IBM: Revenue Continues to Decline

May 2, 2016

I understand the appeal of marketing. Sitting in a room with bright young people, conjuring images of “to be” products, and using Excel’s built in functions to build revenue confections—the sport of MBAs.

I read “IBM Reports Worst Revenue In 14 Years, Shares Slide.” I know I have highlighting the antics of the IBM Watson unit. How can I ignore a TV game show win, a recipe book, and assorted partnerships designed to make IBM the money machine it was in years of yore?

Right here in my office I operated the Threat Open Source Intelligence Gateway on IBM servers. I recall with fondness the eight drive DASDs, the multiple CPUs, and the redundant power supplies. I bought my Movin Cool Classic 14 to knock the room temperature to a pleasant 70 degrees. Ah, the noise. Ah, the joy of a $750 minimum roll charge when the Serveraid software nuked a SCSI set up. I loved IBM.

The shift at the company has done little to renew my faith in the firm’s ability to generate solid revenue and a bounty for stakeholders. I learned in the write up:

International Business Machines Corp reported its worst quarterly revenue in 14 years as results from newer businesses including cloud and mobile computing failed to offset declines in its traditional businesses, sending shares down nearly 5 percent in extended trading. Revenue of the world’s largest technology services company fell 4.6 percent to $18.68 billion in the first quarter, but beat analysts’ average estimate of $18.29 billion. It was the 16th straight quarter of revenue decline for IBM.

Yep, 16 consecutive quarters of revenue decline.

Seems like a trend. What is clear is that the company will continue to promote products and services which have yet to have a significant impact on IBM revenues. What if IBM has asked its “cognitive” system Watson what to do? What if IBM is implementing IBM Watson’s ideas? What if IBM Watson does not work? Will IBM marketers will respond with more partnerships and cook books.

Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2016

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under IBM Watson, News

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.