Airtel and Google Cloud Teamed up, For Enterprise Business

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel & Google Cloud declared an agreement on January 20, to serve small & medium businesses with digital solutions. Under the pact, Airtel will offer G-Suite for small & medium-sized companies (SMBs) in India as part of its integrated ICT portfolio. G-Suite is a set of brilliant Apps-Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar. The move follows a series of enterprise partnerships announced by rivals Reliance Jio and Microsoft.

In August 2019, Airtel’s biggest telecom competitor Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio, declared a 10-year deal with Microsoft to benefit the operator set up a network of giant data centers across India. The tech giant will expand the Azure cloud platform in these centers to uphold offerings. The first two data centers, which would house IT equipment consuming up to 7.5 MW of power, were being set up in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra and were set to be operational within 2020.

Jio had announced that it would also provide the associated Cloud-Microsoft app framework free of cost to start-ups & for a monthly fee of Rs1,500 to the ministry of MSME (micro, small, and medium enterprises). Currently, Airtel furnishes its wide-ranging of services from telecommunication to the Internet to nearly half a million small & medium businesses and about 2,500 large companies across the country. Apart from India, the Delhi based telecommunication service contributor is a subsidiary of the Bharti Enterprises and is currently running in 18 countries across the globe, although Google launched its Cloud platform back in 2008, in 2015, Google became a supplementary company of Alphabet Inc.

Previous year, in April 2019, Bharti Airtel and network gear maker Cisco united to bring networking & connectivity solutions to SMEs in India. The partnership entailed Airtel offering software-defined extensive area network (SD-WAN) services built on the Cisco-Viptela platform. This solution was said to have a centralized policy & a management controller for SME customers to view data flows to optimize them.

These partnerships aid the Telco’s to extend their rivalry to the enterprise data center business already populated by the likes of Google, Netmagic, Amazon Web Services, and CtrlS, among other data center service providers in the country. The launching of goods and services tax (GST), in 2017, and subsequent digital identity it gave to businesses across the country through the GST number has flagstoned the way for technology providers to knock into this market further.

With its developing economy and the adoption of digital services, India offers one of the most significant opportunities to serve customers with innovative solutions. Airtel has strengthened its deep-rooted relationship with Google Cloud further and build products and services aimed at transforming Indian businesses.