Google Cloud and Axiata Enterprise, the B2B unit of Axiata Group, have formed a strategic partnership to support digitalising economies across Asia.
The partnership will be delivered in two phases. The first will see Axiata’s telcos customers offer Google Workspace as part of their integrated ICT portfolio and solution bundles to small and medium businesses. Dialog in Sri Lanka will be the first with integration scheduled for the second quarter of 2021, followed by Celcom in Malaysia, XL in Indonesia, Robi in Bangladesh, Ncell in Nepal, and Smart in Cambodia by the second half of the year.
The second phase of the partnership will see Axiata’s telcos customers use Google Cloud’s core compute, storage, and networking capabilities to upgrade their infrastructure and support their various digital transformation initiatives.
“Axiata and Google Cloud have a shared vision of helping businesses digitise and grow as they build greater resilience for the long haul. With nations increasingly stepping up on digitalisation for economic recovery and growth, we stand at a critical juncture to support businesses, especially small and medium players in their efforts to adjust and adapt to new digital norms for survival,” said Dr Gopi Kurup, CEO of Axiata Enterprise.
“The power of Google Cloud’s advanced technologies combined with Axiata’s market intelligence enables companies to access advanced tools to boost their collaboration and productivity and generate data-based insights to strengthen their evolving customer engagement strategies.”
XL Axiata adopted Google’s Anthos to power its hybrid and multi-cloud computing in 2020, with a target to move 70% of workloads to the cloud within the next three years.
In addition, Celcom is using Google Cloud’s infrastructure and solutions to run its payment gateway and advance its modern digital customer journey. The company also has plans to use Google Cloud’s AI tools to build personalisation and recommendation models to further enhance customer experience.
“To resource-strapped SMBs, cloud technology is a game changer that enables them to compete with larger players in the market,” said Ruma Balasubramanian, managing director of Google Cloud in Southeast Asia.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Axiata to accelerate the digital transformation of millions of companies in the region and help them solve their complex business and technology challenges.”