It seems to me from IBM's current slate of TV ads, that IBM has abandoned the whole Hybrid Cloud strategy for AI WatsonX, now that AI is currently the flavor of the month.
How long before IBM gives up completely on the Hybrid Cloud concept like it has with countless other initiatives in the past.
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From a marketing perspective, IBM has an interesting situation. IBM's marketing messages are constantly focused on buzzwords like "AI", "Hybrid Cloud" and "Blockchain". However, the actual products they sell (where the money is) are more mundane things like computer hardware, operating systems, databases and internal "plumbing". This discrepancy has resulted in much confusion among the customer base, and much confusion among the employees.
AK and his successors would have a much easier and more profitable time if they could dispense with the BS in IBM's marketing and communications, and focus more on product and service offerings that actually sell and make money. The current approach of selling pie-in-the-sky stuff like AI and Blockchain isn't working.
Nope he's sticking around until 65
AK is 61 and less than 5 months from 62. Traditional retirement age for an IBM CEO was always 60. GR broke that unwritten policy, was 62 when announced she was stepping down as CEO, and then retired ~9 months later at 63. I'd bet money AK announces early next year and retires end of next year. Maybe sooner.
This is AK slowly restructuring the company and discarding everything Ginni put in place. Ginni never had an original thought / vision as CEO, and AK has to discard all of her trash without embarrassing the board for supporting her. Yep it’s ugly, but he certainly seems to be sticking to his current mainframe focus, and not pursuing “ginni’s next shinny object strategy” . My chief complaint with AK is he is too passive (typical IBM due to inward focusing) and he needs to get this death by a 1000 cuts restructuring behind him. Gerstner took his restructuring medicine 8.9 billion in one big gulp and then doled it out over 24 months. AK would be wise to do the same for any restructuring that remains. Otherwise he’s going to have an Oracle moment at any slight disappointment in earnings or revenue.
The question is not how long before they give up on Hybrid Cloud. The question is how long before it is beyond any doubt that they are grifters, pretenders and wannabes in the AI space.
The world long since passed IBM by in any sort of cloud context. When they first entered this space, they had to define a niche which they could then claim to own. That niche was originally "Hybrid Multi Cloud" which was shortened to "Hybrid Cloud." What they have left in "Hybrid Cloud" -- some weird CloudPak things -- is recycled IBM software that is packaged for "cloud like" deployment but has nothing to do with what we think of as Cloud.
WatsonX is blatantly all about saying "us too." And once again, they seem to be trying to define a niche which they can claim to own. ("We are the AI company for Enterprise customers.") But once again, this will mostly be about an internal echo chamber and circle of deception with all of these execs telling each other how impressive they are even though the underlying technology is always in "catch up" mode and always the most expensive option out there.
5 years.... thats how much time IBM took to abandon IBM Blockchain.
By Hybrid cloud, do you mean Cr-p Paks ?
there should be honesty in our execs saying how much revenue they bring in... Customers dont want a all-you-can-eat (or deploy) software. They need point solutions.
Not Cr-p Paks with a heavy footprint.