IBM Inks $260M Digital Transformation Deal With Philippine Bank

IBM and the Bank of the Philippine Islands signed a $260 million multi-year services agreement calling for IBM to provide IT services for agile IT and hybrid cloud, as well as development to accelerate BPI's digital transformation, IBM said Wednesday.

BPI is the third-largest bank in the Philippines in assets, with more than 9 million customers, providing services over mobile, ATMs, cash accept machines and branches, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) said in a statement.

IBM and BPI designed an IT environment that supports open APIs to create application and services. BPI wants to achieve continual upgrades for bank branches with new technology, as well as additional financial services apps for customers, IBM says.

The deal continues two weeks of good news for IBM's cloud business. And IBM hasn't had a lot of good news in the last couple of years, as it struggles to transition from its legacy systems business to emerging technology including cloud, cognitive computing and analytics.

Figure 1: Photo by Nickrds09 [CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

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The cloud helped IBM boost revenue and beat expectations for fiscal 2018 and sent the company stock soaring following an earnings report Tuesday. IBM traded at $133.04 up 8.59% Wednesday afternoon. (See IBM Had a Very Good Day in the Cloud .)

Tuesday morning, IBM announced an eight-year deal with BNP Paribas, France's largest bank, which does business in 73 countries, to extend their cloud partnership for real-time baking, mobile services, digital transformation and improved efficiency. IBM did not disclose a price tag on that partnership. (See IBM Inks 8-Year Cloud Deal With BNP Paribas, France's Biggest Bank.

IBM and Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD) inked a $550 million deal to provide cloud services to European enterprises last week. (See IBM, Vodafone Strike $550M Cloud Deal.)

Also last week, IBM Services announced a $325 million deal to move Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) infrastructure to the cloud. (See IBM Inks $325M Deal to Move Juniper to Cloud.)

And Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) shareholders approved a $34 billion deal for that company to be acquired by IBM, to further IBM's multi-cloud strategy. (See Red Hat Shareholders Greenlight $34B IBM Acquisition.)

— Mitch Wagner Executive Editor, Light Reading