Airtel and Oracle double down on partnership to accelerate India’s digital economy

NEW DELHI, INDIA and AUSTIN, TEXAS: Oracle and Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s premier communications solutions provider, have extended their partnership to support the growth of India’s digital economy by bringing a range of industry leading cloud solutions to more than 1 million enterprise customers.

The number of active Internet users in India is projected to grow from 622 million in 2020 to over 900 million by 2025^[1], driven by affordable smartphones and data tariffs. With 5G services expected to begin in 2022, the Indian economy will see a further surge in demand for digital services and applications. Additionally, organisations are moving to cloud-based applications to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. As a result, India’s public cloud market is expected to grow from USD 3.6 billion in 2020 to USD 9.5 billion by 2025^[2].

Oracle Cloud to expand in India with Nxtra by Airtel

To support the increasing demand for cloud services in India, Oracle will expand its India West  (Mumbai) region capacity with Nxtra by Airtel – the data centre subsidiary of Airtel. The expanded Oracle Cloud Mumbai Region will be available in 2022. Nxtra by Airtel operates India’s largest data centre network of 10 hyper data centres and 120 edge data centres and plans to invest Rs. 5000 cr (USD 760 million) by 2025 to expand capacity by 3X to over 400 MW.

The expanded Mumbai Region will complement Oracle’s existing MeitY-empanelled cloud regions^[3] in Hyderabad and Mumbai, which already serve hundreds of customers in the country, spanning the private and public sectors. The expanded region will enable more customers to leverage Oracle’s next-generation cloud infrastructure and Airtel Business network to innovate and accelerate their business growth.

Airtel Business to offer Oracle Cloud

As part of the collaboration, Airtel Business and Oracle will also jointly market Oracle Cloud solutions to enterprise customers in the private and public sectors. Airtel Business serves over one million enterprises in India, including large corporations, start-ups, governments and SMEs. Oracle Cloud solutions will now be available to these customers as part of Airtel Business’ integrated portfolio.

Co-innovation for the Indian market

Oracle and Airtel will also set up a Cloud Centre of Excellence in Gurgaon with a dedicated team of specialists from both organisations. These experts will help modernise Airtel’s internal workloads as well as enable customers to adopt cloud and fully benefit from it. Airtel and Oracle will also work on joint IP solution development to support emerging technology growth areas. These include multicloud solutions, B2B customer experience solutions, unified communications solutions among others.

“The demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is on the rise. We’ve witnessed triple-digit growth in the business last year with more and more organizations, of all sizes ranging from top banks and telcos to governments and unicorns, in Asia, turning to OCI to run their mission-critical workloads. We want to help customers build true business continuity and disaster protection, while helping them address their in-country data residence requirements,” said Garrett Ilg, President, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific. “Our partnership with Airtel is a milestone and together we can truly help Indian businesses fast-track growth and help boost India’s economy.”

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel said: “We are delighted to strengthen our close working relationship with Oracle even further. Airtel’s world-class data centre network will support Oracle’s cloud growth in India as they expand their cloud region in the country. Both companies will also partner to co-innovate cloud solutions for India’s digital economy and take these to the market by leveraging Airtel’s leadership in the enterprise segment. With its 5G ready network and large investments in digital infrastructure including data centers, Airtel is well positioned to tap the emerging growth opportunities in the enterprise segment as businesses accelerate their digital transformation journeys.”

[1] https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/active-internet-users-in-india-likely-to-reach-900-mn-by-2025-iamai-121060300710_1.html
[2] https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/indian-public-cloud-market-to-reach-9-5-billion-by-2025-idc/83299000
[3] https://www.oracle.com/in/news/announcement/oracle-cloud-benefits-2021-08-11/