IBM’s Clayton Talks Hybrid Cloud Strategy, $1 Billion Investment
… 50 commercial products and gives partners a way to “sell their software today and make money,” Clayton said.
ISV partners so far include Anchore, Cockroach Labs, CognitiveScale, Couchbase, Dynatrace, KubeMQ, MemSQL, MongoDB and StorageOS. Solutions comprise 12 categories including artificial intelligence/machine learning, database, monitoring, security, storage, big data and developer tools.
IBM Beefs Up Financial Services Cloud Partner Roster
The second partner-centric cloud area revolves around financial services. IBM just announced more on this in-motion effort earlier this month. Recall that IBM launched its public cloud product for banks, IBM Cloud for Financial Services, in 2019. This past summer, the vendor introduced its partner ecosystem for the platform. Then in mid-October, it said it has beefed up that lineup with new partners. These experts will help banks integrate third-party services and modernize applications, all to improve the customer experience.
IBM designed the financial services cloud with Bank of America and a number of other global banks.
“They came to us and said they love the architectural approach, ‘you understand us and our security requirements; we want to innovate more than we have in the past, and we need to [team] with more partners,” Clayton said.
So, once it finished IBM Cloud for Financial Services, Big Blue signed more than 50 partners — and it beefed up that number with 15 more in October alone. Avaya, Bulpros, Crealogix, Izicap, Movius, PDV Financial Software, Silverlake Logistics and Infrastructure Sdn Bhd, SureStep, Triple Point Liquidity, Trūata, Turbonomic, vArmour and WorkFusion all just teamed up with IBM.
“They’re joining this ecosystem for financial services because we help them get through the security control plane reviews, access more banks throughout the world … and standardize the process to become a partner of these banks,” Clayton said. “Part of our billion-dollar investment is to bring ISVs on board and help them grow their businesses.”
Evaristus Mainsah, general manager, cloud, Cloud Pak and edge ecosystem at IBM, agreed.
“IBM will guide ISV partners through each step of the onboarding process, which includes a security controls assessment, workload migration and readiness validation,” Mainsah wrote in an Oct. 15 blog. “This process supports partner compliance initiatives with the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services requirements and efficient onboarding through a systematic approach supported by IBM’s technical, security and regulatory teams. IBM will help validated ISVs discover new opportunities by leveraging its global network of financial services partners and customers.”
And given that 40% of IBM’s total revenue comes from financial services, it makes sense that the vendor is pumping money into this domain.
“Supported by a Cloud Engagement Fund established as part of a $1 billion investment in our ecosystem, IBM is helping to accelerate the adoption of our platform for these new partners by addressing financial and technical obstacles,” Mainsah said. “The fund gives IBM the ability to create financial frameworks for partners, layering in cloud credits and technical resources to help launch impactful business relationships.”
Overall, the channel’s demand for working with IBM’s cloud services and banks “has absolutely taken off,” Clayton said.
“We’re just keeping pace with the demand from our partners,” he added. “It’s a great problem to have.”