In 2022, companies continue to step into Industry 4.0, the new phase of industrial development utilizing AI and advanced robotics to enhance efficiency. At Kyndryl, we’re setting the pace. The emergence of Edge as the “third landing zone for customer workloads” is adding fuel to Kyndryl’s Network & Edge Practice. That’s why Kyndryl, the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, partners with other companies and today we announced a technology alliance with Cisco to help enterprise customers accelerate their transformation into data-driven businesses powered by Cisco solutions and Kyndryl managed services. We reached out to Keith Dyer, Vice President, Cisco Global Enterprise Sales, and Global Partner Organization for his perspective on our alliance.
What does this continued partnership with Kyndryl mean to Cisco?
Cisco and Kyndryl have a strong track record delivering IT solutions to our joint customers. Kyndryl is one of our largest managed services partners that delivers complex services to global customers. Cisco and Kyndryl are working together to provide the next generation of managed services. Kyndryl is building solutions that will feature Cisco technology and that will enable customers to operate their most critical business applications with two trusted companies.
What industries are in focus for this partnership?
While Kyndryl plays across many verticals, Financial Services is where they have their strongest presence globally. They also have a strong presence in the public sector, both local and federal, as well as the manufacturing sector. These are the areas where we expect to focus our expanded partnership.
How would you describe "next generation" of managed services? What does that look like?
The old model of managed services was built for the ‘Efficient Enterprise’ where IT would look to provider partners for product implementation and tactical, operational support. In the new model of managed services for the ‘Agile Enterprise”, IT and digital buying centers across the organization are looking for cloud-enabled, consumption-driven services that deliver on outcomes.
IT is no longer responsible for just running the business. They are now accountable for optimizing business outcomes that technology can deliver.
At Cisco we see an immense opportunity in the intersection between managed services and the drive to as-a-service models. We are working with our Provider partners to build outcomes-based offers that are tied to pre-scoped sizing and packages, complemented with simple service tiering. In collaboration with partners, we are moving from operations-focused offers to more catalog-based consumption-driven services.
