IBM emphasises principle of data residency for AI models

Global technology company IBM emphasised that data residency will be its key governing principle when it provides artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and platforms, as it sees data sovereignty fundamental to businesses and governments.

At the IBM Think 2025 conference in Mumbai on Wednesday, Hans Dekkers, General Manager, Asia-Pacific, IBM, said, enterprises should have the ownership, control, and flexibility in how they manage their own data and the associated AI models.

Today, data sovereignty has become the key focal point for enterprises and governments worldwide as they are wary about any external party leveraging this information. This has led to steps towards creating regulatory frameworks for how data is consumed and whether it can be retained within a specific territory.

Dekkers remarked that businesses should have the choice on how they run, govern and create value out of the data and added that no external party or third-party vendor should be involved in the process.

This makes the point about the presence of large language models (LLMs), which are able to gather data from multiple sources to build AI models. On the other hand, Dekkers said the differentiation of IBM is that it helps businesses to deploy AI in an open and trusted model.

Towards this end, IBM sees the coming together of three elements—AI, hybrid cloud, and quantum computing—which could redefine how technology is going to be deployed by businesses.

IBM India and South Asia MD Sandip Patel said this technology trinity will enable enterprises to turn data into action for scaling and tackle tough business challenges. He further added that the majority of the data among enterprises remains untapped, and this can be unlocked through agentic AI.

He also emphasised the need for data residency and remained within the specified territory as it has become a critical driver for business value.

On how the country is going to embrace newer technologies, Patel said this is a new era where technology will be a growth accelerator, helping India leapfrog into a digitally empowered, resilient, and globally competitive economy.

IBM also announced a partnership with Bharti Airtel to augment its recently launched Airtel Cloud. The partnership is expected to bring together the telco-grade reliability, high security, and data residency of Airtel Cloud with IBM’s leadership in cloud solutions, and advanced infrastructure and software technologies designed for AI inferencing.

Together, Airtel and IBM will aim to enable enterprises in regulated industries to scale AI workloads more efficiently, delivering interoperability across infrastructure, including on-premise, in the cloud, across multiple clouds and at the edge.

Through this partnership, Airtel Cloud customers will be able to deploy the IBM Power systems portfolio as-a-Service, including the latest-generation IBM Power11 autonomous, AI-ready servers in regulated industries like banking, healthcare, government and others.