Kyndryl, an IT infrastructure services provider, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have entered into a multi-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with a special focus on Artificial Intelligence.
Specifically, the partnership focuses on the development and delivery of advanced generative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. The collaboration aims to catalyze customer innovation, enhance operational efficiency, and expedite digital transformation initiatives, the company said.
Establishing the Kyndryl and AWS Innovation Factory
The agreement outlines the creation of the Kyndryl and AWS Innovation Factory. This venture is a mutual investment designed to co-create generative AI and ML solutions targeting specific industry use cases. Leveraging Kyndryl’s data-driven expertise, the Innovation Factory aims to facilitate cloud modernization and accelerate business transformation for customers.
Furthermore, the agreement will enhance Kyndryl's capabilities in designing, implementing, migrating, modernizing, and managing AWS cloud services across intricate IT environments. It also includes a strategic plan to modernize enterprise resource planning systems and other applications on AWS, aiming to reduce costs, complexities, and implementation time.
Expanding Certifications and Expertise
An integral part of the collaboration is the expansion of expertise among Kyndryl's technical specialists, according to the company.
This includes a substantial increase in AWS-based certifications, building upon the 10,000+ existing certifications held by Kyndryl professionals. The initiative is designed to broaden the scope of digital transformation services offered to customers on AWS.
Industry Leaders Reflect on the Agreement
Nicolas Sekkaki, data and AI global practice leader, Kyndryl Applications, commented:
“The expansion of our alliance with AWS fuels Kyndryl's ability to help customers accelerate the adoption – and maximize the benefit of – generative AI solutions. The collaboration will also help Kyndryl scale its reach and ability to facilitate customers' digital transformations on AWS through a growing variety of application modernization options.”
Julia Chen, vice president of Partner Core, AWS, said:
“Our customers turn to AWS Partners to support them through their cloud migration journey, in optimizing their IT assets to unlock future business growth and identifying how and where to leverage new technologies for maximum business impact. We are delighted to be working with Kyndryl to help our shared customers to leverage data to derive AI insights at scale.”
Michael Wagner, MD, president and CEO, Care New England, added:
“Given Kyndryl's expertise and skills in supporting enterprises in their digital transformation journey, we knew they would be the ideal AWS Partner to modernize and migrate our mission-critical workloads to AWS. This migration project is key to reducing our operations costs, strengthening our system's data security and freeing up valuable time for our staff to focus on providing the highest quality patient care.”
Kyndryl's Role in AI Adoption
Kyndryl says it will also use its AI-readiness program to assist customers in adopting AWS generative AI services responsibly.
This program, based on Kyndryl's extensive domain knowledge and AI expertise, aims to provide comprehensive services for integrating generative AI solutions to achieve impactful business outcomes.
About Kyndryl
Kyndryl, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KD, serves thousands of enterprise customers across more than 60 countries. The company specializes in the design, build, management, and modernization of complex, mission-critical information systems essential to global businesses.
The company is an IBM spin-off specializing in managed infrastructure services faced a challenging financial situation at the end of 2021. For the quarter ending December 31, 2021, the company reported revenues of $4.6 billion, marking an 8% decrease from the same period in the previous year. Additionally, Kyndryl incurred a net loss of $740 million, slightly higher than the $719 million loss from the corresponding quarter the year before.
Despite these financial challenges, Kyndryl has been proactive in forging new paths for growth. The company has established global partnerships with major cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Adtran. These partnerships are part of Kyndryl's broader strategy to transform its service delivery capabilities and improve business areas with substandard margins.
Kyndryl has outlined three key initiatives for driving long-term profitable growth. These include increasing signings, certifications, and revenues with new ecosystem partners and capabilities, transforming service delivery to enhance quality and pivot to new revenue streams, and addressing business elements that generate substandard margins. By the end of fiscal year 2023, Kyndryl aimed to capture up to $1 billion in signings linked to cloud hyperscalers, save up to $200 million in annualized costs, and generate additional savings in future years.
Expanding into Diverse Managed Services Markets
As an independent entity, Kyndryl says it is focusing on expanding its presence across six managed services markets: Cloud, Applications, Data & AI, Security & Resiliency, Core Enterprise & zCloud, Network & Edge, and Digital Workplace. This diversification is a strategic move to drive growth and establish a more robust presence in the rapidly evolving IT and cloud services sectors, according to the company.
In October 2023, the company unveiled its Experience Management as a Service, its digital workplace capability. In August, the company became a VMware Cross-Cloud Managed Services Provider.
The recent collaboration with AWS, aiming to accelerate the adoption of generative AI solutions, aligns with these strategic initiatives.
