Vodafone Idea, IBM sign five-year deal for cloud platform

Vodafone Idea has signed a multi-million dollar five-year deal with IBM for cloud-based digital platform that will allow the telco to deliver an enhanced customer experience to its over 387 million users.

Both Vodafone and Idea Cellular had been partners of IBM prior to their merger and now the deal has been renewed for five years with the merged entity.

The deal with IBM will also contribute to Vodafone Idea’s merger synergy objective by reducing its IT-related costs.

Payment of the deal will be through vendor financing wherein IBM Global Financing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM will support the company with an option of extended flexible payment plan structure for the term of contract.

The company said it believes the new platform will remove constraints to the exponential growth of data usage driven by increasing consumption of video, streaming and digital commerce.

The company is collaborating with technology partners including IBM to deploy new age technologies with built-in customisations and novel innovations.

“This five-year collaboration with IBM opens new opportunities for us to partner together in domains like cloud, AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (internet of things). We will also be able to leverage collateral from the cloud partnership already announced between Vodafone and IBM in Europe,” Balesh Sharma, chief executive, Vodafone Idea, said.

It will consolidate applications and infrastructure, including data centres, disaster recovery centres, and further accelerate existing cloud usage.

Solutions deployed by Vodafone

India and Idea Cellular earlier will be merged and big data capabilities be enhanced.

IDEA Cellular Limited