Airtel drives Open Hybrid Cloud Network deployment with IBM, Red Hat

Bharti Airtel has completed the first phase of its Open Hybrid Cloud Network, built with IBM and Red Hat's portfolio of hybrid cloud and cognitive enterprise capabilities, according to a statement.

With this, Airtel's customers and ecosystem partners will have a flexible base to build and deploy innovative applications on the cloud network. "They will also gain enhanced performance, availability, automation and scaling, all the way from the core to the network edge," the statement said.

Once completely implemented, Bharti Airtel's Open Hybrid Cloud Network will help partners and customers across industries harness the power of emerging technologies like 5G and edge computing.

Airtel has accelerated its Open Hybrid Cloud Network deployment with IBM and Red Hat.

Globally, telecom operators are expected to spend over $111 billion by 2022, upgrading network cloud and platform.

"With the ever-increasing customer demand for seamless connectivity services and the continuing exponential growth in data traffic, Airtel has embarked on this massive cloudification program to make its network agile, robust and scalable," the statement added.

Airtel has been working with IBM to integrate advanced automation and plans to embed Artificial Intelligence or AI capabilities in the future as a core part of its network transformation.

"In this first phase, IBM and Airtel have co-developed a 'single click' automated hybrid cloud design and deployment capability and 'light touch' operations. This will enable Airtel to rapidly improve network connectivity and accelerate its continued core network transformation," the statement said.

Airtel will be able to scale to meet increased customer demand, onboard new partners faster and speed the launch of innovative cloud-based services, the statement pointed out.