The June incidents were particularly severe, with one affecting 54 core services, including Virtual Private Cloud, DNS, identity management, monitoring systems, and crucially, the support portal itself. This left customers unable to file support tickets while their workloads remained technically operational but unmanageable.
Enterprise operations at risk
For enterprise customers, these disruptions create operational chokepoints that extend far beyond temporary inconvenience. Modern businesses rely on continuous deployment pipelines, automated scaling, and real-time monitoring — all dependent on consistent access to cloud management interfaces.
“Any significant outage for a cloud service provider can quickly erode enterprise trust, underscoring that robust, transparent SLAs and demonstrable remediation measures are essential for maintaining credibility,” said Kaustubh K, practice director at Everest Group. “Moreover, unmet service commitments directly affect customer confidence and frequent disruption can prompt reassessment of vendor relationships.”
The timing proves especially challenging given IBM’s market position. According to Statista data, Amazon Web Services commands 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market, and Microsoft Azure holds 21%. In comparison, IBM Cloud struggles to crack 2% market share despite significant investments in hybrid cloud capabilities.
Hybrid cloud strategy under pressure
IBM has staked its cloud future on hybrid architecture, positioning itself as the leader for enterprises needing to integrate on-premises systems with public cloud resources.
However, repeated control plane failures undermine this strategic positioning. “IBM Cloud’s positioning as a hybrid leader assumes an inherent resilience advantage over hyperscalers. Yet the reality is that platform-level control-plane failures in quick succession directly contradict that perception,” Gogia observed.