Digital transformation is accelerating, with over 20 million virtual machines migrating to the cloud in the coming years, fuelling a $29B market growing at 30% annually. Clients like banks and airlines are under intense pressure to modernise without disrupting their mission-critical systems. As a small UX team in enterprise IT, we’ve heard that ‘moving the needle’ is tough. Hybrid cloud has traditionally focused on technical depth rather than design-led innovation.

We are on a mission to change the status quo. While IBM’s technical expertise and certified services enable secure and resilient workload migration, the IBM–VMware partnership offers great potential to redefine interactions in B2B cloud infrastructure. Our vision is to make the experience a true differentiator for VMware workloads on IBM Cloud.

In 2024, Broadcom acquired VMware and consolidated its portfolio around VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). In response, we streamlined our offerings and launched VCF-as-a-Service – our new flagship product. VCFaaS combines self-managed and IBM-managed options with full on-premises compatibility, providing unique flexibility for clients to make a seamless transition to the cloud, on-demand, paying only for what they use.

The product can be scaled globally to meet regulatory, performance, and latency needs – delivering up to 75% cost savings and 201% ROI over three years while reducing carbon emissions by 80-90% compared to on-premises solutions.

The road to a flagship experience wasn’t easy. Early Beta reviews rated the experience ‘satisfactory’ (C-level), citing limited self-service, friction in accessing features, and underutilised upselling. We prioritised usability and integration with IBM Cloud services, launching several major enhancements —all while reducing provisioning time by 67% from 21 minutes to just 7. In parallel, we resolved over 350 issues identified by users and peers, related to branding, visuals, content and usability.

As a result, user retention tripled, and self-service revenue surged (40% of paid accounts completed purchases within 30 days). Our newly designed promo code experience increased utilisation by 61% in 2025—altogether leading us to an ‘excellent’ experience rating, backed by compelling client feedback: “We met you at Explore, started with the promo code, and ow we’re spending over $50k/month” – CEO, Cybersecurity Services.

VCFaaS also catalysed a refresh of our IBM Carbon system, reinforcing consistency and compliance. We modernised the interface for a more intuitive layout, with support for various devices, dark mode, and enhanced accessibility. We contributed new components to our shared design library, assisting other IBM Cloud teams. The result: a faster, more accessible, responsive experience that 91% of users prefer over old designs—and a 20% boost in UX-UI productivity.

Our transformation is powered by hundreds of IBMers across design, engineering, product, marketing, and client success. To align on user needs, we use an outcome-based roadmap where each epic has a client value statement, built on personas and validated through playbacks with sponsor clients. This helps prioritise delivery, encourages iteration, and fosters a culture of empowerment, boosting our OSAT score by 17%. Additionally, by co-creating with users, we reduced total onboarding time for new clients by 88% (from 32 to 4 weeks), enabling faster value for clients and quicker revenue for IBM.

Category:MultimediaAward Year:2025Designers:Adam Habensusz, Ty Tyner, Linus Schellin, Adam Habensusz, Sándor Vass, Mariusz Mickiewicz, Eszter Lázár, Arthur Hayden, Peter Felkai, IBM, Austin, Texas, USAManufacturer:IBM, Austin, Texas, USA