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There are plenty of strategic collaboration agreements signed by cloud providers, but file this one under the category of if you cant beat them, join them. IBM, which has failed to get a substantial foothold in the cloud computing race, announced Wednesday it had signed a deal with the industrys top cloud provider to offer its software portfolio as a service on AWS.

Customers using AWS will be able to access IBM software for automation, data and artificial intelligence, security and sustainability thats built on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, IBM said in a press release.

The IBM SaaS products that will be available as cloud-native services running on AWS initially will include IBM API Connect, IBM Db2, IBM Observability by Instana APM, IBM Maximo Application Suite, IBM Security ReaQta, IBM Security Trusteer, IBM Security Verify and IBM Watson Orchestrate. Theyll be sold through AWS Marketplace, an online store of third-party software, data and services, with out-of-the-box integration with AWS services and support for API, CloudFormation and Terraform templates.

"As hybrid cloud continues to become the reality for our clients, IBM is ready and willing to meet them with a flexible and cloud-native software portfolio wherever they are in the cloud or in data centers," Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Software, said in a statement. "By deepening our collaboration with AWS, we're taking another major step in giving organizations the ability to choose the hybrid cloud model that works best for their own needs and workloads, freeing them up to instead focus on solving their most pressing business challenges."

The multiyear deal will include joint sales and marketing efforts, incentives for channel partners, developer enablement and training, and the development of products for industry verticals including oil and gas and travel and transportation, according to the companies.

IBM is in a very, very distant fifth place among cloud computing providers thanks in part to contributing revenue from Kyndryl, which it spun out last year as an independent company providing managed infrastructure services. IBM/Kyndryl claimed 4% market share of first-quarter enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services, according to Synergy Research Group, well behind AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and trailing Chinas Alibaba Cloud.

IBM said the agreement builds on its SaaS products available on its own IBM Cloud and complements its 30-plus software products that can be deployed manually through AWS Marketplace and customers with bring-your-own-license capabilities.

Originally posted here:
IBM customers interested in the cloud can now run its software on AWS - Protocol