As part of its own transformation, IBM is becoming a cloud business, and is building its ecosystem in Europe to suit With cloud sales up 44% in the most recently reported quarter, showing it as a $12.7bn business of which $7.5bn is “as a service”, IBM is justified in claiming a position at the top table for cloud business. But it has not gone out of its way to publicise this side. Talking to Sebastian Krause, General Manager, IBM Cloud Europe reveals that it is very busy, some internally talking to other IBM divisions such as services, but mainly talking to customers and building an ecosystem.
Where IBM is building its cloud business is in hybrid – that mix of public and private, including on-premise that puts the decision in the hands of the customer. This is particularly important in Europe, where cloud is faced with a succession of compliance issues and consideration which make each country, sometimes each region, unique.
In Europe, IBM has been taking its proposition out to the marketplace – literally, Sebastian Krause says some 60% of his time is spent out of the office meeting customers and partners. “There is no big difference between Europe and the US in terms of cloud,” he says other than the extra compliance issues”. And sometimes Europe can be said to be in the lead with some innovative ideas – there are some real pockets of innovation, especially in the Nordics where he has just been in meetings, but it does depend on the business and the vertical industry focus. “There are a lot of start-ups and entrepreneurial businesses here,” he says.
And the emphasis is on building that ecosystem – finding and working with what he calls “services integrators” who can help build the next digital businesses. “Cloud is the enabler of digital transformation and we are talking to our traditional software resellers and those working with private clouds to change the business model and expand cloud.”
This means providing both IBM branded cloud and their own solutions, offering the IBM “As-a-service” route, and offerings through the IBM Marketplace. "Each country has its own tailored portfolio to meet its own needs."
While seeing a boom in systems integration, both large and smaller country-based firms, realistically, there are not a lot of partners who can do this, so there is not just one pattern for the IBM involvement. For service providers and ISVs it means opening up the APIs and backing the integrator with skills and support. “The partners in the cloud work in many different ways."
The recent initiatives with VMware and SAP have brought a lot more focus to these markets and announcements this week concerning OpenStack interoperability across cloud will bring a further boost to IBM's cloud and partners.