A look inside the companies’ three-prong strategy with IBM’s head of cloud, 5G, and edge
IBM on Wednesday announced a partnership with Indian telco Bharti Airtel to bring forth a massive edge computing project that will include 120 network data centers across 20 cities in India. The companies see the new effort as a business accelerator not only for large Indian enterprises in manufacturing, automotive and other industries, but also for Indian startups working on emerging edge use cases and solutions.
Bill Lambertson, IBM’s VP of cloud, 5G and edge, recently offered RCR Wireless News some background on the project.
“We’ve been working extensively with Bharti Airtel for almost a year now on this partnership,” he said.
The hybrid platform will be deployed using IBM Cloud Satellite and Red Hat OpenShift.
“Airtel envisioned a platform being built on Kubernetes,” Lambertson said. “And when we started to talk to then, we suggested not only Red Hat OpenShift but also IBM Cloud Satellite as a managed instance of Red Hat OpenShift anywhere.”
Much attention is focused on India’s nascent 5G industry. The country recently concluded a US$19 billion auction, with government officials pushing the winning bidders to launch 5G in the country by October. While 5G deployments are top of mind for the winning bidders, including Airtel, Lambertson noted that edge computing services extend well beyond just 5G.
“Whether it’s 5G or 4G, or Wi-Fi, or wireline, it doesn’t really matter. That’s why it’s called multi-access edge computing. Airtel, is going to be deploying these edge solutions across their network data centers, and then the interconnection into the network, whether it’s through a (user plane function) for 5G or through (Control and User Plane Separation, or CUPS) if it’s 4G, or whatever, they’ll be able to do that,” he said.
Lambertson said the telco was very receptive to the combination of an open platform with service and management handled by IBM. He said that Airtel’s focus is on three market segments.
“The first one is they want to develop solutions and provide solutions for large enterprise customers in India. And they want to combine that with their 5G and private 5G offerings,” he said.
IBM and Airtel point to Indian automaker Muruti Suzuki India Ltd as an example of such a large enterprise customer. The company – India’s biggest passenger vehicle manufacturer – will use the new edge service to help manage quality inspections on the factory floor. The solution combines private 5G edge services provided by Airtel, combined with IBM’s Maximo asset management software.
“They were very interested in having a mobile, smart manufacturing floor – to be able to move things around at will,” said Lambertson.
Large industrial and commercial enterprises like Muruti Suzuki offer plenty of low-hanging fruit for the companies to pick. Indian businesses, like everywhere else, are hungry for agile digital transformation solutions to drive operational efficiency and, hopefully, improve the bottom line. But Airtel and IBM have broader ambitions – to help foster innovation and change throughout the Indian tech sector.
“The second area Airtel wants to develop is…to have a sandbox that startups, ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), and developers can leverage to develop their own edge use cases and solutions that will take advantage of the Airtel network, and the Red Hat and IBM Edge platform,” he added.
Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is Airtel and IBM’s third focus area, according to Lambertson, an area where Airtel already has a large installed base of customers and devices to support.
“As the IoT devices become more intelligent and more operating technology is enabled, [customers] want to be able to capture the data and leverage those far edge devices around industrial IoT,” he said.
Airtel’s startup play
The combination of Airtel’s network services and IBM and Red Hat’s edge software can also help simplify edge deployments for startups, Lambertson contended.
“Through some early interviews that we’ve done, and some early discussions that we’ve had with some of those startups, the network is always one of the difficult things that they emphasize as being a challenge for them at the edge,” he said.
Airtel and IBM see local startups serving a vital role in the growth and development of edge services and software in India, he said.
“We think that the startup community and the small medium businesses will be a much more important part of the equation for the Indian marketplace,” said Lambertson. “Airtel has been fostering and developing and nurturing some startup communities and has played a key role for some startups in India.”
Emerging data sovereignty requirements for the Indian marketplace are another accelerator for Indian startups looking to take advantage of emerging edge services from Airtel, he said.
“I think (Airtel) can carve out their own niche that they can cater to the domestic India, small, medium businesses and enterprise businesses and do it cost effectively. They have very strong buying power in India,” he said.
