Created by the separation of IBM’s Managed Infrastructure Services, Kyndryl is the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, serving thousands of enterprises in more than 60 countries. The company designs, builds, manages, and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day.
As a focused, independent company, Kyndryl is building a foundation of excellence by bringing in the right partners, investing in the business it operates, and working side-by-side with its customers to unlock their potential.
With tens of thousands of skilled practitioners serving a community of over 4,000 global customers, including more than half of the Fortune 500, this $17 billion company is the world’s largest infrastructure implementation and managed services provider, innovating at scale with intellectual property and a portfolio of 3,000+ patents.
Kyndryl continues to serve its customers’ technology infrastructure needs, powering mission-critical technology systems across essential industries.
- 5/10 of top airlines by total revenue passenger miles (RPM)
- 5/5 of the top automotive companies by revenue
- 11/20 of the top insurance companies by revenue
- 4/5 of the top consumer staples retailers by revenue
- 3/5 of top telecom companies by total mobile connections
Kyndryl is an undisputed leader in managing mission-critical systems that run the above essential industries:
- 15K+ Oracle & SAP instances managed
- 6.7M mainframe installed Millions of Instructions per Second (MIPS)
- 576 exabytes of customer data backed up annually
- 73K+ WAN devices managed
- 23M Service Desk contacts annually
The Situation: Real CIO Transformation
When Kyndryl separated from IBM in 2021, it inherited a series of complex legacy systems that did not align with its simplified business and evolving technology strategy. The company needed to pivot to an agile, cost-effective, and streamlined environment that could scale with its business requirements.
Born with over 1,800 applications, Kyndryl struggled with an overgrown application landscape that was not fit for purpose. With its large on-premises non-strategic platform footprint, Kyndryl’s landscape required 50+ server locations. Data was scattered and difficult to find throughout the organization, with more than 68 disparate information/data warehouses, multiple Master Data apps and visualization tools, and no central governance or single source of truth. Decentralized and reactive services allowed for limited data visibility.
Only 13% of revenues were going through an SAP system, with the rest going through a myriad of other legacy systems, making the company’s migration a hybrid SAP and non-SAP transformation project. Separating from IBM across a two-year spin required Kyndryl to achieve operating independence by November of 2023, creating an opportunity to build best-in-class business processes and a state-of-the-art IT environment to support its new business objectives.
The Initiative
Kyndryl’s IT modernization initiative was part of a greater transformational effort at the company designed to support “The Kyndryl Way,” a shared set of values and principles that describes Kyndryl’s winning culture based on collaboration, mutual responsibility, and excellence.
To drive forward its mission—to be a technology services company that is a partner and employer of choice—and its purpose—that, together, each employee advances the vital systems that power human progress— Kyndryl required technology modernization to succeed.
To learn more about IT modernization at Kyndryl, download this ASUG case study, developed in partnership with Kyndryl.
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