International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) is making the right kind of investments to position itself to win across key growth drivers including cloud, mobile, analytics and big data. All these mega-themes are expected to evolve in the next 3-5 years.
IBM does not view cloud as cannibalistic to its software business, but rather an enabler of new IT delivery methods and business models (i.e. selling traditional middleware as a set of services without owning your own data center).
New York-based IBM recently introduced new cloud and mobile-enabled social-business software and service capabilities which will allow line of business executives to move their business processes quickly into the cloud to drive better decision making and increase productivity.
IBM's SmartCloud Connections includes new features, such as mobile file sync and share; new community features such as social bridging; and bringing traditional office productivity tools into the social realm.
IBM is also a key contributor of the Openstack initiative which it expects to act as a tide that raises all boats (opening significant new opportunities to sell its hardware, software and services into new applications) and is fully supporting its development through direct investment as an active contributor.
IBM acquired SoftLayer to accelerate its public cloud advancement, particularly in enterprise-centric, high SLA applications. Dallas-based SoftLayer has 21,000 customers and 13 data centers in the US, Asia, and Europe.
IBM's SmartCloud is targeted more at large enterprises while SoftLayer focuses on small and medium businesses (SMB). Depending on the workload and SLA requirements, SoftLayer could allow IBM to sell more easily to SMB, which should be an early adopter of public cloud.
IBM is offering a new cloud-based hybrid server deployment option for companies that allow them to bridge on-premises and cloud with a single administration console while also accelerating their transition from weeks! and months into hours with no hardware investment.
Today more than 9,000 cloud clients, and 75 percent of the Fortune 100 are transforming their business operations with IBM enterprise social software, and the momentum continues to grow.
Meanwhile, IBM is well positioned for big data. IBM has invested $15 billion in M&A to position itself for the Big Data opportunity and believes it has built the industry's leading big Data / Cloud platform, bar none.
IBM is combining its Big Data platform and analytics tools into Apps that for specific customer applications. For example, in the airline industry, IBM is harnessing customer insight by ingesting real time twitter and other contextual data to enhance customer loyalty (e.g. personalized call / emails to Elite members).
"This 'customer sentiment' data is one of the most sought after items in Big Data and IBM believes its capabilities in this area are unique," Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore wrote in a note to clients.
In addition, the proliferation of mobile devices is taxing existing IT systems as these devices access internal data through private and less secure public clouds which makes security an increasingly vital area.
IBM bolstered the security aspect of cloud offering with its recent acquisition of Trusteer, which specializes in secure consumer–to-business transactions in financials. IBM is forming a cybersecurity software lab in Israel that will bring more than 200 Trusteer and IBM researchers and developers together to focus on mobile and application security, advanced threat protection, malware, counter-fraud, and financial crimes.
IBM should be well positioned for the IT as a service (ITaaS) era. The company's bet on Big Data, increasing investment in cloud, and traditional strength in managing complexity may result in a better competitive position than in the client-server era.
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