IBM has assembled a Hybrid Cloud Build Team to help partners deploy customer applications across IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) & other clouds. The common theme across those clouds: IBM wants Red Hat OpenShift to be the underlying platform for those cloud deployments.
The Hybrid Cloud Build Team is part of IBM's $1 billion investment in its ecosystem, and will support the migration and modernization of ecosystem partner products, services and other offerings across open hybrid cloud environments, IBM said in the statement. The Hybrid Cloud Build Team is a complimentary offering to enable partners and their customers to bring their ideas to market using engagement models like IBM Garage and IBM's design thinking methodology, according to the statement.
IBM Introduces Hybrid Cloud Build Team
The team, which has over 100 cloud architects, data scientists, cloud developers, security specialists and developer advocates, is expected to grow to more than 200 members in 2021 and has already participated in over 75 engagements, IBM said.
The Hybrid Cloud Build Team also advises partners in highly-regulated and industries like financial services and telecommunications, according to the statement.
Build team members have expertise in Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, AWS and many more environments, to helps partners revamp workloads across all cloud platforms and providers as well as new technologies like AI, 5G, Kubernetes, blockchain and edge to optimize business operations and improve client outcomes, according to the statement.
Hybrid Cloud Team: An Investment in Ecosystem Partners
"In addition to recent changes that include new programs, additional funding, and a simplified ecosystem approach, IBM's Hybrid Cloud Build Team demonstrates a commitment to and investment in our ecosystem partners like never before," said Willie M. Tejada, IBM chief developer advocate and general manager, ISV/Build ecosystem. "This elite group of hybrid cloud specialists helps partners overcome obstacles to modernize and migrate client cloud workloads while infusing AI across platforms and providers. Numerous partners have told us that the team's work has proven advantageous to their clients and has been a catalyst in expanding IBM's Hybrid Cloud Ecosystem."
Typical Hybrid Cloud Build Team engagements have lasted between five and twenty weeks to create an application minimum viable product (MVP) or prototype, and help enable significant go-to-market opportunities for participating partners, the company said in the statement.
IBM Multi-Cloud Momentum: More Time Needed
Theses latest IBM efforts surface after the company delivered weaker-than-expected cloud and cognitive software revenues for Q4 of 2020. In stark contrast, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud each delivered especially strong quarterly revenues in recent days.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has been striving to pivot the company from hardware and software toward hybrid cloud opportunities. Much of the effort leverages the Red Hat acquisition — which provides open source software that runs across any public cloud, in private clouds and across on-premises data centers.
More recently, IBM has acquired small cloud and SaaS application consulting firms such as:
- January 2021: Taos, a Top 250 Public Cloud MSP as ranked by ChannelE2E.
- January 2021: 7Summits for Salesforce cloud consulting expertise
- December 2020: Nordcloud for cloud consulting, migration and transformation capabilities.
- November 2020: SAP software developer & IT services partner TruQua Enterprise.
- November 2020: Application performance monitoring (APM) software company Instana.
- June 2020: WDG for robotic process automation (RPA) software expertise.
- June 2020: Spanugo for cloud cybersecurity posture management solutions.
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
