KUWAIT CITY, May 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM)
today announced that United Business Group (UBG) -- a leader in IT
Infrastructure Management, Technical Support Services, IT
Consultancy and Technology Resource Outsourcing in Kuwait -- has chosen the IBM Cloud to
transform its business into a managed service provider. IBM and UBG
will offer a flexible hybrid cloud platform based on OpenStack to
deliver customized cloud services to customers in Kuwait. Businesses will be able to choose to
have their data located in country and given the option to have the
data reside either on premises or off premises.
The market shift toward cloud-enabled business models is
accelerating and buying behavior is largely focused in
"as-a-service" options, which is driving a huge demand for
in-country managed services and the hybrid cloud. To address this
market change, UBG employed IBM Cloud to offer customers in
Kuwait the option for subscription
model cloud-based offerings to save costs and increase operational
agility, choice and flexibility. The new model will also grant
customers the transparency to use all data and apps across multiple
platforms, the control and governance to manage heavy workloads,
and a multi-layered approach to ensure security across every
interaction point.
UBG will also offer to its clients in Kuwait Bluemix, IBM's cloud development
platform, to speed up app development, cutting deployment time from
months to minutes. The new model also allows businesses to select
from a range of hardware configuration options based on open
standards and deploy services from IBM's SoftLayer global data
centers based on the needs of the workload. Now businesses will be
able to focus more on building functional applications and services
and less on the back-end processes, such as the infrastructure and
cloud management systems.
"By offering our customers access to a hybrid cloud platform
based on open standards, we will be able to help break down the
barriers between clouds and on premises IT systems, providing
clients with control, visibility and security as they use both
public and private clouds," said IBM General Manger of Cloud
Services James Comfort. "Data location across an ever-growing
number of clouds is an increasing concern for customers, and we are
unveiling new developer services to make this easier to
manage."
IBM recently opened its first office in Kuwait to strengthen its ability to provide
solutions and services to a rapidly expanding customer and partner
base in the country. IBM's Kuwait
office is part of a broad program of investments that IBM is making
across the Middle East. The new
office will act as a sales and customer service hub for IBM's
comprehensive line of offerings in the region.
"We are leveraging IBM Cloud, analytics, mobile and security
offerings in order to create high-value, competitively
differentiated services," said Muraleedharan Nanoo, Managing Director, UBG.
"Our goal is to improve development productivity and reliability to
better serve our customers."
IBM total cloud revenue – covering public, private and hybrid
engagements – was $7.7 billion over
the previous 12 months at the end of March
2015; it grew more than 60 percent in first quarter 2015.
IBM's cloud delivered as a service business, a subset of the total,
includes IaaS.
For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit
http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on
our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation
#ibmcloud.
For more information on UBG visit http://www.ubgkw.com.
Press Contacts:
Jumana
Akkawi
External Relations Leader, IBM Middle East
Phone: +971 4 4498353
Email: jumanaak@ae.ibm.com
Scott Cook
IBM Media Relations
Phone: 312-669-4743
Email: scotty@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM