IBMs Cloud, like most of IBMs products, is pieced together and disjointed. Oracle is already trying to rewrite what they rolled out, so anyone who jumps onboard now will likely be on an obsolete platform going forward. In addition, IBM and Oracles existing products were not designed for Cloud and are unwieldy, overweight and overpriced. So choosing to go with other competitors and/or migrating systems away from IBM and Oracle makes a lot of sense.
In the past, playing catch-up was just a matter of buying some mindshare/marketshare and getting back into the game. Both IBM and Oracle have been doing that for a while. However, this time around, nobody is going to be able to just buy out Amazon, Microsoft or Google. IBM and Oracle are definitely in a tough spot going forward. They'll likely both be able to survive, but they are going to miss out on the growth that their competitors are going to be experiencing.
Excellent analysis by @O3bgtpB-5zuz, who I hope will not mind this being bumped into a thread.