Letting Customers Decide Who Leads in the Cloud

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When people discuss “the cloud,” what they’re really talking about is the vast landscape of cloud solutions. Today, clouds fuel apps that are touched by thousands of organizations and millions of people every day. In a lot of ways, the cloud has become the invisible thread weaving its way through everything digital, in one form or another.

It is becoming central to increasing aspects of our digital society, so much so that in a few years, we very well may stop talking about it all together. Instead, we will simply assume the capabilities it represents—better economics, ease of use, and flexibility.

Today 80% of enterprises are headed to hybrid models, which integrate cloud and on-premises, according to IDC. In addition, IDC says more than 90% of new software will be built for cloud delivery in 2015. This major IT shift is forcing corporations to find out the best way of moving to the cloud without foregoing existing investments in infrastructure.

IBM is helping lead this shift to the cloud and assisting clients across a wide array of industries as they digitally transform their organizations. Through our decades of client work and industry expertise, we are able to deliver consistency with choice via hybrid, public or private clouds. We’re leveraging this heritage and expertise while investing billions to deliver new AI, Internet of Things and Blockchain applications to the cloud.

Today there is no shortage of opinions when it comes to cloud leadership. Research firms, influencers and pundits have all weighed in about defining cloud, vendor market share, the ongoing evolution of cloud-based services and who will ultimately end up on top.

The assessments by analysts are varied, but rather than examine approaches or methodology, we’d like to stick to the facts. Here’s what some of the key analysts in the industry are saying about cloud:

• IBM Captures Leadership Position in Hybrid Cloud Environment Adoption by Technology Business Research (TBR);
• IBM is Named as Leader in Worldwide Platform-as-a-Service by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG);
• IBM is Named a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services for NA. Clearly the growth in data center outsourcing is being driven by the global adoption of cloud and this report is the latest validation of IBM’s evolution from a systems to services integrator with hybrid cloud;
• IBM is Named Leader in Private Cloud Adoption by Technology Business Research (TBR).

These new independent reports build on two that recently came from IDC and TBR , naming IBM a leading IaaS provider. Another client survey by TBR ranked IBM as the most widely adopted cloud platform and Synergy Research recently ranked IBM as the #1 hybrid cloud provider.

If these reports weren’t enough, just this quarter, IBM Cloud announced a 30 percent year-to-year growth in Q2. IBM Cloud now has reached $11.6B in revenue for the past 12 months. IBM Cloud also has $6.7B annual run rate in cloud delivered as a service.

This strong growth is being driven by customer wins include Halliburton and Pratt & Whitney.

Halliburton is using the cloud to lower the risk and cost of exploring new oil and gas fields, ultimately improving their bidding decisions. Using high performance computing and the GPU features of the IBM cloud, Halliburton can quickly run hundreds of simulation cases and build forecasts.

Pratt & Whitney, a United Technologies Corp. company, is moving the engine manufacturer’s business, engineering and manufacturing enterprise systems to a fully-managed and supported environment on the IBM Cloud. The move will enable the company to scale quickly to meet the expected rise in computing service, data processing, and storage demands as a result of increased production over the next decade.

These milestones reflect the customer adoption and validation IBM is experiencing in the market. People will continue to speculate and guess on where the market headed. In the meantime, these facts and independent third party assessments underscore IBM’s leadership in the cloud.
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