Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), one of India’s largest integrated telcos, has selected IBM and Red Hat to build its new telco network cloud, designed to make it more efficient, flexible and future-ready to support core operations and enable new digital services. Under the agreement, Airtel will build its next-generation core network, analytical tools and new consumer and enterprise services on top of this cloud platform based on open standards.
Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst, Founder & CEO, Greyhound Research, said, “The Indian Telecom sector has witnessed a seismic shift in investor sentiment over the past month. In the past 3 weeks, Jio has received 3 investments from 3 global majors amounting to a total of USD 8 billion. This has a direct bearing on Jio’s ace competition, Bharti Airtel that has a leaner, partner-led strategy compared to Jio’s in-house, vertically integrated strategy. Of course, this also has a strong impact on Vodafone Idea (VIL), which is the other major player in Indian Telco sector.
For all three, the battle has shifted to consumer data, apps and enterprise services where there is a lot more money to be made compared to traditional voice Services. But in this new turf, the winner is decided on a key metric – the one that delivers better customer experience which further depends on parameters like network availability, overall performance and 5G readiness.”
This deal with IBM (using RedHat) is a testimony by Bharti Airtel’s to its network, its partner-led model and most of all its focus on delivering superior customer experience. Using a hybrid cloud platform with the aim of onboarding new partners for offering new services and hence generating fresh revenue is a forward looking step. In addition, IBM’s deal with VIL is also a testimony of it being committed to further optimising its network and use it as a competitive advantage in the tough battle against Jio and Bharti Airtel. Of course, enabling all of this is IBM’s deep domain expertise and relationships in the telecom sector along with the RedHat’s technology platform and ecosystem, he said.
[CXOToday]
P.S.: To read a research report on the investments in Jio Platforms, click here.
Analyst:
Sanchit Vir Gogia: Sanchit is the Chief Analyst, Founder & CEO of Greyhound Research, a Global, Award-Winning, Technology & Innovation Research & Advisory firm. To read more about him, click here.
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