Bharti Airtel and IBM join forces to transform emerging African Mobile Communications Market
September 20, 2010 05:06 pm
* 10-year agreement in principle will extend innovative relationship that began in 2004;
IBM to handle IT for Bharti Airtel’s 16 operations in
* First of its kind transaction in Africa to enable Bharti Airtel to deliver innovative and affordable 2G and 3G mobile services across the continent
* Cutting-edge technology from IBM to bring enhanced efficiencies and benefit customers, employees and business partners of Bharti Airtel
KENYA, and ARMONK, N.Y: In a move that will accelerate the transformation of African mobile communications and positively impact the speed of economic development across the African continent, Bharti Airtel Limited and IBM (NYSE: IBM)announced the selection of IBM to manage the computing technology and services that power Bharti Airtel’s mobile communications network spanning 16 African countries. An agreement is expected to be finalized in the fourth quarter.
Under a completed agreement, IBM will deploy and manage
state-of-the-art information technology infrastructure and applications to
support Bharti Airtel’s goal of bringing affordable and innovative mobile
services to remote locations in
When completed, the agreement will extend a deep relationship between IBM and Bharti
Airtel that was established in 2004 when
According to a Deloitte report commissioned by the mobile communications industry association GSMA, only 40 out of every 100 Africans have a mobile phone. However, demand is growing at an average rate of 25 percent annually, and a 10 percent rise in mobile penetration could increase gross domestic product by 1.2 per cent in developing markets.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti
Airtel, said: “There are huge opportunities throughout
“We are delighted to extend our successful relationship with
IBM in South Asia to
“It will also offer career enhancement opportunities to Bharti Airtel’s employees in the IT domain who will now get exposure to global best practices and latest technologies with IBM. More importantly, this alliance underlines our commitment to the growth of Africa.’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector and contributes towards bridging the digital divide on the continent.”
Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman, President and Chief Executive
Officer, IBM, said: “We see our strategic relationship with Bharti Airtel as a
powerful example of building a smarter planet. We have achieved great success
together in
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 of the applications, data center operations, servers, storage and desktop services.
When the agreement becomes final, IBM will provide customer
support applications that include customer relationship management, billing and
self-care that will empower customers and assist Bharti Airtel in delivering
innovative and convenient 2G and 3G mobile services. In addition, IBM plans to
deploy a powerful content management system to offer rich media content such as
music and video over mobile devices, while simultaneously facilitating the
growth of the application developer community in
The strategic partnership will enable Bharti Airtel to scale its network and systems to more than 100 million African customers by 2012.
IBM will also build automated internal systems for Bharti Airtel’s business which will result in enhanced efficiency and empowerment for employees through applications that deliver processes and data on a real time basis – both on PCs and mobile devices. Business partners such as distributors and retailers will benefit from on demand data by simply using mobile devices to increase efficiencies. IBM will also be responsible for deploying advanced information security systems that will provide privacy protection for customer data and enhance the resilience of enterprise systems against threats.
Bharti Airtel has operations in