IBM Inks Deal With WhirlPool for Private Cloud
Press releases from Armonk, NY confirm that IBM has officially won the rights to build out Whirlpool’s private cloud infrastructure. Whirlpool is best known as a home appliance manufacturer and the global enterprise felt as if the best way to cut IT costs and provide better service was by going to the private cloud route.
VP of IT at Whirlpool Alan Douville is quoted in a PR release as saying, “As a global organization that operates in almost every country in the world, we needed to find a way to grow our capacity to store and track business-critical data and address compliance activities to respond to market dynamics more quickly.”
The Whirlpool infrastructure will host bare metal servers with Softlayer running atop of it. The press release goes on to mention Whirlpool’s main goals which were to “Provide a solution that offers a scalable service delivery platform that expands and contracts based on client demand. By using IBM Cloud capabilities, Whirlpool can provision its applications faster and increase flexibility to integrate managed and non-managed services with future workloads.”
It is also being reported that Whirlpool has contracted IBM’s Cloud Managed Services. Whirlpool is using this new deal as a way to build out a cloud disaster recovery infrastructure for its global business. Making comments about the deal was IBM Cloud Services GM James Comfort who said, “Coupling our integrated approach and industry-specific expertise with solutions like IBM Cloud Managed Services and SoftLayer provide our clients with the means to quickly differentiate themselves in crowded and increasingly competitive markets.”
The press release doesn’t release any numbers or figures indicating how much the deal netted Big Blue. It can be speculated that this was at least an 8 or 9 figure deal. Given appliance manufacturers stated goals, the investment seems well worth it for Whirlpool. Comfort also commented on the deal by saying, “Our ongoing work with Whirlpool is providing the company with robust scalability and enterprise-grade cloud capabilities that are best suited for its long-term requirements.”
