Dive Brief:

• IBM announced it will work with VMware on a new cloud-based partnership on Monday at its annual cloud conference.
• The new agreement will enable VMware customers to move their workloads from their own data centers to IBM’s cloud without having to adapt or convert the data. IBM said the partnership could affect millions of workloads in approximately 80% percent of the world's data centers. 
• At the conference, IBM also announced partnerships with GitHub and Bitly, in addition to releasing new developer tools. 

Dive Insight:

IBM Cloud CTO Jim Comfort said the partnership is designed to help companies looking for a hybrid cloud solution as the new offering hosts data on both physical and cloud-based data centers at the same time.

IBM's move could allow them to compete on the same market as the leading cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google. The leading providers frequently offer adaptive tools and other hybrid solutions to try and entice customers away from their competitors. 

But taking on cloud giants won’t be easy. Last quarter, for example, AWS sales were up 69% year over year and generated $2.4 billion in one quarter alone.

IBM has worked to reinvent itself in recent months. In addition to a number of investments in cloud, the company has been looking to further build its cognitive computing business for use in a wide range of areas, from health to Internet of Things applications. In October, IBM announced it was buying the Weather Company’s digital assets.