Vodafone Idea, the country’s largest telecom operator by subscribers, has signed a five-year outsourcing contract with IBM to enhance its business efficiency and reduce IT-related costs.

The company did not disclose the deal size, but termed it as a multi-million-dollar agreement.

The collaboration will provide Vodafone Idea with a hybrid cloud-based digital platform, enabling more intimate engagement with customers, enhancing business efficiency, agility and scale.

This deal will also help in simplification of its business processes, the company said in a statement.

This engagement will also contribute to Vodafone Idea’s merger synergy objectives by reducing its IT-related costs, it added.

The Aditya Birla group company has more than 387 million subscribers (as of December 31, 2018).

“Delivering better customer experience through the digital medium is one of the focus areas for Vodafone Idea, said Balesh Sharma, CEO at Vodafone Idea.

“This five-year collaboration with IBM opens new opportunities for us to partner together in domains such as the cloud, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT),” he added.

Benefits of the agreement

“We will also be able to leverage collateral from the cloud partnership already announced between Vodafone and IBM in Europe. Achieving synergies post-merger from the combination of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular is a strategic priority for us and we continue to be ahead of track,” he said.

IBM will consolidate applications and infrastructure, including data centres and disaster recovery units, and further accelerate its existing Cloud usage.

Solutions deployed by Vodafone India and Idea Cellular earlier will be merged, and Big Data capabilities enhanced.

IBM is also supporting Vodafone Idea with the option of an extended flexible payment plan structure for the term of the contract through IBM Global Financing, its wholly owned subsidiary.

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