A key learning from 2020 is that for businesses – of all sizes, in all industries – it has become a fundamental imperative to have an organization, culture and business architecture that can keep pace with the ever-increasing rate of marketplace change. At IBM, we see an open hybrid cloud approach and a powerful ecosystem of partners as fundamental aspects to achieving this objective.  

Transforming industries and enabling innovation is hard work. Open hybrid cloud strategies deliver greater choice in how businesses figure out how to tackle problems and deliver new value.  To adapt. To thrive.  And aligning a powerful and diverse ecosystem of like-minded partners who also embrace this approach is key to driving success. 

Today, I'm pleased to share that we are taking another big step forward on this journey by enhancing our strategic global partnership with Samsung. Together, we will help businesses explore new 5G, edge, and open hybrid cloud solutions to modernize their operations and embrace the fourth industrial revolution.

Our shared vision with Samsung is to develop open hybrid cloud solutions that enable enterprises to put 5G and edge computing to work to harness the growing volumes of data at the edge – from a factory floor, an oil rig or a retail location – infusing artificial intelligence to improve operational efficiencies and worker safety as well as to minimize downtime. 

To do this, we intend to unleash the power of Samsung’s Galaxy 5G mobile devices with advanced end-to-end enterprise network solutions and IBM’s network management, hybrid cloud, and edge computing offerings – as a platform for innovation with industry solutions that integrate AI and are built on Red Hat’s open architecture.

5G and Edge together present a major opportunity for every industry to create new value: from telehealth, to manufacturing, to sports and retail – it’s expected to be a $667B opportunity by 2026.  We believe it has the power to speed innovation from months to days and reduce capital and operating expenses for telcos and businesses across industries. 

This is why we are working with Samsung to bring new value with 5G through extensive cross collaborations with global mobile operators.  In fact, earlier this year, Samsung announced a collaboration with IBM and telecommunications provider M1 to develop and test the latest advancements in smart manufacturing using 5G and edge computing for Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority.

For decades, Samsung and IBM have collaborated on many projects that have helped governments and enterprises successfully transform their operations – and most recently, Samsung and IBM joined forces to collaborate on next generation 5G and edge offerings through the IBM Cloud for Telecommunications. The IBM Cloud is built for business, drawing upon proven security, data sovereignty and open architecture capabilities that deliver the requisite agility to keep pace with rapidly changing business needs.

Our continued work together is helping more businesses evolve to open hybrid cloud platforms. This fuels their ability to create transformative solutions because they have the flexibility to select the most innovative partners and fit-for-purpose hardware components, and they can harness advanced technologies like edge computing and 5G. And they can deploy these workloads wherever it makes the most sense.

Taken together, this creates boundless opportunities and propels a pace of innovation that has the power to redefine how we live, work, and communicate for generations to come.   

We are proud of our expanding ecosystem of partners and our commitment to help our customers push the limits of what’s possible to deliver more value to their customers, partners and stakeholders.

Steve Canepa
Global GM & Managing Director, IBM Communications Sector