OREANDA-NEWS. November 19, 2015. IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that five new cloud partners have joined its growing ecosystem serving the U.S. federal government. Together with IBM, these resellers and distributors will focus on delivering new hybrid cloud innovations to help spur wider cloud adoption across federal agencies. Arrow, Avnet Government Solutions, Ingram Micro, Tech Data Corporation and ViON will combine and bundle their solutions with IBM Cloud.

Despite all the attention that the federal government has placed on cloud, IDC estimates that only about six percent of federal applications run in the cloud. At the same time, the Administration’s proposed fiscal 2016 budget estimates that about \\$7.3 billion will be spent on cloud computing and not simply for cost savings, but also to change how services are delivered.

“Federal agencies are really beginning to view cloud as transformational, but first they need a reliable partner to help them get started,” said Anne Altman, general manager of IBM US Federal and Government Industries. “With our partners, we have a strong understanding of the IT investments agencies have made, and how to help them with their migrations to cloud in a secure and strategic way.”

These partners bring specialized expertise to the table:

Arrow helps partners integrate IBM’s Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) into their products and services, and assists in building cloud solutions from the IaaS layer up.

“The federal government’s ‘Cloud First’ policy puts FedRAMP-approved data centers at the forefront of the hybrid-public cloud movement,” said Steve Robinson, global vice president and general manager of Arrow’s cloud business. “We have a unique opportunity to deliver value to public-sector channel partners through our collaboration with IBM, and by leveraging Arrow’s commercial value-add cloud model in our federally focused immixGroup organization.”

Avnet Government Solutions helps business partners accelerate the development of their cloud portfolios with a scalable, secure base for the delivery of cloud services across its entire network around the world. Avnet and IBM’s Cloud capabilities will allow federal agencies to place their data where and when it is required.

"With our recently opened office in the Washington, D.C., area and investments in public sector capabilities, Avnet Government Solutions is perfectly positioned to help our partners sell IBM’s FedRAMP-certified SoftLayer federal cloud,” said Pete Rzonca, vice president of Avnet Government Solutions. “For federal clients, Avnet brings more than 30 years of IBM expertise, our skilled cloud solutions team, and the recently launched Avnet Cloud Marketplace.”

Ingram Micro markets, sells and supports IBM Cloud on the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace. Through a single online portal, channel partners can configure and manage IBM Cloud while driving cross-sell and revenue-generating opportunities within its partner community. As a master cloud services provider, Ingram Micro offers its cloud onboarding capabilities, partner enablement, marketing support, and end-to-end technical and operational support to its channel partners focused on building cloud solutions.

“Ingram Micro is pleased to partner with IBM to serve U.S. federal government agencies in their transition to the cloud,” said Tarik Faouzi, vice president, Global Cloud Partners and Solutions, Ingram Micro Cloud. “By leveraging our cloud migration capabilities and value-added services, we remove the barriers and complexity of the migration process to ensure a seamless and secure migration that supports business transformation to the cloud.”

Tech Data Corporation is one of the world's largest distributors of technology products, services and solutions. Its advanced logistics capabilities and value added services enable 115,000 resellers to efficiently and cost effectively support the diverse technology needs of end users in more than 100 countries.

ViON offers its on-premise private cloud leveraging 13 years of experience as an IaaS solution provider. With IBM’s FedRAMP-certified SoftLayer, ViON is uniquely positioned to integrate the security of an on-premise solution with the scalability of a public cloud to address Federal hybrid cloud initiatives.

“For nearly two decades, ViON’s partnership with IBM has enabled our Federal customers to achieve their mission success,” said Tom Frana, ViON CEO. “Our customer service intimacy model coupled with IBM’s public cloud offering will allow us to continue to meet the demands of our customer today and tomorrow.”  

Federal agencies are turning to IBM’s SoftLayer Federal cloud, which integrates existing and new services in a hybrid environment, driving new innovations and helping agencies better decide, manage and secure where their data and apps reside. SoftLayer meets all Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requirements for government workloads.

Under terms of their agreements, the five new partners will resell and market IBM Cloud Services with a focus on implementing hybrid solutions where some applications and data remain on premise but can easily integrate with systems moved to the cloud and new services launched on the cloud. They also have access to Bluemix, IBM’s Cloud platform; and IBM’s Software as a Service portfolio.

For the federal market, IBM offers a portfolio of FedRAMP compliant services. In December 2014, IDC named IBM a leader in U.S. Government private cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

For more information about IBM Cloud, visit: http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing.