IBM to manage Airtel's African IT systems

Global IT giant IBM bagged a 10 year IT outsourcing agreement from Bharti Airtel to handle the telecom players 16 operations in Africa. The deal was closely contested by players like Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Tech Mahindra. The size of the deal was not disclosed.

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.

IBM will deploy and manage information technology infrastructure and applications to support Bharti Airtel’s goal of bringing mobile services to remote locations in Africa.  In addition, IBM will deploy advanced technologies created by IBM Research, including the Spoken Web -- a voice-enabled Internet technology that allows users to access and share information simply by talking over an existing telephone.

This according to the company, is the first of its kind transaction in Africa to enable Bharti Airtel to deliver 2G and 3G mobile services across the continent.

When completed, the agreement will extend a deep relationship between IBM and Bharti Airtel that was established in 2004 when Bharti signed an outsourcing deal with IBM to run the IT and applications for its entire Indian network.  Since then, Bharti Airtel has seen explosive growth – from six million subscribers to more than 150 million today. The existing realtionship of IBM and Bharti Airtel is in excess of $1 billion.

 Bharti Airtel plans to replicate the success of its relationship with IBM by lowering the barrier to entry for the people of Africa to own a mobile device. 

“There are huge opportunities throughout Africa to transform how people communicate and how communities interact.  Delivering on that opportunity through affordable mobile communications for everyone is our focus,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Airtel.

“We have achieved great success together in India, and now we are bringing that model to Africa.  By building a 21st century telecommunications infrastructure for the continent – in effect, treating all of Africa as a system of systems – we expect to help spark transformation not just in communications but across all sectors of society – empowering businesses, governments and individual citizens to connect, innovate and achieve economic growth,” said Samuel J Palmisano, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, IBM.

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 Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. 

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 per cent annually, and a 10 per cent rise in mobile penetration could increase gross domestic product  by 1.2 per cent in developing markets.