Vodafone Idea and IBM signs five year multi-million dollar IT deal

On friday, India's largest telecom operator Vodafone Idea Ltd announced a five year multi-million dollar IT outsourcing deal with tech giant IBM.

The reports said that the deal is about $700- 800 million (Rs 4,900 cr - 5,600 cr). By 2021, this five year outsourcing contract will supplement its targeted Rs 8,400 cr annual operational cost savings.

Vodafone Idea said in a statement, "This engagement will also contribute to Vodafone Idea's merger synergy objectives by reducing its IT related costs".

"The collaboration will provide Vodafone Idea with a hybrid cloud based digital platform to enable more intimate engagement with its over 387 million subscribers (as of 31 December, 2018) enhancing business efficiency, agility and scale plus simplification of its business processes", the statement said.

"Vodafone Idea is collaborating with leading global technology partners including IBM to deploy new age technologies with built-in customisations and novel innovations. We believe that use of IBM's hybrid and multicloud, analytics and AI security capabilities will accelerate Vodafone Idea's progression to an open, agile and secure IT environment", the statement added.

Vodafone Idea CEO, Balesh Sharma said, "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. Achieving synergies post-merger from the combination of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular is a strategic priority for us and we continue to be ahead of track".