IBM Cloud for Financial Services Reaches 100 Partner Milestone

IBM announced it has added new partners to its IBM Cloud for Financial Services ecosystem, bringing the total to more than 100 partners helping accelerate cloud adoption in the financial services industry, according to a blog post from Brendan Kinkade, VP, technology and hybrid cloud partnerships, IBM and Joel Spieth, general manager, IBM Cloud for Financial Services.

“Today, we reached an important benchmark—more than 100 ecosystem partners intend to onboard solutions on to the IBM Cloud for Financial Services to help financial services providers streamline the way they work with GSIs, ISVs, SaaS providers and FinTechs to help accelerate their innovation and improve the customer experience. Our focus is on enabling our partners to accelerate time to market and customer onboarding while deepening engagement through our security and compliance capabilities,” Kinkade and Spieth said in the post.

Big Blue announced general availability of its Cloud for Financial Services in April 2021, as ChannelE2E reported. The cloud, built in collaboration with Bank of America to help accelerate cloud adoption for financial services clients, also helps reduce risk for financial institutions, their partners and financial technology (fintech) providers, according to a statement from IBM.

The financial services-ready cloud platform includes support for Red Hat OpenShift and other cloud-native services, IBM said. The financial services industry and technology partners can build applications with Red Hat OpenShift, migrate virtual machine workloads and enable compliance across workloads, according to the statement.

IBM Cloud for Financial Services

IBM Cloud for Financial Services is designed to help banks host mission-critical workloads while adhering to their security and compliance regulations, and the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services is designed to reduce third- and fourth-party risk in the digital supply chain through a common set of security and compliance controls that are adhered to by the entire ecosystem, according to the blog post. The platform was developed in collaboration with Bank of America and Promontory, a financial services regulatory compliance consulting firm, and maintained by IBM’s Financial Services Cloud Council, led by Howard Boville, Head of IBM Hybrid Cloud Platform, according to the statement.

IBM also has been working with several global financial institutions such as BNP Paribas, Luminor Bank, MUFG and more, according to the statement. Ecosystem collaboration partners including SAP, EY and Tata Consultancy Services, independent software vendors (ISVs) and software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers; new partners include AmplifAI, Circeo, Decision Focus, Enghouse Interactive, Episode Six, Finclude, Hanzo Archives, Inc, Infosys Finacle, NetApp, Inc, NexJ Systems, Inc, NGDATA, Palo Alto Networks, Portworx by Pure Storage, SIS-ID, SunTec, Temenos, Vestigo, VMware, Zafin and many others that help financial institutions integrate offerings from third-party providers, modernize legacy applications to improve the customer experience and speed the path to market, according to the blog post.

Financial Services Cloud Market Opportunities

A cloud engagement fund established as part of a $1B investment in the IBM ecosystem will help support partner adoption of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services and help IBM and its partners modernize applications through technology support and build new use cases, solutions and go-to-market collaborations while layering in cloud credits and technical resources to help partners launch impactful business relationships, according to the blog post.

"As our momentum increases, so will the benefits for customers. Our growing ecosystem has been used by customers to further streamline operations, increase efficiencies, reduce risk, decrease compliance costs and accelerate revenue growth as more partners continue to onboard," said Kinkade and Spieth. "We’re speeding cloud adoption in the financial services industry by offering a cloud with a built-in security and regulatory framework that helps partners and their customers accelerate their journeys to the cloud. We’re proud to share that our momentum toward this goal is increasing every day."