IBM-Airtel Business hybrid cloud solution for the benefit of dairy farmers

Airtel Business and IBM have collaborated to deploy a hybrid cloud solution for a group of Milk Producer Companies (MPCs) created by NDDB Dairy Services. The hybrid cloud solution that leverages Airtel Cloud and IBM Power servers, will host the ERP and other key applications to accelerate the digital transformation of the MPCs. These five large MPCs include Paayas in Rajasthan, Maahi in Gujarat, Shreeja in Andhra Pradesh, Baani in Punjab, and Saahaj in Uttar Pradesh.

What will the hybrid cloud solution do?

The hybrid cloud platform will offer a seamless integration of operations and will aim to improve the systems reliability for easy customization, better data control, and scalability. IBM will provide a seamless modernization from IBM Power8 to IBM Power9 based servers and offer a scalability option to SAP S/4 Hana.

The transition to the Airtel-IBM hybrid cloud platform along with advanced IT infrastructure will enable these MPCs to strengthen the support provided to member milk farmers. It will enable these producer companies to securely record and access key information of members, the quantum of milk procured from the farmers, milk products made and sold etc.

Importantly, the MPCs will be able to make direct and timely digital payments to over 500,000 affiliated milk farmers. Of the over 500,000 farmers supported by the MPCs, most farmers are from small or marginal income groups, with a maximum of women entrepreneurs contributing up to 25 lakh litres of milk each day from more than 14,000 villages.

Cutting edge technology

For companies without their own data centres, the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model can provide an inexpensive, fast, fundamental system that can scale up or scale-out as required. This model tends to work well for businesses that need scalable workloads and control over their data.

Says Ravi Jain, Director – Server Sales, IBM India/South Asia, “We are witnessing a considerable surge in demand for highly secured and cutting-edge digital technology from enterprise and government organizations. IBM and Airtel will collaborate and complement each other’s capabilities to address the growing needs of digital transformation of enterprises in India. We are glad to support Producer companies in their journey to the Cloud. Our engagement is aligned with the “Digital India” plans of the Government and to push for the large-scale adoption of digital platforms including direct payments to millions of farmers to their bank accounts.”

Says Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, CEO – Enterprise Business, Airtel Business, “Our endeavour is to enable enterprises to stay focused on their core businesses as we drive end-to-end digital transformation on their behalf. Clients are looking for solutions that are scalable and secured. Through the joint value proposition, we have offered producer companies a modern and secured data centre infrastructure to run their data-intensive workload on a hybrid cloud platform in a very cost-effective manner.”