IBM and Red Hat: Picks of Airtel in its Endeavour to Build Telco Network Cloud

Airtel is all set to craft its Telco network

Tuesday, 12th May 2020

India’s third largest telecom operator in terms of subscribers, Bharti Airtel has zeroed in on IBM and Red Hat to build its new telco network cloud. This is expected to make it more systematic in propping key operations and enabling new digital services.

This cloud platform is expected to become the base on which Airtel is going to build its fundamental network, analytical tools and all its new consumer and enterprise services.

The new network cloud will qualify the brand to the next level of network performance, refined availability, automation of operations and an overall upheaval of the network. All these will lead to better customer experience as it is drafted to reduce latency, upgrade bandwidth availability and automation and hence reinforce network standards.

IBM and Red Hat, with their cumulative potentiality of cognitive enterprise and overall portfolio of hybrid cloud, will assist Airtel in its venture. This open hybrid cloud platform offered by Airtel will open up revenue streams as it will see the conscription of on-demand tools including gaming, enterprise services and remote media production.

CTO, Bharti Airtel, Randeep Sekhon commented on decision of taking IBM and Red Hat in the fold and mentioned that Airtel will be using their cloud technology “all the way to the network edge”. By doing so they seek to accomplish advancement in time-to-market of services, bringing down operational costs as well as capital expenses.

Steve Canepa, head of Telecommunications, Media & Entertainment Industry, IBM, said in his statement that IBM is an associate to several big communications service providers all across the globe including innovative ones like Airtel. He went on comment that in the 5G and edge computing era, they intend to assist the company in transforming their networks to “open and secure hybrid multi-cloud platforms” to prepare for the 5G stage.

Red Hat too is lending its hand in giving “innovative open source solutions” to Airtel in their endeavour to boost flexibility and minimize development time, at the same time help it stay afloat in the ever expanding telecommunications market, said Darrell Jordan-Smith, global vice president, vertical industries and accounts, Red Hat.

Source: Telecom Economic Times