IBM has partnered with Bharti Airtel to help deploy the operator’s edge computing platform in India, which will include 120 network data centres across 20 cities.

Airtel’s edge computing platform is deployed as a hybrid environment based on IBM Cloud Satellite and Red Hat OpenShift. With a focus on delivering secured and open cloud services at the edge of the network, the platform is aimed at helping businesses improve performance and customer experience by reducing latency while addressing data security and sovereignty requirements.

The business value delivered by edge computing can be significantly enhanced when combined with 5G. In India, where 5G is expected to be rolled out later this year, it has the potential to create a cumulative economic impact of $1 trillion by 20351.

Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, CEO of Enterprise at Airtel Business, said: “As India gears up to experience 5G, we see a massive opportunity to help businesses across industries transform how they deliver goods and services. We have the largest network of edge data centres 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.”

Harnessing Airtel’s 5G connectivity and highly secured edge computing capabilities from IBM can enable enterprises to deploy and manage workloads in near-real time. Industries including telecommunications, financial services, healthcare and government can benefit from reduced latency, high availability and increased connectivity speeds.

“As businesses – particularly those in regulated industries – work to modernise their infrastructures, they need to be able to do so in a way that enables them to stay compliant, without becoming overburdened by their compliance obligations – regardless of where their data resides,” said Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform.