Bharti Airtel has selected IBM to manage computing technology and services that power its mobile communications network spanning 16 African countries.
The partnership will enable the telecom operator to scale up its network and systems to cater to more than 100 million African customers by 2012, the company said in a statement.
“There are huge opportunities throughout Africa to transform how people communicate and how communities interact.
Delivering on that opportunity through affordable mobile communications for everyone is our focus,” the telecom major Chairman and MD, Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal, said.
Under the 10-year planned agreement, IBM will consolidate 16 different IT environments across Bharti Airtel’s African operations into an integrated IT system and will oversee the management of all the applications, data centre operations, servers, storag e and desktop services.
An agreement is expected to be finalised in the fourth quarter. However, the company did not disclose the deal size.
Global technology giant IBM is already handling the IT operations of Bharti Airtel in India.
“We are delighted to extend our successful relationship with IBM in South Asia to Africa. This transformational business delivery model, which will be a first in Africa’s telecom industry, will bring enhanced efficiencies to our operations and help us de liver world-class mobile services to our customers,” Mr Mittal added.
IBM will deploy and manage information technology infrastructure and applications to support Bharti Airtel’s goal of bringing affordable and innovative mobile services to remote locations in Africa.
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