Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) has tapped IBM for a multi-year agreement to unlock additional operations and efficiencies through data. As part of this, it’s undergoing a digital transformation to streamline its IT infrastructure to an open hybrid cloud environment.
The company is the world's largest Coca-Cola bottler based on revenue, operating in 13 countries and employing more than 23,000 people. It has more than 19,000 suppliers and approximately 1 million customer outlets.
The company will leverage Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to decrease operational expenses and increase IT resiliency. It expects that employing Red Hat to leverage analytics and artificial intelligence within its daily operations will also deliver more business insights to its customers.
As part of the agreement, IBM Services will help CCEP transform to an IBM-managed hybrid cloud environment, including the use of IBM public cloud and several SAP workloads. IBM will also provide CCEP with a single point of control over its IT infrastructure.
Peter Brickley, Coca-Cola European Partners CEO, cited the company’s ongoing collaboration with IBM as a chief driver in furthering its digital transformation partnership. The two companies first linked up in 2018.
“The selection of IBM's hybrid cloud architecture with Red Hat OpenShift gives us the flexibility to optimize across different public cloud platforms according to our future needs," he noted.