IBM has announced that Pivotal Consultancy Services, a provider of specialised assessment and collaborative learning solutions, has selected IBM SmartCloud Enterprise to offer new and more cost effective and innovative services to students and organisations via the cloud.

Pivotal, established in 2010, provides online software solutions that support educators and Human Resource organisations to develop and manage learning resources, including creation of question banks, generation of online tests , behavioral monitoring, employee assessment, feedback sharing, appraisals and pre-recruitment tests, among other professional services.

As part of an extremely cost sensitive Indian education sector with high customer expectations, building, operating and maintaining a cost effective business model is critical for Pivotal. To ensure that it has an infrastructure available for faster go-to-market without significant initial investments, Pivotal adopted IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which is a pay-as-you-you model, working with Business Partner, Integrated Tech9 Labs. Pivotal expects IBM SmartCloud will help it save 40 percent of infrastructure and middleware cost over a year.

“Online tests and exams, e-learning, online employee feedback and assessments are gaining popularity. To address this growing opportunity, we wanted a trusted partner who we could leverage not only for a robust, cost effective infrastructure that would help us address growing customer expectations, but who could also provide us access to global expertise,” said Krishan B Chandak, Managing Partner, Pivotal Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd. “IBM’s industrial-strength cloud is the platform for us to transform our business.”

Pivotal will use IBM SmartCloud Enterprise to create a cloud-based platform for their offerings. The company will be able to provide rapid access to a multi-tenant shared infrastructure on the cloud that can be scaled according to business needs. Pivotal has developed its first Software as a service (SaaS) offering, ‘Maxscore’ on IBM’s SmartCloud platform. ‘Maxscore’ is an assessment software that can be used by educational institutions and businesses to run assessments, pre-recruitment tests, 360 degree feedback, program evaluations, culture surveys and post hiring surveys, among others.

“Today, organisations are adopting cloud not only to have a cost effective business model but also to transform their business.  Harnessing IBM SmartCloud is a smart move for organisations that need the elasticity to expand quickly with minimal upfront investments,” said G. Dharanibalan, Executive, Offerings Management & Development, Global Technology Services, IBM, India/South Asia. “We’re seeing businesses chose the IBM cloud as a platform for their own expansion—just as Pivotal has successfully launched their Maxscore service.”