Kyndryl and RISE with SAP: Pioneering the next wave of digital transformations

Article Jul. 25, 2024 Read time: 1 min

At a time when technological demands evolve rapidly, businesses are increasingly seeking ways to meet the changing needs of their customers.

To help guide business leaders through this critical transition, Kyndryl recently expanded its strategic alliance with SAP to include RISE with SAP, an AI-powered cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) offering that enables us to deliver SAP S/4HANA Cloud private edition to our customers.

This expanded alliance will help customers overcome the complex digital transformation challenges of migrating their workloads to the cloud. Kyndryl’s expertise in serving some of SAP’s largest customers will complement our expanded capabilities and enable us to further provide end-to-end services and IT modernization support.

Here, Michael Bradshaw, the former chief information officer (CIO) of Kyndryl who pioneered the company's transformation as Customer Zero and now serves as the Applications, Data and AI Global Practice Leader, details how the RISE with SAP alliance will help bring AI-infused ERP capabilities to advance our customers’ digital transformation journeys.

What pressures do businesses face as they modernize their ERP systems?

Businesses must evolve to continue meeting their customers’ needs. By modernizing their systems, they can increase efficiency and performance, and benefit from better insights into their data and operations. But how does Kyndryl help ensure that our business customers take full advantage of their updated systems, and capture solid returns on their technology investments?

For our customers, the answer is blended. We help businesses optimize the use of the software platforms they own while leveraging our deep IT management and digital transformation experience. For example, businesses want to realize actionable insights from their SAP data, drive faster application development cycles and embrace data integration services that are critical to SAP S/4HANA Cloud transformation. When we combine our expertise, along with SAP’s platform use cases, we can accelerate our customer’s time-to-value and optimize their transformation journey.

What are some pressing challenges to digital transformation?

Customers must overcome three significant challenges. Aligning digital transformations to mission-critical outcomes comes first. Customers need to understand that part of their strategy must include identifying and mitigating risk. Once the customer defines their desired outcome, they can create an appropriate modernization strategy to help them achieve that outcome quickly and efficiently.

Next, a customer must evaluate their entire technology estate to help ensure they have the capacity to support the modernization of their platforms and systems. For example, a customer that needs to update their ERP system must take steps to help prepare their data and applications for seamless integration with their new or updated platform.

But none of these initiatives can succeed without the right skills. That’s why the final step to prepare a customer for successful digital transformation — migrating the right workloads to the right platforms efficiently, cost-effectively and without business disruption — involves working with a trusted partner that has the capabilities and experience to lead and manage the entire end-to-end process.

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When we combine our expertise, along with SAP’s platform use cases, we can accelerate our customer’s time-to-value and optimize their transformation journey

Michael Bradshaw

Global Practice Leader, Apps, Data & AI

As the new leader of Kyndryl’s Global Applications, Data and AI practice, what will be the immediate focus areas?

As Kyndryl’s first CIO, I lived and breathed our own transformation journey over the past two years, applying the culmination of my experiences as an enterprise IT professional. So, I understand the priorities, pressures and obstacles that organizations must balance during their transformations. And while no two businesses are the same, each needs to maintain business operations while completing their transformations within budgetary and time constraints. In my new role, I’ll be able to apply the firsthand experiences of being both a customer and services provider. And I’ll lead Kyndryl in providing our customers with the capabilities to support their digital transformations.

How will Kyndryl's alliance with SAP support its return-to-growth strategy?

SAP is a significant player in our alliance ecosystem and in our customer base, and we’re looking forward to continuing to serve our customers on their modernization journeys both as a RISE with SAP delivery partner and through our expanded applications services. Kyndryl also will provide customers with end-to-end support by tapping our broader alliances ecosystem, especially our relationships with all the leading hyperscalers. Providing our customers with the services and solutions they need to grow their businesses is what Kyndryl is all about. And the more we can do that, the faster we will return to growth.

What’s next for the alliance between Kyndryl and SAP?

Kyndryl’s alliance with SAP adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Working together, we will continue to meet our joint customers’ needs — wherever they are on their digital transformation journeys.

Learn more about how Kyndryl and SAP work together to serve our customers.