As the name suggests, hybrid cloud is a platform where cloud workloads and on-premises are shared. According to a research by Markets and Markets, the hybrid cloud market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 17% till 2022, making it a market of $97.6 billion.

So how does IBM plan to capture this fast growing billion-dollar market? IBM has launched certain innovative products to boost their hybrid loud presence in the market. IBM released the IBM Private Cloud in 2017, a product that enables enterprises to launch and integrate cloud applications within a hybrid cloud environment. The product was a hit owing to IBM’s brand presence, as they managed to win over 400 clients, out of which 100 clients signed up with them in the first quarter of the product release.

IBM recently announced the launch of another multi-cloud product, IBM Multicloud Manager, an open technology platform for combining migrating apps from different cloud platforms, such as Amazon and Microsoft. IBM didn’t want to stay behind the race when it comes to AI, so it launched the AI OpenScale Technology, a technology for managing AI applications.

IBM is launching these products to remain competitive in the hybrid cloud market, which is heating up in competitiveness. Azure Stack, Microsoft’s hybrid cloud product, is gaining massive traction since 2017 and Google’s Cloud platform announced a partnership with Nutanix to help clients manage their cloud applications better. AWS also partnered with VMware in 2018.

IBM’s 13% growth in cloud revenue looks good even though it experienced a 2% revenue decline in 2018. This growth is small in comparison to IBM’s competitors, Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, the top 2 hybrid cloud players in the market that experienced a revenue growth of 50% and 80%, respectively, in the last quarter.