Govts, biz focus on tech independence amid disruptions creating huge biz opportunity for IBM: Exec

Mumbai, Oct 15 (PTI) Focus on technology independence by governments and businesses amid disruptions is creating a huge business opportunity for IBM, a key executive of the global technology major said on Wednesday.

IBM announced a tie-up with an arm of the second-largest domestic telco Bharti Airtel under which the two partners will be establishing two new multizone regions in Mumbai and Chennai for Airtel Cloud.

Speaking with PTI after announcing the tie-up, IBM's general manager for Asia Pacific, Hans Dekkers, said disruptions starting with the Covid-19 pandemic have underscored the need to be independent from a tech perspective among governments and enterprises, which has created a business opportunity for the company.

"There's a huge desire from a technology perspective (among) enterprises, governments for what I call independence ... this is where we as a company are helping our enterprises gain that independence when it comes to technology. It's a huge opportunity, but also a sensible one," he said, replying to a specific query on the impact of the H1-B visa issue in the US.

Every government and company needs to respond whenever there is a challenge, and he has also seen a lot of such activity in Asia. The key question before all is how data is to be protected, AI models are to be controlled and how workforces are to adapt to the changed ways, he said, adding that this is where the hybrid cloud offerings gain traction.

Earlier, the company termed hybrid cloud, AI and quantum computing as a trinity which will influence the future of technology.

IBM's newly announced tieup with Airtel also lays a lot of focus on data sovereignty and data control, and executives said that governments and local enterprises, especially the highly regulated ones, wanting their data to be stored within.

Dekkers said apart from India, many countries in his region, like Indonesia, are shifting their policies to look for similar solutions and added that such offerings will be helpful for them as well.

Without quantifying, he said the company is also investing deeply in the tie-up with Airtel and hinted that it is unlikely to forge such a tie-up with a large entity like Airtel, but focus on the smaller ones.

Bharti Airtel has signed a strategic partnership with IBM to augment its recently launched Airtel Cloud to jointly provide enterprise solutions.

The telco's vice chairman and managing director Gopal Vittal said the company is extending the footprint of Airtel Cloud availability zones in India from four to ten, comprising next-gen sustainable data centres.

"Today, with the IBM partnership, we are adding substantial capabilities to our Cloud platform to address the unique needs of several industries that require migration from IBM Power Systems and allow for AI readiness. We will, together, also establish two new Multizone Regions (MZRs) in Mumbai and Chennai soon," Vittal said.

The multizone region for cloud services entails setting up several physically independent data centres in a geographic location.

The development comes a day after Bharti Airtel announced a partnership with Google for setting up its USD 15 billion AI Hub in Andhra Pradesh, along with Adani group firm AdaniConneX.

Under the pact, Airtel and IBM will aim to enable enterprises in regulated industries to scale AI workloads, delivering interoperability across infrastructure, including on-premises, in the cloud, across multiple clouds and at the edge.

Through this partnership, Airtel Cloud customers will be able to deploy the IBM Power systems portfolio as-a-Service, including the latest-generation IBM Power11 autonomous, AI-ready servers for mission-critical applications in regulated industries like banking, healthcare, government and others, the statement said.

"Through our partnership with Bharti Airtel, clients across India can leverage IBM's innovative cloud offerings designed for workloads that address their strategic business priorities. Together, we will help clients drive true transformation in the era of AI," IBM SVP and Chief Commercial Officer Rob Thomas said.

The statement said Airtel Multizone Regions will help Indian enterprises strengthen their resilience, address data residency requirements and keep mission-critical workloads and applications up and running at all times. PTI AA PRS MR