IBM Boasts Another Big Win, Touts Hybrid Cloud Prowess

IBM chalked up another big cloud win — its third in a week — and reported revenue that beat Wall Street’s expectations also boosted by its cloud business. The company on Tuesday said it signed an eight-year agreement with France’s largest bank, BNP Paribas. The bank will use IBM’s hybrid cloud products including its private cloud and as-a-service IT offerings delivered through IBM’s public cloud. It will also integrate the IBM Cloud hosted in data centers dedicated to the bank. The BNP Paribas win comes on the heels of a $550 million cloud venture with Vodafone and a $325 million cloud deal with Juniper Networks both announced last week. Later in the day, IBM reported its fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 results that beat analysts’ expectations. For the full year revenue was $79.6 billion, up 1 percent from last year. “Strategic imperative” revenue — this includes hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), and security — was $39.8 billion, up 9 percent.