The deal starts with development and testing, with plans to expand to other business functions in the future.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

August 15, 2016

2 Min Read
Workday Signs With IBM for Cloud Hosting

Workday, which provides enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, has signed a multi-year deal to host a development and testing environment on IBM's cloud.

And that's just the beginning. Workday plans to expand the use of IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) Cloud beyond development and testing. Previous dealings between the two companies have seen IBM provide consulting services for Workday customers; acquire Meteorix, a Workday services provider, in 2015; and use Workday Human Capital Management for its global workforce.

IBM's cloud includes nearly 50 data centers in 17 countries on six continents.

The cloud economy often resembles Matryoshka dolls, with cloud providers providing platforms for other cloud providers -- more precisely, software-as-a-service providers turn to infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service providers to run applications.

Perhaps most famously, Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) hosts its services on Amazon Web Services Inc. -- that is, all but the important video streaming, which it runs on its own content delivery network (CDN).

Likewise, Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) is making a multi-year migration to AWS for all its data center operations. (See Intuit's Not Scared of Cloud Vendor Lock-In.)

The trend isn't universal. LinkedIn Corp. wanted control of its own destiny so it launched its own ambitious private cloud project. That project faces a cloudy future (so to speak) in the face of the upcoming acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT). (See LinkedIn Launches Private Cloud for Growth and Under Microsoft, LinkedIn's Big Cloud Plans Face Uncertain Future.)

The Workday/IBM deal "comes soon after two recent reports from analysts raised questions about IBM's ability to compete" with Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the cloud, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Want to know more about the cloud? Visit Light Reading Enterprise Cloud.

Last week, Australia's national census website, hosted by IBM, had to be shut down after cyberattacks disrupted citizens' ability to enter information. IBM apologized, noting that no data was accessed or stolen in the attack, according to the WSJ.

Deutsche Bank and Gartner said recently that IBM is losing ground to Amazon and Microsoft in the public cloud infrastructure market.

On the other hand, Synergy Research Group categorizes IBM with Amazon, Microsoft and Google as cloud leaders, with Amazon "in a league of its own" and Microsoft in second place.

— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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