Bharti Airtel and IBM have announced a 10-year agreement which would see the latter providing comprehensive IT solutions and end user services to employees of the former across 16 African countries. Under the agreement, which aims at building on a strategic partnership signed in late 2010 to manage computing technology and services to power Airtel’s mobile communications network spanning in 16 African countries, IBM will provide an environment, ‘help desk’ and ‘desk help’ support to enhance employee efficiency and convenience. The consolidation of Airtel’s helpdesks, is expected to bring greater cost savings and efficiencies by streamlining the processes of addressing IT operational issues. It will also include an enhanced information enterprise security solution that further strengthens Airtel’s commitment to customer data privacy. According to Executive Officer (International) & Joint Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, Manoj Kohli, “this agreement enables us to provide the best IT capabilities to our employees with a focus of making innovative mobile solutions available across Africa. “IBM will introduce best practices based on their global experience in various sectors. This will help us to focus on delivering innovative products & services and providing a better customer experience,” he added. Airtel and IBM's relationship began in 2004 when South Asia's leading mobile communications provider selected IBM to run IT and applications for its entire network in India. Since then, Airtel has seen explosive growth from six million customers to more than 225 million today. Airtel currently has over 44 million customers across 16 African operations and is targeting 100 million by 2015. "This latest agreement will bring enhanced efficiencies to benefit customers, employees and business partners of Bharti Airtel," said Bruno Di Leo, IBM General Manager, Growth Markets. "IBM becomes the single partner to Airtel, providing end user services as well as consolidating and transforming the different IT environments across Airtel's African operations into an integrated system, overseeing the management of all applications, data centre operations, servers, storage and desktop services. The seamless end-to-end service will enable Airtel to offer a superior customer experience across Africa." The agreement with Airtel highlights IBM's continued geographic expansion initiative to strategically increase its presence in key growth markets and support its global growth strategy. IBM is ramping up its investment in Africa and has a direct presence in over 20 African countries including South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. In recent weeks, the company has announced its expansion into both Senegal and Tanzania. The new agreement was signed in the first quarter of 2011. Source: Myjoyonline.com