IBM and United Business Group Partner to Accelerate Hybrid Cloud Adoption in Kuwait

KUWAIT CITY, May 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that United Business Group (UBG) -- a leader in IT Infrastructure Management, Technical Support Services, IT Consultancy and Technology Resource Outsourcing in Kuwait -- has chosen the IBM Cloud to transform its business into a managed service provider. IBM and UBG will offer a flexible hybrid cloud platform based on OpenStack to deliver customized cloud services to customers in Kuwait. Businesses will be able to choose to have their data located in country and given the option to have the data reside either on premises or off premises.

The market shift toward cloud-enabled business models is accelerating and buying behavior is largely focused in "as-a-service" options, which is driving a huge demand for in-country managed services and the hybrid cloud. To address this market change, UBG employed IBM Cloud to offer customers in Kuwait the option for subscription model cloud-based offerings to save costs and increase operational agility, choice and flexibility. The new model will also grant customers the transparency to use all data and apps across multiple platforms, the control and governance to manage heavy workloads, and a multi-layered approach to ensure security across every interaction point.

UBG will also offer to its clients in Kuwait Bluemix, IBM's cloud development platform, to speed up app development, cutting deployment time from months to minutes. The new model also allows businesses to select from a range of hardware configuration options based on open standards and deploy services from IBM's SoftLayer global data centers based on the needs of the workload. Now businesses will be able to focus more on building functional applications and services and less on the back-end processes, such as the infrastructure and cloud management systems.

"By offering our customers access to a hybrid cloud platform based on open standards, we will be able to help break down the barriers between clouds and on premises IT systems, providing clients with control, visibility and security as they use both public and private clouds," said IBM General Manger of Cloud Services James Comfort. "Data location across an ever-growing number of clouds is an increasing concern for customers, and we are unveiling new developer services to make this easier to manage."

IBM recently opened its first office in Kuwait to strengthen its ability to provide solutions and services to a rapidly expanding customer and partner base in the country. IBM's Kuwait office is part of a broad program of investments that IBM is making across the Middle East. The new office will act as a sales and customer service hub for IBM's comprehensive line of offerings in the region.

"We are leveraging IBM Cloud, analytics, mobile and security offerings in order to create high-value, competitively differentiated services," said Muraleedharan Nanoo, Managing Director, UBG. "Our goal is to improve development productivity and reliability to better serve our customers."

IBM total cloud revenue – covering public, private and hybrid engagements – was $7.7 billion over the previous 12 months at the end of March 2015; it grew more than 60 percent in first quarter 2015. IBM's cloud delivered as a service business, a subset of the total, includes IaaS.

For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud.

For more information on UBG visit http://www.ubgkw.com.

Press Contacts:
Jumana Akkawi
External Relations Leader, IBM Middle East
Phone: +971 4 4498353
Email: [email protected]

Scott Cook
IBM Media Relations
Phone: 312-669-4743
Email: [email protected]

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SOURCE IBM

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