Bharti Airtel, IBM collaborate to provide hybrid edge services over 5G in India
Bharti Airtel, a telecom company in India, has announced its intent to work with IBM to provide secure edge cloud services to Indian enterprises. Airtel and IBM plan to roll out Airtel’s edge computing platform in the form of a hybrid environment based on IBM Cloud Satellite and Red Hat OpenShift.
The companies say that with 120 network data centers across twenty cities, the enterprise-grade platform allows large companies in various industries to develop solutions for clients and internal processes. Airtel’s 5G connectivity and IBM’s secure edge computing capabilities will enable enterprises to deploy and manage workloads in near-real time.
By providing 5G with lower latency, greater availability, and increased bandwidth speeds, Airtel could help businesses embrace the potential of 5G and edge.
Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, CEO of Airtel Business, said in a statement: “As India gears up to experience 5G, we see a massive opportunity to help businesses across industries transform how they deliver goods and services.”
IBM predicts that the business value delivered by edge computing may be significantly improved when combined with 5G. In India, 5G has the potential to generate an overall economic impact of $1 trillion by 2035.
One company that plans to use the Airtel-IBM platform is Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the largest passenger car maker in India. The new technology will help Maruti Suzuki improve quality control and protect data at the edge.
The Airtel-IBM connection arrives when businesses in India are more aware of the specific use cases edge computing can solve and the value it may provide. 5G will help to drive these use cases forward due to its low latency, high bandwidth, and increased availability. Some use cases for edge cloud services in India include intelligent transportation, healthcare IoT, factory automation, fintech, augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality.
“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, making it significantly easier for companies to process workloads where their data resides,” continued Lakshminarayanan.
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