IBM spin-off Kyndryl and SAP team up on digital transformation

22 Apr 2022

Image: © nmann77/Stock.adobe.com

Together, Kyndryl and SAP will use their expertise to help businesses embrace new tech and accelerate the move to the cloud.

Kyndryl, the IT infrastructure company that spun out of IBM last year, is teaming up with German software giant SAP to collaborate on new technologies to help businesses with digital transformation.

Announced yesterday (22 April), the strategic partnership expands on existing relations between the two companies. It will combine SAP’s business technology platform with Kyndryl’s expertise in AI, data and cyber resilience, and help businesses move to the cloud efficiently.

Kyndryl will bring its migration tools and AI-powered business data management and analytics services to the table. These are expected to complement Rise with SAP, a bundle of business transformation assets.

Madhuri Chawla, global head of SAP strategic partnership and alliances at Kyndryl, said that together the two companies will offer customers “a full suite of digital services” as business needs and challenges continue to change.

“As our customers embark on new and ongoing cloud transformation strategies, this joint effort allows us to streamline operations and enhance visibility across their mission-critical workloads at unprecedented speed and scale,” she added.

The collaboration will include key enterprise resource planning services such as modernisation and cloud adoption, data and AI for SAP’s business technology platform, and cyber resilience thorough enterprise-level security.

“Our expanded partnership is paving the way for our customers to begin or advance their cloud transformation journey with Rise with SAP,” said Justin Battles, global VP of strategic growth partnerships at SAP. “This move confirms the value of Rise with SAP and the impact it can have on organisations, regardless of where the customer is in their cloud journey.”

In February, Kyndryl struck a major partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to combine their resources and expertise and offer cloud services to Kyndryl enterprise customers. AWS will also provide cloud services to Kyndryl to help it build its own internal cloud infrastructure.

IBM, which is now focused on hybrid cloud and software consulting since the spin-off, has been seeing growth in recent months. Earlier this week, it reported solid revenue growth in its first full quarter as a “more focused business”.

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Vish Gain is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com