As cloud adoption accelerates, in part due to coronavirus-led disruption, IBM sees more collaboration with Indian IT service firms coming its way for its cloud infrastructure offerings, said a senior IBM executive.
Lingraju Sawkar, General Manager - global technology services, IBM India, told Moneycontrol that after big firms such as Infosys and Wipro, smaller system integrators are also reaching out to them.
Infosys was the first systems integrator to collaborate with IBM to help its clients migrate to cloud in early March. Recently, Wipro too collaborated with the firm. The partnership is aimed at helping their clients migrate to hybrid cloud, a cloud computing environment that uses a blend of on-premise infrastructure and private and public cloud services.
These companies will be able to use IBM's Red Hat solutions, an open-source cloud offering, which the tech giant acquired for $33 billion in July 2019. They will also be able to leverage IBM’s cloud solutions along with their in-house offerings to help clients migrate to cloud.
There are couple of reasons for such partnerships. For IT firms, revenue from core services are decreasing. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, digital revenues are going to take a hit as clients are cutting down their discretionary spends.
According to a recent report by Wipro, close to 75 percent of organisations find the need to upgrade outdated cloud infrastructure and invest in new- age technologies. This infrastructure revamp would mean that there are more opportunities for cloud service providers.
Most IT firms in their Q4 results pointed out that cloud would be one of the key growth drivers.
Sawkar explained that at this juncture, companies have only two options, "either companies develop it (cloud infrastructure) themselves or you pick up a building block".
Given the pace at which solutions are being adopted, partnerships could be the best bet right now. The IT firms are now partnering with cloud providers like IBM and building their solutions.
Analysts Moneycontrol spoke pointed out that the next few months will see more such partnerships as firms look for new avenues for growth.
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