IBM Commended by Frost & Sullivan for Its Strong Managed Service Offerings in the Business-critical ERP Services Market

The IBM managed service platform includes mature, well-established features for managing security proactively

SANTA CLARA, California, Feb. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the North American managed enterprise resource planning (ERP) services market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes IBM with the 2018 North American Product Line Strategy Leadership Award. IBM has combined its strength in infrastructure delivery and management with its understanding of customers' needs to create a managed ERP portfolio delivered on cloud infrastructure. In a survey by Frost & Sullivan about managed cloud service usage, approximately 76 percent of IT decision-makers claimed that the services had helped improve the security of their ERP workloads, especially of SAP's and Oracle's.

"Frost & Sullivan's survey identified that 45 percent of respondents used IBM services, with 23 percent of them using IBM as their primary managed cloud vendor," said Karyn Price, Senior Industry Analyst and Associate Fellow, Frost & Sullivan. "Respondents rated IBM high in customer satisfaction, and gave it a 97 percent satisfaction rating. Among the survey respondents that currently use managed cloud services, 46 percent agreed that the assistance from their managed cloud provider had become an essential part of their overall IT strategy."

IBM recognizes the challenges that businesses face in deploying legacy ERP applications in the cloud without assistance. Businesses expect to increase their cloud-based ERP deployments by more than 40 percent by 2020, but 79 percent cite concerns over application performance and reliability when deploying managed cloud services for ERP. Similarly, 75 percent are apprehensive about the security of their data while 72 percent are skeptical of the ROI. In response, IBM enriched its managed cloud ERP portfolio to help customers launch ERP applications in the cloud with adequate performance, security, and ROI. With the help of a provider like IBM, 66 percent of managed cloud users said they were able to better optimize their ERP deployments and 68 percent noted an improvement in their ERP costs.

IBM has well-documented migration procedures, including data replication and synchronization measures, processes for workload discovery and mapping, and automated tools to ease the migration process. IBM typically meets or exceeds the security levels customers can achieve internally and enables highly secure cloud data centers. The company also integrates the latest security tools and technology with an expert team. This team has access to global threat intelligence and can configure and deploy a service that can thwart not only known or usual threats, but will detect advanced, new, or unusual threats.

"IBM has expanded its business focus from hardware to cloud services, particularly managed cloud services. The demonstrable results that IBM offers in terms of successful managed ERP deployments have further entrenched the IBM brand in the managed services market," noted Price. "Its high customer satisfaction rating for managed ERP services highlights not only the quality of its managed service, but also customers' comfort with the IBM brand."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a comprehensive product line that caters to the breadth of the market it serves. The award recognizes the extent to which the product line meets customer base demands, and the overall impact it has in terms of customer value and increased market share.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

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Bianca Torres
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