Dive Brief:
- IBM’s Envizi ESG Suite, Planning and Analytics with Watson, App Connect Enterprise, and Content Services are now available "as a Service" on AWS, IBM said in a Wednesday announcement.
- IBM and AWS also committed to making additional AIOps and observability software available via AWS early next year.
- The announcement builds on a May collaboration agreement between the two tech giants and gives AWS customers access to more than 50 IBM software products in “as a Service” format, as well in a “bring your own license” format for clients with existing on-prem licenses.
Dive Insight:
Even AWS is betting on a hybrid future. The public cloud infrastructure behemoth with the biggest slice of the domestic cloud pie is working hand-in-hand with mainframe titan IBM to sanctify the marriage of on-prem and cloud-based compute.
In August, the two companies launched a program authorizing IBM channel partners to resell IBM data and AI software on the AWS Marketplace.
The new agreement will allow independent software vendors to obtain IBM software, including three new embeddable AI products unveiled in October, from AWS.
In addition to the new SaaS offerings, IBM is making its Z and Cloud Modernization Stack available through AWS.
Reducing friction between cloud and on-prem is the aim of the ongoing collaboration, Nick Otto, head of global strategic partnerships at IBM, told CIO Dive.
IBM’s consulting team just surpassed 15,000 AWS certifications, according to Otto, who said the partnership is “one of our fastest growing relationships.”
“From our side, we’ve seen AWS developing a much better understanding of the mainframe and why there is a need for different types of compute,” said Otto. “A lot of the work we’re doing with them is around embracing the mainframe, understanding when you need that kind of compute and figuring out how to make that work best with AWS compute.”
The partnership allows AWS customers to spend credits already committed to the hyperscaler on IBM products and to run them in the cloud, the announcement said.
“IBM and AWS will always come with our own points of view,” Kate Woolley, general manager of IBM Ecosystem, said in an interview with CIO Dive. “This partnership allows us to remove some of the emotion around mainframe and public cloud and how well they play together.”
