Sierra Space and International Business Machines Corporation announced the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Together, Sierra Space and IBM plan to work to develop the next generation of space technology and software platforms across Sierra Space's range of space vehicles and infrastructure. The MOU outlines the companies' plans to integrate IBM's technology to coordinate the tasks and workload of Sierra Space astronauts through the company's data analysis and collection technology.

In addition, IBM plans to support Sierra Space through its journey of building a seamless technology platform in space, which both envision as a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive platform to effectively service the cloud in space and drive mission operations – all while supporting development of new applications for commerce, research, tourism and more. IBM's technology platform would facilitate Sierra Space's efforts for automating business operations to achieve better performance, automate IT operations to deliver actionable insights, automate application and data flows to improve client experiences, automate networks to deliver zero-touch operations, and generate deeper insights into threats, orchestration actions and automated responses. The proposed joint work is also expected to drive a single, unified, and flexible distributed computing environment where users can easily build and modernize applications, make data AI-ready, and integrate and orchestrate workloads (across multiple environments and vendors) for flexible, secured, and open operations.

The companies are discussing development and deployment of these abilities terrestrially and/or in space, in addition to offering support for ongoing operations and management of Sierra Space's technologies. Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.