Our team recently met with Sven de Backer, Managing Director, Kyndryl Luxembourg. In this interview, he talks, among other things, about Kyndryl's strategy in Luxembourg, its ambition and its positioning on the market.

This is an exciting time for Kyndryl globally: your company has become independent after its separation from IBM and has signed several global strategic partnerships, for example with Microsoft. What impact will these changes have on your business model, here, in Luxembourg? What does this change in your relationship with your clients?

Sven de Backer: Our robust and expanded digital ecosystem of tech industry leaders will provide innovative, intelligent and effective solutions for our customers, and help them integrate the best technologies. As an independent company, we will expand our ecosystem and invest in new capabilities to provide more world-class services offerings for our customers. As Kyndryl, we can now be technology agnostic and will adjust our offerings accordingly. We’ll remain the trusted advisor and IT integrator of our clients, but will now be able to address a wider scope of solutions.

As a flatter organization, we’re re-orienting ourselves as a customer-centric services business, with fewer management layers and key decision in the countries. We will accelerate the pace of our decision-making – including decisions about hiring and resources – and shift the ability to make key decisions closer to the customer. Our faster, flatter organization puts the customer at the centre of our business.

The development of IT infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges facing companies and a market that promises to be very lucrative in the years to come. How does Kyndryl intend to position itself to take advantage of this?

S. D. B.: We indeed see a shift in decision making about IT infrastructure consumption with our clients, in many ways. IT will become more and more complex, and business needs more and more demanding. Growing demand for digital transformation services in all industries is driven by the competitive pressure to provide better customer experiences, operational cost savings and the desire for flexibility and scale.

Skills and talents to manage these environments and execute on transformation projects are clearly in great demand everywhere and Kyndryl, with its 90.000 employees worldwide, and strong local presence can address these needs. We have the skills and the solutions to support our clients on this journey.

What is Kyndryl's ambition in Luxembourg? What added value can you bring to Luxembourg companies?

S. D. B.: Our customers come to us for our expertise, proactive value creation, speed and agility. They relied on us to stay up and running during the pandemic, and we met that challenge. Over decades, they have relied on us to help them adopt the latest technologies and meet their business needs. We can leverage trusted and proven Intellectual Property, IP for short (including more than 3,000 patents).

In Luxembourg, Kyndryl has a broad customer base with who we have a long relationship. Our strong and growing local team of experts are part of a worldwide organization being dedicated to the success of our customers. Kyndryl Luxembourg wants to pursue what we did with IBM Global Services locally during 30 years here, i.e. listen and understand the business needs of our customers and support them with quality and innovation whatever the size and type of business.

Kyndryl wants to bring additional expertise to our market and enter a new era: AI, DevOps and others are clearly part of our agenda. As shared with our logo, Kyndryl is the heart of the progress, also in Luxembourg.

What are the specific needs of the Luxembourg market and how do you intend to meet them?

S. D. B.: Our customers want our deep technical knowledge and proficiency as well as operational stability with little tolerance for risk to their systems, continuous improvement and innovation with modern, pre-integrated solutions and world-class IP that has been stress tested, advisory support that is proactive, anticipatory and highly responsive and partnership. They view our investment as evidence of our commitment.

Customers in Luxembourg are not different from the others in the world, except for the proximity where they expect more. Their challenges remain the same: the best IT solution, compliant with regulations, without risks, innovation, with the best financial conditions.

Kyndryl Luxembourg has the expertise, skills and solutions to match them. Our partnership approach will always make the difference for our customers and partners.

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