IBM adds resellers to its federal cloud portfolio

EDITOR's NOTE: This article first appeared on FCW.com.

IBM has chosen five resellers and distributors to team up with the company on cloud solutions by bundling their products and services under IBM cloud offerings for the federal market.

In a Nov. 17 statement, IBM officials announced that they were partnering with Arrow, Avnet Government Solutions, Ingram Micro, Tech Data and ViON.

Under the terms of the agreements, the five companies will market and resell IBM cloud services with a focus on implementing hybrid solutions in which some applications and data stay on the customer's premises but can move into the cloud if needed.

The goal is to enable the partners to capitalize on IBM's FedRAMP-certified cloud offerings while enhancing customer choice.

"With our partners, we have a strong understanding of the IT investments agencies have made and how to help them with their migrations to cloud in a secure and strategic way," said Anne Altman, general manager of IBM's U.S. Federal and Government Industries.

IBM's SoftLayer cloud infrastructure integrates existing and new services in a hybrid environment, which allows agencies to manage where their data resides. It also meets all FedRAMP and Federal Information Security Management Act requirements for government workloads, according to IBM.

The new partners also have access to Bluemix (IBM's cloud platform as a service) and the company's software-as-a-service portfolio.

IBM announced its cloud partnerships in conjunction with the First Responder Application Challenge, an early effort to establish an applications ecosystem to run on FirstNet, the planned nationwide communications network for first responders.