Nxtra by Airtel becomes ‘India’s first data centre to deploy AI’

Nxtra by Airtel deploys AI in Chennai data centres for operational excellence, plans expansion and net-zero commitment.

Data Centre company Nxtra by Airtel, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, announced the successful deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its Chennai data centres to drive operational excellence.

With this, Nxtra by Airtel has become the first data centre in India to leverage AI to build new-age digitised facilities engineered to drive smart capabilities such as predictive maintenance, enhanced operational and energy efficiency, streamlined automation of operations and optimised capex utilisation,” said its CEO Ashish Arora during an interaction.

After the successful deployment of the AI-powered SmartSense platform of Ecolibrium, Nxtra plans to deploy it across all its core data centres.

With the deployment, Nxtra aims to achieve key efficiency milestones such as 10% increase in asset life, 10% reduction in non-IT power consumption, 15% increase in equipment performance and 25% improvement in productivity across all data centre operations.

“The partnership with Ecolibrium and the integration of AI into the core of our data centres is a crucial step in this direction with which we will advance our energy efficiency and overall performance,” he said.

Today, our AI/ML platform is operational at over 500 sites worldwide, providing real-time, data-driven insights across industries such as real-estate and manufacturing. In a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Nxtra, we are bringing our 12 years of expertise to revolutionise data centre operations through cutting-edge AI technology,” said Ecolibrium CEO Chintan Soni.

Mr. Arora announced the doubling of data centres existing capacities to over 400 MW in the next few years at an investment of ₹5,000 crore and is committed to becoming net-zero by 2031 through multiple interventions.