TOP 100: IBM makes big move toward transformation – Washington Technology

TOP 100: IBM makes big move toward transformation

A recurring theme that weve heard from companies on the 2021 Washington Technology Top 100 is transformation, both for themselves and for their customers.

But few companies can claim as a dramatic a transformation as the one that IBM is undergoing. Big Blue is spinning off its managed infrastructure services business to form a $19 billion a year new company to be called Kyndryl.

IBM will remain $59 billion a year company focused on hybrid cloud adoption, digital transformation and other areas of innovation such as artificial intelligence-related solutions.

We are really returning to our roots as a core technology company, said Steve LaFleche, general manager for IBMs U.S. public sector and federal market.

Pre-split, IBMs revenue is about 65 percent services and 35 percent technology, but once Kyndryl is an independent company, IBMs revenue mix will have flipped to 65 percent technology and 35 percent services, he said. The split is expected to happen by the end of this year.

For 2021, IBM is ranked No. 33 on the Top 100 with $1.1 billion in prime government contracts.

LaFleche explained that the split will have little impact on the federal business because most of the public sector manage infrastructure business takes place in the state and local market.

Another question that was top of mind was how does IBM distinguish between managed infrastructure services and its cloud offerings. Why dont they fit together?

Its rather simple, according to LaFleche. Think of the managed infrastructure services as the people who run data centers and network operations. It is about people and hourly rates.

IBMs focus is on our hybrid cloud platform, he said. The software platform, some of the underlying integrated hardware that enables clients to modernize. Well keep that as part of IBM.

The company has positioned itself to help customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys, modernize applications, and implement intelligent workflows. We will not be running data centers or networks or storage farms or any clients on-premise infrastructure, LaFleche said.

IBMs journey began several years ago and can be tracked through the kinds of acquisitions it has made. Most notably is the $34 billion acquisition of RedHat in 2109 Much of IBMs hybrid cloud strategy is built around Red Hats Open Shift.

That is the foundation of our open hybrid cloud platform, LaFleche said. From there the company has invested in its software stack that sits on top of that platform and the company is retooling its services business to focus on accelerate adoption of the cloud platform.

The company is also incorporating Open Shift into its System Z mainframes and IBM Power Servers.

This will better enable our clients to move to this open hybrid cloud world that we see as the predominant architecture for the foreseeable future, he said.

The opportunity is huge in the federal space because while parts of many agencies are moving to a hybrid cloud, the majority have not. There is a lot of work to be done.

IBM wants to help federal customers keep what they need on premises in a private cloud but at the same time help them move what they can to a public cloud. This will be particularly important as agencies add mobile front ends to systems and improve how they interact with citizens.

Those kinds of moves require a hybrid cloud approach. And IBMs strength is really in that hybrid multi-cloud arena, LaFleche said.

Earlier this year IBM won an $850 million Navy contract for enterprise resource planning support services. This is an example of the kind of opportunities IBM is pursuing in the federal space. The contract is known as NETSS, for the Navy ERP Technical Support Services. It consolidates several existing contracts.

Thats exactly the type of work we want to see, LaFleche said. Anything that involves applications and application modernization and moving those applications forward.

Besides Red Hat, other acquisitions also have been building these capabilities such as Taos in the United States and NordCloud in Europe. Those deals happened earlier this year and brought hybrid cloud consulting capabilities.

These companies are services companies that help clients modernize applications, move them to a hybrid cloud in an open way, he said. So they can run on IBMs cloud, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure. Its very agnostic.

And this month, IBM acquired BoxBoat, a DevOps consultancy and enterprise Kubernetes certified service provider. The deal extends IBMs container capabilities, which are critical to a hybrid cloud implementation.

While its acquisition strategy moves forward, IBMs partnering strategy has evolved as well. It has forged relationships with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google. It also partners with Workday, Salesforce and Palantir.

We have embraced a broad ecosystem but with a common mission we want to help drive this open hybrid cloud platform. Were not just partnering for empty calories, LaFleche said.

The pace of modernization and digital transformation is picking up in the government market. Part of that is driven by the COVID-19 pandemic which forced agencies to work remotely. Now they see a real benefit of a flexible workforce whether there is a pandemic or not, he said.

Theres a big pull in the marketplace and the technology is there and the skills to modernize these applications are there, he said. We are at a moment of time where everybody says, its time to go.

Posted by Nick Wakeman on Jul 16, 2021 at 9:44 AM

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TOP 100: IBM makes big move toward transformation - Washington Technology