Cloud & Virtualisation

Indian telco Bharti Airtel announced on Wednesday it has signed a strategic partnership deal with IBM to upgrade its recently launched Airtel Cloud service to enable enterprises in regulated industries to better scale AI workloads across multiple environments.

Tata Consultancy Services, a major name in IT services, consulting and business solutions headquartered in India, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Indian government group the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to accelerate the development of India’s sovereign cloud ecosystem.

Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud have teamed with Malaysian state-backed telecoms infrastructure operator Smartsel to launch Selangor Multi-Cloud Services (SMC), a state initiative aimed at accelerating AI adoption and driving digital transformation across Selangor.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) says it has partnered with Philippine telco NOW Telecom to co-design, develop, and deploy scalable and secure digital infrastructure that includes the creation of a sovereign data cloud for public and private sectors.

Xtelify, a fully owned subsidiary of Indian operator Bharti Airtel that houses Airtel’s digital assets and capabilities, has announced the launch of what it describes as a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform called Airtel Cloud, along with software platform deals in a number of territories.

In what is described as a major boost to South Africa’s digital and AI capabilities, Touchnet, a business-to-business-focused internet service provider, in collaboration with global cloud provider Zadara, has officially launched a sovereign AI cloud infrastructure at Digital Parks Africa’s advanced, carrier-neutral Uptime Tier III Design Certified Data Centre in Samrand in the Gauteng province.

Qatar and the UAE have new sovereign cloud services following separate launches this week from Ooredoo and du that promise a local alternative to international cloud service providers.

Ericsson said on Wednesday it has struck an agreement with Latvian telco Latvijas Mobilais Telefons (LMT) to modernize its subscriber domain infrastructure to support its planned deployment of standalone 5G.

Arkan Solutions, a provider of cloud communication services and session border controller as a service (SBCaaS) across the Middle East and globally, has announced the successful go-live of its PSTN integration service for international express shipping service DHL Express in Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan, in collaboration with British Telecom (BT).

AIS Business said on Thursday that it has launched what it says is Thailand’s first locally-based hyperscale cloud service using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to support AI workloads for public and private organizations.

Robi Axiata’s digital services subsidiary Axentec announced on Tuesday it has launched what it says is the first Tier-IV cloud platform fully hosted and operated in Bangladesh that promises data sovereignty for local enterprises.

Cloud networking and security-as-a-service provider GTT Communications says it has expanded its global Tier 1 IP backbone in nine more countries in the Latin America and Asia Pacific regions.

A reminder of the growing emphasis from governments on ensuring that local data stays within their borders comes from Azerbaijan, where edge AI, cloud, network, and security solutions provider Gcore has announced a strategic partnership with state-owned service provider AzInTelecom.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced plans to embed its cloud technology within Orange’s mobile networks in Morocco and Senegal this year, aiming to significantly improve connectivity speed and reduce latency.

Magalu Cloud, a cloud computing services platform, and data centres and connectivity company Ascenty, have committed to continuing a partnership to support the digital transformation of Brazil’s retail sector.

Solomon Islands operator Our Telekom is partnering with Oracle for an end-to-end digital transformation initiative.

Abu Dhabi’s Department of Government Enablement has announced an agreement with Microsoft and Core42, a G42 company specialising in sovereign cloud, AI infrastructure and digital services. G42 is an artificial intelligence development company based in Abu Dhabi.

Tencent Cloud and TrueWatch have announced a partnership to launch what is said to be Indonesia's first multi-cloud SaaS observability platform.

PLDT’s mobile arm Smart Communications announced at Mobile World Congress 2025 on Thursday it is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power Smart’s strategy to boost customer experiences with AI-powered applications.

At MWC25 international operator Orange has launched a new 5G core network as a service (CNaaS) solution – a world-first that, it says, drastically simplifies 5G deployment for mobile operators of any size.

India-based Jio Platforms announced at Mobile World Congress 2025 on Monday it has teamed with AMD, Cisco, and Nokia to create an 'Open Telecom AI Platform' that promises to integrate AI and automation into every layer of telco network operations.

Red Hat, a provider of open source solutions, has announced at MWC25 that Kenyan operator Safaricom has deployed Red Hat OpenShift as a common cloud platform for applications, including the M-Pesa mobile payment system.

Ethio Telecom launched seven new cloud-based enterprise services on Wednesday – ranging from banking and push-to-talk communications to cattle management – which it says are designed to streamline operations and elevate customer service.

Saudi Arabian digital enabler, stc Group, through its AI arm, stc.AI, says it has launched a large language model (LLM) sovereign cloud platform, which will, it claims, run the world’s largest open-source frontier model.

Saudi Arabia’s STC Group announced it has signed a collaboration deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate deployment of cloud-based services and AI infrastructure in the country.

The DeepSeek AI story continues to make headlines, this time through AceCloud, which claims to be the first Indian sovereign cloud provider to offer DeepSeek Gen AI models at scale on its cloud platform.

CoreX has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the businesses of Volteo Digital.

Oracle has equipped its Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP) with connectivity from Space X's Starlink low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites , enabling clients to access its cloud applications in remote locations.

Amazon Web Services has officially launched its AWS Asia Pacific (Thailand) Region as part of its overall commitment to invest more than US$5 billion in the country up to 2037.

Veon-owned Ukrainian telco Kyivstar said on Monday it has launched a generative AI (GenAI) lab in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help local enterprises adopt GenAI to improve their business processes.

Digital ecosystem GoTo Group, along with leading cloud company Tencent Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of China’s Alibaba Group, have signed agreements that, they say, will boost cloud infrastructure and digital talent development in Indonesia. All three companies will work closely with the Indonesian government.