Bharti Airtel and IBM jointly announced a 10-year
agreement to provide comprehensive IT solutions to its employees across 16
African countries.
IBM will provide a standard operating
environment, ‘help desk’ and ‘desk side’ support to enhance employee efficiency
and convenience. Today’s announcement builds on a strategic partnership signed
in late 2010 to manage the computing technology and services to power Airtel’s
mobile communications network
spanning 16 African countries.
IBM will provide comprehensive end user services to
Airtel employees across Africa, in French and English. The consolidation of
Airtel’s helpdesks, is expected to bring
greater cost savings and efficiencies by streamlining the processes of
addressing IT operational issues. It will also include an enhanced information
enterprise security solution that further strengthens Airtel’s commitment to
customer data privacy.
IBM will also be responsible for the implementation and
maintenance of a standard operating environment, using state of the art
platforms, tools and management processes.
“This agreement enables us to provide the best IT
capabilities to our employees with a focus of making innovative mobile
solutions available across Africa. IBM will introduce best practices based on
their global experience in various sectors. This will help us to focus on
delivering innovative products and services and providing a better customer
experience,” said Manoj Kohli, chief executive officer (International) &
joint managing director, Bharti Airtel.
Airtel and IBM’s relationship began in 2004 when South
Asia’s leading mobile communications provider selected IBM to run IT and
applications for its entire network in India. Since then, Airtel has seen
explosive growth from six million customers to more than 225 million today.
Airtel currently has over 44 million customers across 16 African operations and
is targeting 100 million by 2015.
“This latest agreement will bring enhanced
efficiencies to benefit customers, employees and business partners of Bharti
Airtel,” said Bruno Di Leo, IBM general manager, Growth Markets.
“IBM becomes the single partner to Airtel, providing
end user services as well as consolidating and transforming the different IT
environments across Airtel’s African operations into an integrated system,
overseeing the management of all applications, data center operations, servers,
storage and desktop services. The seamless end-to-end service will enable
Airtel to offer a superior customer experience across Africa,” Leo added.
The agreement with Airtel highlights IBM’s continued
geographic expansion initiative to strategically increase its presence in key
growth markets and support its global growth strategy. IBM is ramping up its
investment in Africa and has a direct presence in over 20 African countries
including South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia.
By TelecomLead.com Team
[email protected]
