IBM betting on multi-cloud
At its Think 2018 event in Las Vegas, IBM’s top executives have outlined how the firm is betting on multi-cloud.
Cloud Private gets some attention
To back up its plans, IBM points to the enterprise cloud market, where, according to IDC research, 85% of enterprises will commit to multi-cloud architectures in 2018. And a recent RightScale survey, which showed enterprises are using an average of five public and private clouds.
IBM says its Cloud Private is front and centre to its multi-cloud strategy and goes full-on with the promotion. Launched last quarter, the platform is designed to make cloud “more accessible and easier for businesses of all sizes”.
Built on open-source Kubernetes container technology, IBM Cloud Private can be installed on a range of enterprise systems to create a private cloud with an architecture and capabilities consistent with the public IBM Cloud.
The company says this combination of “flexibility and control is particularly important” to companies in industries such as finance with high standards for security, compliance and reliability.
More than 150 clients have already signed up for IBM Cloud Private including Brazilian bank Bradesco, Finland insurer Ilmarinen and Macedonian payments operator KIBS.
Brazil to Macedonia
IBM also provides more details on those three Cloud Private deals.
Bradesco, which has 77 million customer accounts, chose IBM Cloud Private to create new microservices that extend banking information, such as account balances, to mobile devices.
The bank is already using IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence (AI) system to assist employees with answering customer questions and IBM mainframes for mobile transactions.
Ilmarinen is the largest private insurer in Finland responsible for the pensions of over 1.1 million Finland residents and more than €45 billion in investment assets.
It has been shifting applications to Cloud Private to “maximise existing infrastructure capacity, while allowing for more flexible allocation of IT resources depending on workloads”.
KIBS, aka Klirinski Interbankarski Sistemi AD Skopje, is owned by 12 banks, and adopted Cloud Private to meet regulatory, security and availability standards – and for the development of digital services.
According to IBM, nations in the Western Balkans region, where KIBS operates, are now on the path of their closer integration with the European Union, adding new regulations for financial services companies.
