IBM, SAP partner to move financial institutions to the hybrid cloud

SAP will be offering finance and data management tools on the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, the companies announced Wednesday, as part of their joint effort to bring industries to the hybrid cloud.  

IBM made its Cloud for Financial Services generally available just this past April. It's designed to support various financial services requirements ranging from regulatory to privacy, while accounting for varied workloads different architectures. The cloud already has a partner ecosystem of more than 100 ISVs, SaaS providers and FinTechs, including SAP, Adobe, Infosys, Avaya, VMware and Lumina.

With SAP on the IBM Cloud for Financial Serivces, financial institutions and their partners will specifically be able to access SAP's intelligent suite, including SAP S/4HANA tools, as well as data management tools like SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise and SAP IQ software. 

IBM and SAP have an existing partnership and have already helped hundreds of companies digitize their operations using hybrid cloud environments. Expanding that partnership to serve financial companies is a logical step, given the industry's stringent compliance, security and resiliency requirements. 

"The rapid transition of regulated industries, such as financial services, toward the cloud makes it necessary to address new operational and technology challenges," Bob Cummings, head of SAP Financial Services Sector, said in a statement. "The combination of IBM Cloud and SAP's capabilities can help banks and insurers around the world to accelerate their digitalization journey and scale their business globally."

Hybrid cloud is a critical part of IBM's growth strategy. In the the fiscal year 2020, IBM's total cloud revenue went up by 20 percent, in large part thanks to hybrid cloud programs offered by IBM-owned Red Hat. Earlier this month, IBM reported steady gains in its cloud business during the second quarter, with cloud revenue up 13 percent to $7 billion.