4
IBM
| Power Score: 69.00 | Momentum Score: 22.0 (T-8) | HQ: Armonk, NY | CEO: Arvind Krishna |
Economics
Valuation: $18.72 billion (+57% YoY)
Amt. Raised: n/a
Politics
Lobbying Spend: $4.62 million
Industry Orgs: ITI, SNIA, CSA
People
Headcount:
523,061 (+2% YoY)
Engineering Headcount: 103,046 (+5% YoY)
Big Tech Experience: 0.6%
Open Roles: 25,080
Innovation
R&D Spending: $6.3 billion (+6% YoY)
Patents Applied For: 70,745
Patents Owned: 148,797
Acquisitions: Bluetab (July 2021), BoxBoat (July 2021), Catalogic ECX (May 2021)
On Power
When companies have new data that needs storing, the default companies to turn to are now Amazon, Microsoft and Google. A lot of people think it
should have been IBM
. After years of infighting, juggling competing priorities and catering to unique customer demands that didn't scale, IBM has been relegated to a smaller but still powerful position in the cloud storage space. After more or less abandoning its hopes of becoming a leading public cloud provider, IBM has
shifted its messaging
and products toward the hybrid cloud, betting that customers will still want to handle sensitive and regulation-bound workloads on-prem while offloading dozens of other use cases to the public cloud. That shifting message has taken the same form as many other companies competing in the space: with a promise to
Kondo
-fy multiple interfaces so that
storage management becomes more accessible
. At the core, Big Blue is still Big Blue, meaning it's buoyed by its staying power in the tech industry as opposed to organic growth. The company
collects IP
like trading cards, which ultimately provides some safety net as CEO Arvind Krishna has
placed his focus
on recovering from the last decade-plus of starts and stops in the cloud market.
On Disruption
IBM's professional services group has fared well despite the company's losing cloud bid — in its most recent quarter , the division was up 11.6% to $4.4 billion in revenue, while its cloud software division grew just 3%. The company has been moving away from its hardware backbone when it comes to storage, putting more emphasis on its public cloud relationships, as evidenced by its Azure expansion last month and the company's previous AWS agreement. What could be on tap next for Big Blue is a similar partnership with Google. But more broadly, as the company pivots toward hybrid cloud and enterprises continue to need bespoke advice for their specific industry and company dynamics, it's possible that IBM will be known more for its consulting and implementation and less for its software.
Tea Leaves
IBM's professional services group has fared well despite the company's losing cloud bid — in its most recent quarter , the division was up 11.6% to $4.4 billion in revenue, while its cloud software division grew just 3%. The company has been moving away from its hardware backbone when it comes to storage, putting more emphasis on its public cloud relationships, as evidenced by its Azure expansion last month and the company's previous AWS agreement. What could be on tap next for Big Blue is a similar partnership with Google. But more broadly, as the company pivots toward hybrid cloud and enterprises continue to need bespoke advice for their specific industry and company dynamics, it's possible that IBM will be known more for its consulting and implementation and less for its software.
They Said It
" I BM is all-in on hybrid cloud and AI, determining years ago that our clients' only feasible path to rapid digital transformation is through a hybrid cloud strategy. Public cloud is an integral piece of that strategy." — IBM statement in response to Protocol's coverage of its cloud division
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