Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Google Cloud and Axiata Enterprise, the B2B unit of Axiata Group Berhad (“Axiata”) a leading telecommunications group in ASEAN and South Asia, today announced a strategic partnership to serve the evolving needs of millions of companies across rapidly digitalising economies in Asia.

The partnership will be rolled out in two distinct phases. The first will see Axiata’s Digital Telcos offering Google Workspace as part of their integrated ICT portfolio and solution bundles to Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). Dialog in Sri Lanka will lead, with implementation scheduled for Q2 this year, 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 Digital Telcos continue to leverage Google Cloud’s core compute, storage, and networking capabilities to modernise their infrastructure and drive their digital transformation initiatives.

Asia is home to over one million SMBs all looking for the best possible way to tap the immense opportunities in some of the world’s fastest growing Internet economies. Axiata’s controlling interests in six mobile operators cover over 157 million mobile subscribers across its footprint.

XL Axiata has already adopted Anthos to power its hybrid and multi-cloud computing needs last year. With a target to move 70% of workloads to the cloud within the next three years, the Indonesian telco is able to automate, manage and scale workloads across its hybrid- and multi-cloud environments in a secure, consistent manner.

Likewise, Celcom is leveraging Google Cloud’s infrastructure and solutions to run its payment gateway and advance its modern digital customer journey. The Malaysian telco also has plans to use Google Cloud’s AI tools to build personalisation and recommendation models to further enhance customer experience.

Axiata Enterprise’s CEO Dr Gopi Kurup said, “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,”

“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,” he added.

Ruma Balasubramanian, managing director of Google Cloud in Southeast Asia said, “To resource-strapped SMBs, cloud technology is a game changer that enables them to compete with larger players in the market. 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.”