IBM And Workday Shake Hands On Seven-Year Cloud Deal

IBM is expected to announce a seven-year deal today to provide software provider Workday with cloud services.

The deal, reported by the Wall Street Journal, will see the financial management software maker Workday use IBM’s SoftLayer cloud service to develop and test new software.

Cloud capacity

IBM will be the primary provider of cloud computing capacity for Workday. The company will continue to use Amazon Web Services, however. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In July, Workday bought big data analytics company Platfora to bolster its financial cloud applications. Platfora specialises in analysing and sifting data drawn from applications such as Apache Spark and Microsoft Excel. Its customers include Disney and Citi Bank.

“With the Platfora team and its technology unified within Workday, we will continue enriching the analytics in Workday Financial Management and Workday Human Capital Management so our customers can be even more prepared to tackle business problems and seize opportunities today and into the future,” said Workday’s executive vice president of products Mike Frandsen.

The deal will give a public boost to IBM’s cloud, which currently sits ahead of Google in terms of market share, holding eight percent to Google’s five percent. Microsoft sits in second place with 11 percent, and Amazon Web Services is the clear leader with 31 percent, according to Synergy Research Group.

But a report from Gartner earlier this month said that IBM’s SoftLayer isn’t innovating quick enough compared to its rivals.

“Other than an early 2015 introduction of new storage options, SoftLayer’s feature set has not improved significantly since the IBM acquisition in mid-2013,” Gartner said.

Update

Workday has now confirmed the deal.

“IBM and Workday are both delivering transformative applications and services in the cloud,” said Aneel Bhusri, Co-Founder and CEO, Workday. “Workday will use IBM Cloud to continue accelerating Workday’s internal development and testing efforts to support our ongoing global expansion.”

“Leading enterprises like Workday continue to turn to IBM Cloud for its global reach, flexibility, and resiliency,” said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Cloud. “Through a preferred cloud partnership with IBM, Workday can accelerate its innovation efforts to better serve clients around the world.”

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