Technology keeps moving forward. What is groundbreaking today will be an outdated drag on your business tomorrow. And unless your company has an infinite IT budget, it’s nearly impossible to stay on the bleeding edge of technological advances for your industry. Instead, organizations that exist in the real world must embrace a more gradual and deliberate innovation strategy, acting only when it makes sense.
But lagging too far behind the IT curve can have clear, negative impacts on what you can offer, who you can market it to and how much revenue you can capture.
Founded back in 2009, long before cloud computing had become common, solution provider Tetherfi Pte Ltd. had developed its offerings — predominately for the banking, financial services and insurance (BSFI) sector — to run as on-premises software. However, in early 2019 the business found a reason to update this approach.
“We were working on an RFP for a large company,” explains Binny Mathew, Head of Presales and Product Realization at Tetherfi. “This was a huge opportunity for us — one we couldn’t pass up. But this potential customer was moving to cloud and wanted a cloud-based solution. And our applications were never built to run in a cloud environment. So we started talking internally about how do we take our offerings to the cloud? How do we get something up and running for the market quickly?”
Hybrid Cloud Model
Enabled a hybrid cloud delivery model for 40% of its offerings
Market expansion
Having updated its software portfolio, Tetherfi expanded into new geographies and markets
The Tetherfi team also recognized that adding a cloud-based delivery model would open up opportunities beyond this initial contract. As Binny notes: “We asked around and found that a lot of enterprise customers — which is our target market — are making this same shift to cloud. But they are also facing heavy resistance when it comes to security. So we needed a hybrid model that let them be flexible — that let them run on prem or on cloud.”
Unfortunately, Tetherfi didn’t have the skills internally to begin moving forward, so the business began searching for potential cloud service providers that could help it update its offering portfolio. And fortunately, it found IBM.
Becoming an IBM Business Partner, Tetherfi began coordinating with IBM design teams to rework its offerings portfolio to meet the demands of not only this large RFP but also any future cloud-based deployments.
“We brainstormed a lot, figuring out how our solutions should work in the cloud,” recalls Binny. “And it was invaluable working with the IBM Cloud team. Their objective wasn’t to just sell us something. They wanted to really understand how our applications worked and to figure out how to translate that to a cloud environment. It wasn’t just a lift and shift.”
One tool that’s seen broad, cloud-based adoption — predominately due to the COVID-19 pandemic — is Tetherfi’s Secure Work From HomeExternal Link offering. With many businesses quickly requiring a new remote work solution, Tetherfi could now offer this solution with an accelerated setup time. And so far, the business can deliver roughly 40% of its solutions via its new, hybrid model with plans to migrate even more applications to the cloud in the near future.
“We’re moving step by step, component by component,” adds Binny. “We’re building containers and deploying everything in Red Hat OpenShift. We’re writing different microservices. We’ve introduced Kafka to help ensure that things are tightly binded. We’re bringing the best of both worlds with on premises and cloud.”
Beyond helping to secure the large, five-year contract, working with IBM has created several new sales opportunities for Tetherfi. “It’s helped us open doors,” notes Binny. “When you bring in IBM Cloud, that brand says something. It builds on the successes that IBM has already had. So our customers are much more confident in the reliability, in the security of what’s moving to the cloud.”
And while Tetherfi had tightly focused on the Southeast Asian market in the past, with its hybrid offerings, the business extended its reach into new, previously untapped geographies, expanding further into Asia as well as into the US.
Ultimately, with its new delivery model, Tetherfi can offer its users a higher level of service and choice. “It’s whatever they want,” notes Binny. “Whatever they want to keep on prem, they can. Whatever they want to keep in the cloud, it’s up to them.”
He continues: “And Red Hat OpenShift lets us offer them the same performance, the same experience no matter where they are on their cloud journey. I know for a fact that one of our main competitors has different feature sets for their on-premises and cloud solutions. So offering a common, unified experience to our customers has definitely been the deciding factor for some of our wins.”
Originally founded as Interlink back in 2009, IBM Business Partner TetherfiExternal Link develops IT solutions — such as voice and video chat, screen sharing and co-browsing software — focused on delivering engaging customer service experiences. The business is currently headquartered in Singapore with additional offices in India, the US and Sri Lanka.
Footnotes
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2021. IBM Corporation, IBM Cloud, New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504
Produced in the United States of America, December 2021.
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and IBM Cloud are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at https://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.
Red Hat® and OpenShift® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates.
The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.
Secure Work From Home is not IBM products or offerings. Secure Work From Home is sold or licensed, as the case may be, to users under Tetherfi Pte Ltd.’s terms and conditions, which are provided with the product or offering. Availability, and any and all warranties, services and support for Secure Work From Home is the direct responsibility of, and is provided directly to users by, Tetherfi Pte Ltd.