IBM: Winning Is Everything in Cloud Computing and Revenues

August 11, 2016

I love testosterone charged sports talk. I wish there were more of it from large companies with an enviable record. Consider IBM. I think it is 16 consecutive quarters of revenue declines. Yes, a crown of sorts.

I read “IBM’s Cloud CTO: We’re in This Game to Win.” I read these thrilling words of hope and revenue optimism:

“We knew it was a massive opportunity for IBM, but not in a way that necessarily fit our mold,” said Jim Comfort, who is now CTO for IBM Cloud. “Every dimension of our business model would change — we knew that going in…. Our platform is cloud,” Comfort said. “It’s not just that we’re doing some cloud services, but that everything we do will be cloud-delivered. That’s a declarative statement — that’s fundamental…. “We understand what matters from the perspective of industries,” Comfort said. “AWS and Google don’t; Microsoft does in certain domains.”

The only hitch in the git along is everyone’s favorite world’s smartest person, Jeff Bezos, quant and space enthusiast. It appears that Amazon’s cloud business is either number one or very close to being number one. (It depends on how one counts, of course.)

The fact is that IBM is into the mainframe thing. IBM has Watson to answer this question, “How can IBM close the gap with Amazon?” And “How can IBM thwart the new Oracle NetSuite cloud thing?” And “What happens if Google shifts its attention from solving death and flying loon balloons to its cloud services?

IBM is in the game to win. Yep, the only problem is that IBM is losing revenues. Hope springs eternal even at ageing technology companies trying really hard to find substantial, sustainable, and profitable revenue streams. The race may be between IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Knocking off Amazon because it doesn’t understand the customer is like the junior college coach who thinks he can run an NFL coaching operation. Long shot. What do you think Watson? Watson, Watson, come here I need you.

Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2016

Comments

One Response to “IBM: Winning Is Everything in Cloud Computing and Revenues”

  1. phpduglist.info on August 11th, 2016 9:20 am

    phpduglist.info

    IBM: Winning Is Everything in Cloud Computing and Revenues : Stephen E. Arnold @ Beyond Search

  • Archives

  • Recent Posts

  • Meta