'Unleashed from IBM' - An interview with Kyndryl UK/I chief Tosca Colangeli

Kyndryl is a big company. Created last year when the Managed Infrastructure Services division was spun off from IBM, taking 88,449 people with it, it immediately inherited 4,000 blue chip customers and a global addressable market of $250 billion.

Plus, within weeks it had inked partnerships with AWS, Microsoft, Google, VMware, Nokia, Teradata, Pure Storage and more.

So, hardly your typical bootstrap garage-based operation, then, but Tosca Colangeli, Kyndryl President UK and Ireland and a 27-year veteran of IBM, insists that's the way it feels - "like a $19 billion startup".

That's because being "unleashed" from IBM has created new opportunities and freedoms.

"I've got the delegation I always dreamed of," she said. "I've got more delegation than my boss's boss had in my old company."

I've got more delegation than my boss's boss had in my old company

This freedom extends to the UK and Ireland, Kyndryl's third-largest market, where operations are at arm's length from the US headquarters, and that's very much by design, she added. When Kyndryl was formed the mantra was (and remains) "flat, fast and focused". In terms of structure, this meant stripping out "10 management layers" to create a more streamlined operation with a deal of autonomy given to all departments, in particular customer-facing ones.

"When we were unleashed from IBM in November, our first priority was freedom of technology choice. We'd been a subdivision of IBM for such a long time, and boxed into a set of technologies and decisions which were not matching what our customers journeys and pathways were," Colangeli explained.

This increased empowerment of individuals and departments is designed to take care of the 'fast' part of the mantra, while ‘focus' is a result of boiling down managed services practices into six core domains: cloud; digital workplace; security and resiliency; network and edge; core enterprise and zCloud; and applications, data and AI.

"Rather than have 752 offerings, which we did, we're now with the six practices with this advisory services wrapper, so we can be laser- focused on the market."

And instead of "trying to drive them on the journey" Kyndryl is set up to "meet them where they want to go" as trusted advisors assisting their migrations and transformations, she said.

"We said, we need to really ramp up our advisory and implementation services. That wasn't the remit we had at IBM.

The multi-cloud future

The world of enterprise technology has been moving away from the monolithic for some time now, not least in terms of cloud services, where employing more than one provider is a deliberate choice for many, because of local regulations, the need for additional services or to avoid lock-in.

"Everybody has a multi-cloud tenanted environment now, whether by design, or because they've just ended up where they are," said Colangeli. "That is clearly something that's around to stay."

The challenge then becomes how to ensure uptime, security and resiliency, and to control costs across multiple platforms, the answer to which consolidating and integrating different departments across common management and security frameworks. But there are many questions that require structured answers: "What's that service model? What's that automation model? What's that model for managing my security and resiliency?"

The end result should be about giving IT leadership more control.

"I think there's a real empowerment with the CIO to be able to bring that governance together, so that he can bring the multi-cloud environment and make sure that there's consistency, and also keep an eye on costs."

A shared culture

But while substantial efforts have been made to strip out the more bureaucratic elements of its former 'other half', Colangeli insists that Big Blue - where the majority of Kyndryl's employees once worked - and the new spinoff are "steeped in the same history and culture" and share a "tremendous bond and camaraderie" - and there are no plans to change that. Kyndryl customers are largely IBM customers at this stage, and despite the new relationships being forged, IBM will still often be the first port of call.

Asked about technology neutrality and whether her old pals at IBM get preferential treatment, Colangeli hedged slightly, saying: "IBM is our largest client. We're joined by culture and I think we'll always have a partnership with many shared customers, but that's really where it ends, you know, the independence is really important for us."