New Delhi, India, October 15, 2025- Bharti Airtel has announced a strategic partnership with IBM to expand its Airtel Cloud platform, adding AI-ready capabilities and significantly increasing its data centre footprint across India.
The deal marks a major step in strengthening domestic cloud infrastructure for enterprises and government organizations that require highly secure, compliant, and resilient computing environments.
As part of the collaboration, Airtel Cloud will extend its number of availability zones in India from four to ten, leveraging new, sustainable data centres across the country. In addition, the partners will establish two Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai, distributing cloud infrastructure across physically separate facilities within the same region to improve redundancy and resilience. These MZRs are designed to ensure continuity of operations for critical workloads, particularly in regulated sectors such as banking, healthcare, and government services.
Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director 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. 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.”
IBM will contribute its advanced cloud infrastructure and AI-ready systems, including Power11 servers and hybrid cloud technologies, enabling enterprises to run mission-critical workloads efficiently and securely.
Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM, commented, “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 address their strategic business priorities. Together, we will help clients drive true transformation in the era of AI.”
The partnership positions Airtel as a leading Indian cloud provider capable of delivering high-availability AI infrastructure while meeting compliance and sustainability requirements. Analysts note that expanding Multizone Regions and availability zones will reduce reliance on foreign cloud regions, enhance digital sovereignty, and support enterprises in scaling AI workloads locally.
With the rollout of next-generation data centres and AI-ready infrastructure, Airtel Cloud aims to become a critical enabler of India’s AI adoption, offering both resilience and flexibility to enterprises navigating increasingly complex technology and regulatory landscapes.
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