Kyndryl Holdings Inc., the former IBM Corp. business that now operates as an independent company, and VMware Inc. are expanding their partnership to help enterprises speed up their cloud initiatives. 

The companies announced the move today. The partnership expansion comes a few weeks after Kyndryl completed its spinoff from IBM to become an independent firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange. VMware spun off from its former parent company, Dell Technologies Inc., around the same time as Kyndryl. 

Kyndryl operated as IBM’s managed infrastructure services division before becoming a separate organization. It helps enterprises build, deploy and run information technology infrastructure as well as other technology assets. With about 90,000 employees and a customer base that includes more than 4,000 organizations, Kyndryl ranks as the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider.

The expanded VMware partnership announced today builds on a long-running collaboration that began while Kyndryl was part of IBM. Through the expanded partnership, Kyndryl will provide advisory, implementation and IT management services to help companies run the VMware Tanzu suite of multicloud products.

The Tanzu suite made its initial debut in 2019. It’s a bundle of software products designed to help organizations more easily manage Kubernetes clusters on public and private cloud environments. Also included: developer tools that make it easier for companies’ software teams to build applications on their Tanzu-powered Kubernetes clusters.

For developers, Tanzu provides features such as the ability to quickly spin up a cloud database to store an application’s data. The suite also offers numerous capabilities for IT operations teams. In addition to streamlining the deployment and management of Kubernetes clusters, Tanzu eases tasks such as ensuring that cybersecurity best practices are implemented correctly. 

For Kyndryl, providing IT services to enterprises adopting Tanzu could potentially unlock significant revenue opportunities.

VMware counts a significant percentage of the world’s enterprises among its customers. The company recently stated that 75% of its customers currently use two or more public clouds, which gives Tanzu a large addressable market given the suite’s focus on simplifying multicloud operations. As demand for Tanzu grows, there should be more enterprise interest in IT services like those offered by Kyndryl that can simplify the task of deploying and running the product suite.

For VMware, the expanded partnership also brings a lot to the table. Large-scale cloud projects often have a professional services component because companies don’t always have the technical know-how necessary to carry out a major IT initiative on their own. Kyndryl’s professional services can help VMware customers adopt and manage Tanzu projects more easily, thus making the product suite more accessible. 

“With the average organization running hundreds of apps across many different clouds, customers need solutions and strategic partners that enable their organizations to be as agile and resilient as possible,” said Susan Nash, VMware’s senior vice president of strategic corporate alliances. “Kyndryl is a strategic partner that brings world-class solutions, skills, expertise and experience to the companies’ mutual customers.”

According to Kyndryl and VMware, another focus of the expanded partnership will be “align and optimize their collaboration” in support of the VMware Cross-Cloud product portfolio. The product portfolio includes the Tanzu suite, as well as other offerings from the virtualization giant such as its Carbon Black cybersecurity platform. 

The companies have set up a joint lab to support their partnership. According to Kyndryl and VMware,  the lab will develop solutions to help customers leverage Tanzu for IT projects focused on app modernization, containers, observability and cybersecurity. 

Photo: Kyndryl