Alliances and partnerships
How Kyndryl’s alliance strategy accelerates enterprise transformation
Article
09-Dec-2025
Cloud is now the engine of business agility and innovation — but companies are also dealing with more regulatory and operational complexity than ever. Success depends on strategies that balance hybrid environments, AI integration, and strict compliance demands. Many organizations struggle to move critical systems into the cloud without business disruption or needing to rewrite their mission-critical code.
To help businesses address these challenges, in 2024 Kyndryl acquired Skytap, newly rebranded as Kyndryl Cloud Uplift, to provide enterprises with a more secure, lower-risk path to lift, shift and modernize mission-critical workloads to the cloud. In this Q&A, Brad Schick, General Manager for Kyndryl Cloud Uplift, explains how Kyndryl is helping customers navigate today’s business challenges, realize their cloud strategies, and unlock growth and resiliency.
What problems are companies turning to cloud computing to help solve?
Schick: To thrive, businesses must innovate faster, reduce costs and improve resiliency all while avoiding disruptions. Many have mission-critical workloads tied to traditional infrastructure, and rewriting those applications for the cloud is a long and risky endeavor. Customers need a way to move quickly without compromising compliance or performance.
That’s where Kyndryl Cloud Uplift comes in: it gives customers a fast and low-risk way to move their systems into the public cloud, increasing innovation and flexibility in the short term, and kickstarting longer-term modernization strategies. Customers can exit traditional data centers quickly and implement intentional cloud strategies on their own timeline. For example, Kyndryl Cloud Uplift enables organizations to lift and shift IBM Power and dependent x86 workloads into Microsoft Azure without refactoring — allowing customers to access cloud scalability, resiliency and operational efficiency without waiting for application rewrites. They can realize cloud benefits now and then modernize additional aspects of their IT infrastructures when it makes sense for them.
Cloud success is dependent on design, not happenstance, and Kyndryl Cloud Uplift provides a clear roadmap for enterprises. Kyndryl’s Cloud Readiness report revealed that 70% of CEOs have arrived at their current cloud environment “by accident, rather than by design.” But the right approach can help customers move quickly without sacrificing strategy and alignment across infrastructure, governance and data.
Why did Kyndryl acquire Skytap?
Schick: Kyndryl acquired Skytap to expand our hybrid cloud services portfolio, strengthen our cloud partnerships and reinforce our position as a global leader in IT modernization. Kyndryl’s deep expertise and skills, combined with Skytap’s capabilities for transitioning complex workloads to hyperscaler environments, deliver what customers need now and position them to benefit from new capabilities in the future. As businesses increasingly depend on AI to extract value from mountains of data running on traditional systems, the urgency to move those systems to the public cloud will only increase.
Cloud success is dependent on design, not happenstance, and Kyndryl Cloud Uplift provides a clear roadmap for enterprises.
How have customers responded to the acquisition?
Schick: Over the past few years, we’ve been helping new and existing customers from across industries, from insurance to manufacturing, to migrate and run mission-critical workloads in the cloud as-is, while they plan modernization on their timeline. Some will operate on Kyndryl Cloud Uplift for years (with systems like AI layered atop), while others will use it as a staging point to transition to cloud-native architectures. Either way, customers avoid the costly, risky, all-at-once modernization model and gain control over technology decisions and investment cycles.
Looking ahead, what can customers expect?
Schick: We continue to deepen integration with cloud-native services to simplify modernization, enhance our infrastructure capabilities and expand our footprint beyond the seventeen global regions where we currently operate. While Microsoft Azure is our primary partner today, we’re exploring additional hyperscaler collaborations to give customers even more flexibility. We’ll also unify Kyndryl’s various infrastructure offerings to deliver solutions for customers spanning public and traditional data centers.
We’re focused on making cloud-driven modernization easier, smarter and more secure.
Customers can expect continued innovation, deeper collaboration with more partners and new ways to accelerate their digital journeys.
