Bharti Airtel on Monday said the company is launching customised cloud computing services for small and medium business enterprises.
The company is partnering Hewlett Packard (HP) for the new offerings. Airtel had earlier announced partnerships with VMware for virtualisation and Savvis for hosted managed services to ramp up its cloud computing services.
Three areas
The new partnership with HP would provide infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service to small businesses of sizes as low as five employees in a company to 500 people.
“We have three focused areas – global, enterprise and government, and SMBs – to provide them solutions. Through different suites, we become their chief information officers on cloud to collaborate,” Mr Najib Khan, chief marketing officer – Airtel business, told
He said the entire suite would be available now for connectivity, load applications, take care of data centres and managed services, and enable them on cloud.
The partnership with HP would also take care of security concerns on bring-your-own-device for employees. He said the information technology team of companies would not have to worry on shared infrastructure as Airtel would use its own data centres situated in the country.
Ms Amrita Gangotra, Director- IT India and South Asia, Bharti Airtel, said cloud enablement platform powered by HP would also be a value preposition for value-added services partners through mobile phones.
“Any industry can use such solutions through mobile phones and going forward, we are targeting industry specific customers on mEducation, mHealth and advertising,” she said.
B2B vertical
Cloud services are part of Bharti Airtel’s business-to-business (B2B) vertical. B2B is a key component in the overall growth strategy of the company that contributed eight per cent to total revenue.
The partnership with HP would also create more ecosystem and growth that would benefit both the companies, she added.
When contacted HP India, a spokesperson from the company said, “HP will enable Bharti Airtel’s Cloud Enablement Platform that will be launched tomorrow.”
Acording to market estimates, enterprise mobility market in India stands at around Rs 1,366 crore that is expected to touch Rs 5,600 crore by 2015.
According to Springboard Research, the managed services market in India grew by 25 per cent last year and is poised to touch Rs 21,280 crore by 2013, at an annual compounded growth rate of 23 per cent.