The road to cloud just got a lot less rocky

For a technology that’s supposed to make everything simpler, cloud can get a little complicated.

Private. Public. Hybrid. Multicloud. XaaS. Kubernetes. There’s a lot to unpack and explain any time the conversation turns to cloud. And since the companies in the TIMETOACT Group are specialists in various kinds of cloud implementation, we have those types of conversations all of the time.

Luckily, this past summer with IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat, those discussions became a lot easier to have with our customers.

Shifting the conversation

Since we began working with IBM® Cloud™ Private in 2017, we’ve been having conversations with many of our clients about the respective capabilities of private and multicloud environments and about why moving to open technology offers a significant advantage in avoiding vendor lock-in.

So when the Red Hat acquisition went through and the IBM Cloud Pak™ line was formally announced, we were already in a strong position to accelerate to market with the technology. We quickly moved the conversations we were having with our clients to OpenShift®, initially as a platform in its own right — with its market leading hybrid multi-cloud and containerization capabilities — and then highlighting the added possibilities presented by IBM Cloud Paks.

From identity management through to blockchain, the whole range is very much on our radar. Put simply, if we’re not working with a particular IBM Cloud Pak now, we can see very strong reasons to do so in the future.

Opening up a new approach

What’s different about Cloud Paks is the ease with which clients can understand the potential benefits to their business.

Talking about cloud invariably generates interest. But talking about specific solutions — like security or identity management — rather than about technology gives clients that “lightbulb moment”. They can more easily comprehend what these solutions conceptually might bring to their business.

A recent example was a mid-market customer— very much in the “white space” in IBM terms — that we worked with in Germany. The business wanted to automate its ordering process. And using IBM Cloud Pak for Automation we were able to bundle together the products needed to create that solution under a single license, rather than negotiating individual licenses for the individual products.

That customer ultimately signed on to a five-year commitment to our solution, and that was in no small part thanks to the simplicity of sourcing the technology they needed to run a compelling solution.

As that engagement demonstrates, bundling products into solutions in the form of Cloud Paks makes technology easy to understand — and more crucially, easy to consume. Of course, one size can never fit all, so some of the bundled products and the way they are measured may be a more difficult fit. But the concept and the way it is executed “for the majority” resonates strongly with our clients.

Ultimately, it’s a simple concept. And at a time when clients are looking for help in accelerating their journey to cloud, that simplicity is a major competitive advantage. We’ve already seen it create a recognizable brand for IBM Cloud Paks.

Now when we talk to clients about cloud, there’s a good chance they already know about Cloud Paks. That makes selling IBM to our customers even easier.

Source: ibm.com