IBM’s Managed Infrastructure Services business -- temporarily known as NewCo -- has announced more executive team members ahead of the expected spin-out from IBM before 2022.
Key NewCo names to know include:
- Elly Keinan, group president. He most recently was venture partner of Pitango Venture Capital. Earlier, Keinan was GM of IBM North America, GM of IBM Latin America, and chairman of IBM Japan.
- Maria Bartolome Winans, chief marketing officer. Winans is a 25-year IBM veteran. Most recently she was CMO for IBM Americas. Also, Winans led marketing teams in IBM’s Watson business and in IBM’s Software unit, and she has been a leader in IBM’s Hispanic community.
Both NewCo hires fulfill major companies needs. Keinan's VC experience could be very valuable if NewCo hunts for potential acquisitions involving MSPs, IT service management (ITSM) automation and managed cloud infrastructure tools. Winans, meanwhile, could provide much-needed brand building expertise to give NewCo instant brand recognition once a formal company name is unveiled.
Keinan and Winans join Martin Schroeter, who became CEO of the NewCO spin-out on January 15, 2021. In a prepared statement about the executive roles, Schroeter said:
“These executives bring great global expertise as we build a purpose-led culture for our new company. Elly and Maria have deep knowledge of the industry, and they share our unwavering commitment to our talented employees and to the success of our customers. I know they will play a pivotal role in the leadership team we are building to deliver excellent value to customers and shareholders.”
IBM Managed Infrastructure Services: NewCo's MSP Focus
The Managed Infrastructure Services business has relationships with 4,600 companies and a backlog of more than $60 billion.
Key services of the NewCo spin-off will include hosting and network services, services management, infrastructure modernization, and migrating and managing multi-cloud environments.
Amid the NewCo spin-off plan, IBM itself will double down on its hybrid cloud strategy — which leans heavily on Red Hat OpenShift.
IBM vs NewCo MSP: Partnering and Competing?
Once IBM spins out the MSP business, the two companies will surely cooperate -- but they could also wind up competing on some fronts.
For instance, IBM since June 2020 has acquired the following companies:
- January 2021: Taos, a Top 250 Public Cloud MSP as ranked by ChannelE2E.
- January 2021: 7Summits for Salesforce cloud consulting expertise
- December 2020: Nordcloud for cloud consulting, migration and transformation capabilities.
- November 2020: SAP software developer & IT services partner TruQua Enterprise.
- November 2020: Application performance monitoring (APM) software company Instana.
- June 2020: WDG for robotic process automation (RPA) software expertise.
- June 2020: Spanugo for cloud cybersecurity posture management solutions.
It's a safe bet IBM will retain those acquisitions amid the NewCo spin-out. But NewCo may also need some of its own hybrid cloud consulting expertise in order to manage customers' modernized hybrid cloud infrastructures.
Also, both IBM and NewCo will need to offer cybersecurity services. IBM has a Top 250 MSSP business unit, as tracked by MSSP Alert. And NewCo will need to offer security baked into its MSP services for customer infrastructure, ChannelE2E notes.
