So the 2H mandate is Cost control above all else. Green dollars are the focus, but even blue dollars are under scrutiny. In Data and AI and Automation, new GM - Dinesh, and now a new VP of PM - Tarun from systems. The old VP of PM, Gilfix was from all accounts forced out as Cloud Pak is not the massive success expected. I guess he did not know to grab a chair when the music stopped.
The cloud pak concept was the brain wave (fa-t?) of Dinesh and Rob Thomas, bringing all of the IBM software to a containerized platform, where a customer could buy CP for Automation, CP for Security, CP for Data, and others. 3 years into this adventure and execs appear to have discovered, most customers want nothing to do with it. Unless you are a top 200 client - why would you want to tie yourself to a single vendor? Clients want choice, the only thing cloud in Cloud Pak is the name!
Cut costs to grow revenue has NEVER worked in the history of business, but, this time will be different, right?
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Although I didn't think packaging a lot was a very smart idea, containerisation is likely a good starting point for IBM Software. Data fabric is not such a good strategy either. Who come up with these strategies?
with a yak like RosaMILKia running things. What do you expect. Guy knows nothing.
@4sms, Do you really understand the reason behind the containerisation of legacy software? That means that IBM admitting modern architecture is winning the market and most importantly IBM itself needs to adapt in the changing market rapidly.
Prior GM of Data and AI was Rob Thomas, likely explains why Hernandez is still at IBM. Story on Gilfix - since he was CPO of Cloud Paks, Tom R., said the failure of CP was his responsibility. I assume as a second level VP, he has 60-90 days?
So the “refactor all the old cr-p into some shape of CloudPak” hasn’t worked? What a surprise. Still stuck in ELAs with that 1k+ person Customer Success org spinning cycles? And the architects of the plan still running the ship? Pass the popcorn.
Please remember IBM can only grow Redhat and it’s offerings only so fast as IBM can’t find the manpower/skills. IBM adds approx 700-1000 Redhat engagements a year. That’s all they can absorb. When you say most folks don’t want Redhat, IBM already knows that. That’s why they bundle them into cloudpaks and ELA’s. They are only marketing the Redhat strategy to the big boys (fortune 1000-2000) and they know if it’s embedded in Pak’s that some of it will bleed over. Also Remember IBM announced their plans when they finalized the Redhat purchase back in July of 2019. They mapped the fortune 1100. Their goal was always adoption just in enterprise accounts. Since then IBM is right on plan building Redhat revenue by approx 1 billion a year. Right now is when it starts to get interesting as the 3 year ELA’s are wrapping on IBM. If the ELA’s get renewed IBM is happy as Redhat bleeds over, and legacy continues on (farm the branch). IBM knows they are very very late to the cloud party and that is why they are exploiting their monopoly (enterprise accounts)
IBM keeps on shuffling the VPs and GMs, just hoping to find one that can actually execute on the IBM strategy (Openshift + CloudPaks). That strategy is dead on arrival, reason why these execs either leave IBM or get moved to other lower meaningless positions.
woah, did I see correctly that Daniel is no longer GM for Data & AI?
I was in the group sometime back when he was a VP (alongside Dinesh) and then lager became GM. Didn’t think he’d get out of the role so quickly.
The cloud paks were huge sales to big accounts and lacked feature parity for many things… so it was really shelfware inside a big ELA. A packaging innovation more than product innovation.
If it fails the whole company is largely 4uúùkd
These Execs at IBM don't last very long as they can't deliver on the strategy which is CloudPaks and Openshift. Unfortunately for IBM, most customers don't want any of these. You wonder when the CEO will finally come to the realization that buying Red Hat and moving all the IBM software to run in containers is a complete mistake.
Data & AI GM Daniel Hernandez was moved to a new mysterious sales role. Tom had a blog about it.
What happened to the previous Data and AI GM? Can’t find a blog post about his move.
Thanks for the confirmation, went to search the blog announcement and found it...
Gilfix out... and another Indian moving up, no surprise there!
@voq+1i2unN4j Yes, Dinesh announced he is 'pursuing opportunities outside IBM' in a blog a couple of weeks ago, the same time the new VP PM was announced.
Forcing everything to run on K8s when 99% of the time the scalability it brings (at the expense of a 100X increase in complexity) is not needed was the d-mbest decision of all time.
Is Gilfix out of IBM? He still shows in BluePages. No doubt that the CloudPaks are struggling. They are too complex, require Openshift which most customers don’t want, not to mention that running everything in containers makes absolutely no sense.