IBM Brings Another Energy Company Into Its Cloud

… IoT as well as security, and Teich notes that IBM, in its IBM Cloud Private (ICP) for Data, integrated its Watson, analytics and IoT services — and linked ICP for Data to its Multi-Cloud Manager.

Liftr Cloud Insights’ Paul Teich

“IBM’s ICP private cloud message being linked to advanced analytics and a multicloud story is a good value proposition for the energy industry,” Teich told Channel Futures.

According to the latest numbers from Synergy Research Group, IBM ranks fourth among the largest cloud providers, far behind market leader Amazon Web Services and trailing Microsoft Azure and Google. Teich sees IBM’s planned $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat as a way of bulking up its multicloud efforts.

“Enterprise public cloud access starts with private cloud, and now both IBM’s own ICP and Red Hat’s private cloud solutions will list IBM Cloud as one of the destinations for a multicloud solution,” the analyst said. “IBM is counting on Red Hat to keep IBM Cloud in the multicloud mix.”

He also noted that the issue isn’t the size of the cloud provider by revenue or data centers deployed; rather, it’s more about whether the provider can deliver the services an organization needs in the right region “while meeting contractual service guarantees at a solution price that provides value to the customer. Anyone can play, if they can provide the right solution value,” Teich said.