Spinoffs Kyndryl and VMware team up on multicloud

The two new spinoffs on the block—Kyndryl and VMware—have expanded their relationship and promised to help customers with their app modernization and multicloud plans.

Under the agreement the companies say they will focus on developing a range of services aimed at multicloud infrastructure and management, digital workspace, managed applications, and other areas.

“Our combination with VMware is especially important as Kyndryl continues to invest in our industry-leading skills in key areas, most notably in cloud, network and edge computing, and in security and resiliency services,” said Martin Schroeter, Chairman and CEO of Kyndryl in a statement. Through previous agreements, Kyndryl already has thousands of staffers with VMware certifications.

The companies also aim to help customers speed digital transformation by building and deploying new, more secure applications for the hybrid workforce.

Kyndryl says it plans to work with VMware to expand its existing multicloud advisory, implementation, and management services to support VMware Tanzu, the company’s container and Kubernetes platform, and deploy vSphere workloads to VMware multi-cloud infrastructure running in public clouds.

“Multicloud is the digital business model for the next 20 years. With the average organization running hundreds of apps across many different clouds, customers need solutions and strategic partners that enable their organizations to be as agile and resilient as possible,” said Susan Nash, senior vice president, strategic corporate alliances, VMware in a statement.

The Kyndryl-VMware agreement follows on Kyndryl’s tie-in with Microsoft earlier this month. Under that pact, the companies will develop products built on the Microsoft Cloud aimed at helping customers with digital transformation, Kyndryl stated. 

Microsoft will make products developed by the two companies available for its global enterprise sales force and create Kyndryl University for Microsoft to provide employee traning in Microsoft’s cloud. The companies said they will jointly focus on data modernization and governance, AI-driven innovations for industries, cyber security and resiliency, and moving mission-critical workloads to the cloud. Kyndryl will lead with advisory, implementation, and managed services for hybrid IT environments, Kyndryl stated. 

Kyndryl and VMware are beginning a new business life since being spun off by their parent firms—Kyndryl from IBM and VMware from Dell.

Company executives say by spinning out of IBM, Kyndryl will have more freedom to partner with other major tech companies and cloud hyperscalers such as Google, AWS, and Microsoft. Plus it can invest in its workforce as well as focus on developing services for hot markets such as 5G, edge computing, cloud, and security.

VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram wrote in a blog that the company will be more flexible to partner more deeply with cloud and on-premises providers.

“And the increased flexibility we will have to use equity to complete future acquisitions will help us remain competitive. Today’s move will strengthen our mission to be the Switzerland of the cloud industry, uniquely positioned to provide our customers with the best combination of options as we grow our robust ecosystem of partners,” Raghuram.

In related news, Kyndryl announced a new certification agreement with SAP to train more of Kyndryl’s global team on SAP HANA and help those customers migrate to public cloud hyperscalers, and expand its services to manage SAP operations on cloud and on-premises.