Interview with Jai Menon of Airtel

Category: Enterprise | No Comments | Posted on June 5, 2006

Dr. Jai Menon, Group CIO of Bharti Airtel, talks about the company’s famous outsourcing strategy. If you are still wondering how can an operator outsource its network – read to find out.

Instead of funneling huge CAPEX on infrastructure, processes and people, he tested what he considered a “true utility computing model” by outsourcing the company’s call center and business IT systems, with plans to outsource content and service delivery systems in the near term. To carry it out, he partnered with the likes of IBM, Nortel and Oracle and utilized different payment models from revenue per share to cost per all, depending on what works for the parties involved.

Menon believes that the on-demand model has effectively supported the company’s rapid growth curve. Bharti now serves 18 million subscribers and targets to reach 100 million mark in four to five years’ time.

The idea was to outsource the provisioning of streams of IT, including what Menon and his team classified as “classic IT” or CIT, covering business IT systems such as billing and care and enterprise IT including ERP and intranets. It also outsourced Contact Center Technology or CCT involving speech enabled IVRs, network virtualization and voice loggers. Currently, the company is finalizing its model for Service Delivery platform covering a comprehensive content platform that works across heterogeneous networks including mobile, broadband and value added services.

The company has also unified its fixed line, ISP, IDD and mobile business under one brand, Bharti Airtel.

Menon says operators could test blended formula that puts into account revenue, churn rate, customer statistics as part of the equation and decide on which agreement with work best. “The important thing is for you and your partners be aligned on the same objectives, sort that out and you’ll make Utility Computing work for you,” Menon concludes.

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