Airtel’s fully owned subsidiary, Xtelify, launched a telco-grade cloud platform for telecom businesses on Monday. Dubbed Airtel Cloud, the cloud platform was initially designed to serve the telecom operator’s internal operational requirements and houses all its digital assets and capabilities. It is said to handle 140 crore transactions per minute. Airtel is now expanding the platform to third-party telecom service providers as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model. Alongside, the company also launched a complementary artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software platform.
In a press release, the Indian telecom operator announced the expansion of Airtel Cloud to third-party businesses in the telecom sector. Airtel said it is a sovereign platform, meaning it was built within India from the ground up, and it is designed to handle a massive 140 crore transactions per minute. The company claims that the platform is hosted on “sustainable” data centres, indicating that these facilities are capable of reusing water (for cooling the servers) and other resources.
Airtel Cloud offerings
Airtel claims that its cloud platform supports advanced data and AI workloads, featuring built-in support for AI/ML operations. Additionally, the company also claims that its IaaS and PaaS services are “highly secure and reliable.” It is also said to offer up to 40 percent optimisation in cloud spending for Indian businesses. Other features of the Airtel Cloud include scaling capabilities, lower costs (the company did not disclose compared to which service), and no vendor lock-ins.
Alongside the cloud platform, Xtelify also launched an AI-powered software that acts as a complementary layer built on top of Airtel Cloud. It can be understood as a modular telecom-focused Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering with AI and automation at its core. The software offers a converged data engine that can aggregate data across a telecom company’s systems and generate insights such as churn prediction, network optimisation, and average revenue per user (ARPU) prediction.
The Xtelify software combines a workforce platform, which likely serves as a task management tool, and an experience platform, which could focus on customer lifecycle management, into a unified software.
Airtel highlighted that Xtelify has signed three global partnerships for the newly launched platform. These global partners include Singapore-based Singtel, Philippines-based Globe Telecom, and Airtel Africa, which is wholly owned and operated by Bharti Airtel.
