IBM Consulting to double down on public sector

IBM Consulting has unveiled plans to grow its public sector footprint in 2024.

Speaking with Think Digital Partners at AWS re: Invent in Las Vegas, Mahmoud Elmashni, managing partner, strategic partnerships at IBM Consulting, said the firm is set to “double down” on both its US and UK public sector business next year, particularly with public cloud providers like AWS.

“We’re meticulous about what we go after from a government perspective and AWS are aligned in that same way too,” said Elmashni.

“Many federal governments have significant on premise estates that are leaning in in a major way with some of the cloud providers. How does all that come together over time? What are the things from a data residency perspective you have to keep on premise?”

Elmashni pointed to IBM’s significant mainframe presence within organisations. “That’s where I think IBM Consulting is really well positioned – to come in and help them figure out what a modern infrastructure looks like, given all the requirements.”

Nick Otto, head of strategic partnerships at IBM also noted the shift towards adopting a hybrid cloud approach within the public sector. This is more evident in the UK’s evolution from ‘cloud-first’ to ‘cloud-appropriate’.

Public sector adopting hybrid cloud

“It’s been like that in the commercial space as well. AWS itself has adopted the term hybrid. Four years ago, that would have been an absolute no-no,” he said. “A lot of that is just around the reality of how the markets evolve.”

IBM Consulting’s UK government customers include the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) announced a new three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IBM in July 2023, to enhance accessibility and cost-efficiency for public sector organisations using IBM’s hardware, software, cloud, and services.

Last month, The National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) said it was collaborating with to provide UK researchers with cloud access to IBM Quantum’s Premium Plan, including IBM’s fleet of quantum computing systems, to drive new research directions based on the use of quantum computing.