Earlier this year, a survey of CIOs from the United States and the U.K. found that two-thirds of the companies were not ready for the digital future, and don’t have the right infrastructure or skills necessary to meet their future IT needs.

It was the latest wake-up call for IT execs, following the biggest ‘wake-up alarm’ of all: the COVID pandemic. Seemingly overnight, we’ve seen customers put renewed focus on security, flexibility and mobility for their technology estate. There’s a premium on protecting the data they use to run their companies, even as they need to examine how to move to the cloud without disrupting their business or their customers.

Those developments are why I’m excited about the news from IBM about a new capability for enterprises to build and run applications and consume cloud services across any environment -- with IBM Cloud Satellite. IBM’s Global Technology Services (GTS) unit (which will become NewCo) is proud to be part of IBM’s partner ecosystem, with an offering that fuels hybrid cloud environments by helping clients manage and modernize workloads.

IBM Cloud Satellite brings cloud capabilities to where customer data resides, in the environment of their choice, while providing consistency and security – exactly what customers said was a critical pain point for their success.  

Additionally, customers now have a new option called the IBM Cloud Satellite Infrastructure Service, which will allow businesses and organizations to leverage a cloud consumption model with a full range of PaaS services combined with infrastructure as a service – all coming with one bill and support model. The GTS managed private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service capabilities can be combined with the IBM Cloud Satellite management interface to deliver a full infrastructure and platform-as-a-service capability for customers. This offers a single management experience, with containerized Red Hat OpenShift and cloud services running directly on premises, in customer facilities.

This service option requires no long-term infrastructure commitments and allows the customer to pay only for the resources consumed through a single integrated experience. By managing the compute, network, and storage infrastructure as-a-service behind customer firewalls, GTS helps customers successfully address GDPR, data residency and security restrictions through the entire datacenter lifecycle.

The IBM Cloud Satellite Infrastructure Service brings local cloud as-a-service to life for customers, combining IBM Cloud Satellite, hardware, software, tools, all managed through one secure central control point. With more than three-quarters of CIOs saying they will have to rely on managed services partners to fill a skills gap that threatens their digital ambitions, progressive programs like the IBM Cloud Satellite Infrastructure Service are an effective way to help CIOs solve this problem.

IBM Cloud and Global Technology Services have long enjoyed a close relationship, and through key offerings like IBM Cloud Satellite, I am proud that we will remain close partners into the future.

IBM Cloud Satellite Infrastructure Service helps offer a wider set of customers new ways of bringing IBM Cloud to where their data resides. To learn more, read the press release and register to attend the upcoming Distributed Cloud Virtual Event on March 9.

Archana Vemulapalli,
CTO and general manager of Infrastructure Services offerings, IBM Global Technology Services