Bharti Airtel has selected IBM to manage the computing technology and services for the mobile operator's African operations. IBM will deploy and manage IT infrastructure and applications to support Bharti in 16 countries in Africa. In addition, IBM will deploy advanced technologies created by IBM Research, including the Spoken Web, a voice-enabled internet technology that allows users to access and share information simply by talking over an existing telephone. IBM already runs the IT and applications for Airtel's entire Indian network, in an agreement dating from 2004. Bharti chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, who spoke at a press conference in Nairobi on the deal, declined to discclose the value of the agreement. Under the 10-year contract, IBM will consolidate 16 different IT environments across Bharti Airtel's African operations into an integrated IT system and will oversee the management of all of the applications, data centre operations, servers, storage and desktop services. When the agreement becomes final, IBM will provide customer support applications that include customer relationship management, billing and self-care. In addition, IBM plans to deploy a content management system to offer rich media content such as music and video over mobile devices, while simultaneously facilitating the growth of the application developer community in Africa. Bharti Airtel expects the deal will help it reliase its goal of more than 100 million African customers by 2012. Business partners such as distributors and retailers will benefit from on demand data by simply using mobile devices to increase efficiencies. IBM will also be responsible for deploying advanced information security systems that will provide privacy protection for customer data and enhance the resilience of enterprise systems against threats.
