ITBusinessToday

Ricoh and IBM to deliver expanded services to customers via hybrid cloud

Ricoh and IBM

Ricoh selects IBM Services alongside feature-rich IBM Power Systems, furthering the existing relationship between the companies

Ricoh USA, Inc. and IBM today announced a significant expansion of their existing collaboration to help enable the delivery of Ricoh’s innovative information management solutions via the versatile and powerful IBM hybrid cloud.

Under the agreement, Ricoh will utilize IBM Services to design and implement a hybrid cloud environment that can empower customers to benefit from Ricoh expertise and advanced technologies, such as the AI-accelerated IBM Power Systems. This streamlining can help customers increase productivity, enhance process transparency and simplify complexity, with a single, powerful cloud environment backed by industry-leading expertise. In addition, IBM’s versatile hybrid cloud capabilities can enable Ricoh to deliver more features and advanced solutions via the cloud to end-users.

Additionally, Ricoh gains the ability to run both IBM POWER applications and VMware services co-located in the IBM Cloud and offer customers a scalable and cost-effective cloud infrastructure.

Read MoreCan Cyber Security Provide a Competitive Advantage to Businesses?

Ricoh also intends to tap into the versatile Red Hat OpenShift platform via IBM Cloud to help provide a bridge to deploy and manage their applications across all cloud providers in its environment. This can enable Ricoh to deliver more options for customers seeking a fully managed solution.

“For everything from Watson AI integration to running everyday applications, IBM Cloud does so much for so many businesses around the world. We are in constant conversation with our partners, collaborating on better ways to serve modern businesses,” said Bob Lamendola, Vice President, Infrastructure and Engineering Services, Ricoh USA, Inc. “Today, we are making it that much easier for users to leverage the power and versatility of IBM’s cloud alongside Ricoh solutions in a shared environment, simplifying complexity while helping to enhance productivity and deliver actionable business insights.”

Read More: Enhanced IT security with deception strategy

Ricoh’s innovative technologies are designed to help make data accessible to people faster and with more insight than ever before. This expanded collaboration with IBM helps bring Ricoh’s information management technology, services, and related support to a wider range of customers via IBM Cloud, creating more options for companies to innovate, no matter where they are on their digital transformation journey.

“Ricoh understands, at a deep and broad level of experience, how to implement, manage and provide ongoing support for businesses’ digital transformation,” said Bruce Anderson, Global Managing Director, Electronics Industry, IBM. “This collaboration presents another avenue for customers to take advantage of that experience, while also opening them up to the incredible possibilities the IBM Cloud provides.”