Workday Partner: IBM Cloud Infrastructure Will Put The SaaS Vendor On A "Rock-Solid" Foundation, Accelerate Global Expansion

IBM recorded a big win Monday in securing recognition from Workday as the Software-as-a-Service giant's primary cloud platform for development and testing tasks.

The strategic partnership between Big Blue, based in Armonk, N.Y., and the world's second largest cloud-based software vendor, based in Pleasanton, Calif., is also a win for Workday's partners selling its financial management and human resources applications, one Workday partner told CRN.

The deal with IBM will accelerate the cloud application vendor's global expansion, creating new opportunities for global systems integrators in Workday's channel, said Appirio CIO Glenn Weinstein.

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’Most large organizations deploy Workday's human capital and financials applications across a worldwide set of offices, so Workday's ability to scale its global development and testing environments will be a key to future growth with enterprise clients,’ Weinstein told CRN via email.

And ’running on a rock-solid infrastructure foundation,’ Weinstein said, will increase the availability of the vendor’s development and testing environments, which will make it easier for partners like Appirio, headquartered in San Francisco, to create and deploy unique solutions for Workday users.

In a statement, IBM referenced SAP, VMware and Box as other tech giants that are running core business workloads on its cloud infrastructure.

’Through the deal, the IBM Cloud will provide Workday with greater efficiency, flexibility and global scale,’ read an IBM statement. Workday also said that over time it intends to expand its use of IBM Cloud beyond test and development.

IBM is in a competitive battle with cloud service giants Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google. IBM has generally been stronger in providing private and hybrid cloud services, while lagging competitors in its public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings.