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. 

ASUG devel­ops and pub­lish­es case stud­ies reg­u­lar­ly in part­ner­ship with its mem­bers and cus­tomers. For more infor­ma­tion on ASUG spon­sored con­tent, con­tact editorial@​asug.​com.