{"id":11913,"date":"2014-12-03T13:25:11","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T13:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2014\/dec\/03\/ibm-announces-deal-wpp-taps-greater-big-data-and-analytics\/"},"modified":"2014-12-03T13:25:11","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T13:25:11","slug":"ibm-announces-deal-with-wpp-taps-into-greater-big-data-and-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/ibm-announces-deal-with-wpp-taps-into-greater-big-data-and-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"IBM announces deal with WPP, taps into greater big data and analytics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Picture credit: iStockPhoto<\/em><\/p>\n<p>IBM has announced that communications services group WPP has extended its partnership with the tech giant, providing a service delivery and technology platform to run WPP&rsquo;s operations in the cloud for $1.25bn (&pound;797m).<\/p>\n<p>The current agreement will last for seven years, with WPP able to expand the use of big data and analytics and deploy new products and services through Big Blue.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;As the world&rsquo;s largest communications group, we are seeking to exploit IBM&rsquo;s cloud computing expertise to allow us to innovate and add value to both the service and the product we deliver to clients across 111 countries,&rdquo; said WPP Group CIO Robin Dargue.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&rsquo;t the only deal coming from Armonk towers in recent months, with multi-billion dollar deals agreed between IBM and ABN Amro, a Dutch bank, as well as German airline firm Lufthansa. And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2014\/12\/03\/us-ibm-wpp-idUSKCN0JG2EV20141203\">according to reports<\/a>, this won&rsquo;t be the last announcement either.<\/p>\n<p>IBM&rsquo;s push towards becoming the leader in cloud computing has been aggressive for the past 12 months, having shoved $1bn (&pound;638m) of investments into that space to rebrand as a cloud-first company <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2014\/mar\/03\/ibm-rebrands-cloud-company-moves-1bn-investments-hybrid-play\/\">back in March<\/a>. A lot of big legacy tech firms have been moving this way as well &ndash; SAP, Oracle, Microsoft &ndash; with similar results in struggling financials and job cuts.<\/p>\n<p>The firm&rsquo;s Q3 numbers showed revenue down 4%, operating net income down 18%, yet cloud revenue was up more than 50%. They&rsquo;re numbers which make analysts and investors worry, but it&rsquo;s to be expected when moving your revenues to cloud-based ones rather than legacy software.<\/p>\n<p>Globalfoundries recently picked up IBM&rsquo;s chipmaking division, at a cost of $1.5bn to Big Blue, as a clear sign of where IBM CEO Ginni Rometty wants to move the company. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2014\/oct\/21\/ibm-ditches-chipmaking-business-looks-cloud-q3-numbers-get-slammed\/\">As she explained on the analyst call<\/a>: &ldquo;The strategy&rsquo;s correct, and now it&rsquo;s our speed of execution that needs to continue to improve.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>IBM has also made strides to partner up with its perceived competition in recent months, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2014\/oct\/15\/ibm-and-sap-team-run-hana-enterprise-cloud-major-deal\/\">announcing an agreement<\/a> with SAP to help run its HANA Enterprise Cloud. The two companies, even though they&rsquo;re enemies in the cloud vendor war, have partnered for more than 40 years. It&rsquo;s certainly a trend &ndash; take <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cloudcomputing-news.net\/news\/2014\/nov\/05\/dropbox-and-microsoft-partner-office-365-storage-what-does-mean-onedrive\/\">Microsoft&rsquo;s recent buddying up with Dropbox<\/a>, even though Redmond has its own storage product in OneDrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Picture credit: iStockPhoto<br \/>\nIBM has announced that communications services group WPP has extended its partnership with the tech giant, providing a service delivery and technology platform to run WPP&rsquo;s operations in the cloud for $1.25bn (&pound;7&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}