Oct 15 (Reuters) - India's second-largest telecom

operator Bharti Airtel has partnered with IBM ( IBM )

to offer the American tech firm's services through its recently

launched cloud platform, the companies said on Wednesday as

demand for computing capacity grows.

Indian firms have been working to expand the availability of

cloud platforms as the growing prominence of artificial

intelligence technology and some localized data storage

requirements have boosted demand for cloud services in the

country.

Through this partnership, Airtel Cloud customers will be

able to deploy IBM's ( IBM ) offerings, such as AI-ready servers for

applications, in regulated industries like banking, healthcare,

government and others.

This comes just a day after Google said it would invest $15

billion over five years to set up an AI data centre in India's

southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Airtel is also partnering with

Google to jointly establish the data center in the port city of

Visakhapatnam.

Bharti Airtel's digital unit Xtelify unveiled its Airtel

Cloud service in August.

IBM ( IBM ) and Airtel will also establish two new Multizone

Regions, or MZRs, in Mumbai and Chennai soon, said Gopal Vittal,

vice chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel.

MZRs account for cloud infrastructure that is spread across

physical locations in different zones to ensure data and

operations remain safe and uninterrupted in case of faults in

any distinct region.

This will help Indian businesses address data residency

requirements and keep mission-critical workloads and

applications up and running at all times, the companies said.