAI: As India prepares for the 5G roll-out, Cloud major IBM and Bharti Airtel announced to deploy Airtels edge computing platform in the country, which will include 120 network data centres across 20 cities.

To begin with, Airtel edge computing platform backed by IBM Cloud Satellite will power Maruti Suzuki's initiatives to streamline plant productivity and quality operations.

"As India gears up to experience 5G, we see a massive opportunity to help businesses across industries transform how they deliver goods and services," said Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, CEO-Enterprise, Airtel Business.

"We have the largest network of edge data centers available in India under the Nxtra brand and we will leverage our work with IBM to help Indian businesses address their critical business needs with greater efficiency," he added.

Once deployed, the platform is designed to enable large enterprises across multiple industries including manufacturing and automotive to accelerate innovative solutions that deliver new value to their clients and operations -- securely at the edge.

In India, 5G has the potential to create a cumulative economic impact of $1 trillion by 2035.

Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform, said that teaming with Airtel to bring IBM's hybrid cloud offerings to their Indian multi-access edge compute customers "will help them embrace the opportunities presented by 5G and edge, like innovating with greater speed and security".

Airtel's edge computing platform, deployed as a hybrid environment, is based on IBM Cloud Satellite and Red Hat OpenShift.

"We are excited to work with Airtel Business and IBM to set an even higher benchmark and explore the vast possibilities of deploying AI and analytics at the edge to augment the expertise of our workforce," said Rajesh Uppal, Senior Executive Director, HR and IT, Maruti Suzuki.