News

IBM Spinoff Kyndryl and Microsoft Partner in the Cloud

• By Chris Paoli
• November 12, 2021

Microsoft and Kyndryl are teaming up to foster global cloud adoption, the two companies announced on Friday.

Kyndryl, which just last week finished its spinout from parent company IBM, touts itself as the world's largest IT service provider. Friday's announcement aims to partner Kyndryl's expertise with Microsoft's cloud infrastructure to help enterprise customers "accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, modernize applications and processes, support mission critical workload, and further enable modern work experiences," according to the joint press release.

The deal, which positions Microsoft as the newly independent Kyndryl's first premiere global alliance partner, will expand the customer base of both companies and provide "incremental multi-billion dollar revenue opportunities" for both companies.

"As Kyndryl's only premiere global alliance partner, with the power of the Microsoft Cloud we will help customers across every industry manage and modernize their business for the era ahead," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "We are looking forward to partnering with Kyndryl to serve our shared customers, building on its expertise and understanding of mission-critical IT systems, as well as the company’s deep relationships with enterprises around the world."

While Friday's announcement signals a new type of partnership, the two companies have been closely connected during Kyndryl's year-plus journey to independence. Kyndryl is a Gold Microsoft partner and took part in last week's Microsoft Ignite conference with a sit-down conversation between Tony Savov, VP of Infrastructure Services at Kyndryl, and Shannon Kuehn, senior cloud advocate at Microsoft.

Under the terms of the partnership, Microsoft and Kyndryl will work together on enterprise solutions aimed at data management, AI, cybersecurity and hybrid cloud migration and management, with Kyndryl taking point on implementation and client advisory.

Further, Kyndryl will advise clients and help to create new technologies that leverage Microsoft's cloud. To aid in this, Microsoft is establishing the "Kyndryl University for Microsoft" to help Kyndryl's 90,000 employees get up to speed with the capabilities of the Microsoft cloud stack.

The Microsoft partnership is just the first of many to come, according to Kyndryl's CEO Martin Schreter. "As an independent company, we're investing in our partner ecosystem to support the success of our customers, and we're focused on expanding our market opportunity across cloud, data, security, and intelligent automation."

Kyndryl is more than likely hoping the news of this partnership will end its week on a positive note. After the company finalized its spinoff and entered the New York Stock Exchange late last week, there's been a massive sell-off of the stock, which saw the price at $50 at the end of October drop to $21.30 at the end of trading on Thursday.