Managed infrastructure provider Kyndryl isn’t wasting any time declaring its independence from IBM. A week after spinning off from big blue, the newly formed company announced its first strategic partner: Microsoft.

Kyndryl claims the partnership paves the way for a multi-billion dollar opportunity, which will vastly increase Microsoft’s access to the managed service market. “This is a landmark partnership agreement for Kyndryl,” touted Stephen Leonard, global alliances and partnerships lead at Kyndryl, in an interview with SDxCentral.

Kyndryl emerged from the ashes of IBM Global Technology Services (GTS), after IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced plans to spinoff the division and refocus on hybrid cloud late last year.

Following the divorce, Kyndryl joined the New York Stock Exchange last week under the ticker KD. And while the company is a relatively new name in the managed infrastructure market, it's in fact already an established player with more than 4,600 clients, 90,000 employees, and an estimated $19 billion in annual revenue.

Now, thanks to the Microsoft partnership, Kyndryl aims to dramatically expand its managed service offerings to better address customer demand, Leonard said.

“IBM’s strategy for GTS for a number of years was that GTS would lead with and only lead with and only deliver on IBM cloud,” he said, adding that while IBM Cloud may have been a good fit for some, the strategy only served to alienate the majority of GTS customers. Kyndryl puts those days behind it with today's announcement.

Kyndryl and Microsoft plan to launch a series of new managed services designed to accelerate hybrid-cloud adoption, advance artificial intelligence, enhance cybersecurity resilience, and modernize enterprise IT operations.

The partnership isn’t limited to Microsoft Azure, but rather extends to the software giant’s entire product stack including services like Teams and Viva, Leonard added.

The two companies plan to open a “co-innovation lab” to develop joint products, which will be made available on Microsoft’s AppSource and the Azure Marketplace.

Microsoft will also provide training to Kyndryl’s staff of more than 80,000 technical employees through what the company is calling the Kyndryl University for Microsoft.

“As an independent software company we're investing in our partner ecosystem to support the success of our customers, and we’re focused on expanding our market opportunity across cloud, data, security, and intelligent automation,” Kyndryl CEO Martin Schroeter said in a statement.

To that end, Microsoft is only the first of several hyperscale partnerships in the works, Leonard said.

“We don’t think we’ve made any secret that we want to work with the other key hyperscalers,” he added.