IBM Expands Enterprise Cloud with Tencent, Twitter Deals

IBM (IBM) is looking to expand its presence in the enterprise, both at home and abroad. Big Blue announced two strategic partnerships last week that could increase its footprint in China and in the big data analytics arena.

First up is a partnership with Twitter (TWTR). The global partnership is meant to “transform how businesses and institutions understand their customers, markets and trends—and inform every business decision,” according to the two companies.

Through the partnership, Twitter is bringing the ever-growing amount of data generated on its social media platform and combines it with IBM’s cloud-based analytics, customer engagement platforms and consulting services. Basically, the whole partnership is about the crunching of big data for use by businesses.

“This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data. This is the latest example of how IBM is reimagining work,” said Ginni Rometty, president, CEO and chairman of IBM, in a prepared statement.

Crunching the plethora of customer data and perceptions about brands and products based on social media data is no easy task, but it could be a powerful tool for plenty of enterprises.

The second partnership gives Big Blue a stronger foothold in the Chinese market. IBM inked a business cooperation memorandum with Tencent Cloud to collaborate in the public cloud on software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. Through the partnership, IBM and Tencent will focus on enabling small and medium enterprises in the smarter cities and smarter healthcare industries.

“The industry dimension makes this especially appealing for businesses,” said Nancy Thomas, managing partner with IBM’s Business Consulting Services in China, in a prepared statement. “IBM and Tencent’s shared vision is not only to bring the scale and cost benefits of cloud computing to enterprises in China, but to add differentiating value by serving the particular needs of specific industries. That is the key to unlocking the transformative power of cloud computing.”