I recently had the privilege to sit through a two-day session with IBM’s senior executive team in services. I’m someone who tries not to drink the Kool-Aid. Even so, I came away truly impressed by the work that IBM has done to position itself to be relevant and a major player in the future of IT infrastructure.
I’ve written frequently in this blog about the impending crisis that all asset-heavy players face as first RIM and then cloud attack their revenue base. This unrelenting onslaught is already moving share from the incumbents such as IBM to challengers such as HCL and TCS and will only be exacerbated as cloud takes stronger hold.
I came away with from the two days with IBM realizing Big Blue’s profound understanding of this phenomenon and its positioning of offers that allows them to leapfrog the RIM model and play a decisive and significant role in cloud.
Taken as a whole, IBM’s public cloud software and private cloud and automation strategies gives it the capability to move clients smoothly into the future. And it assures capturing the run-off from IBM’s traditional business while at the same time expanding market share. This is truly a formidable set of capabilities that, if executed well, will ensure IBM is a major — if not dominant — player in the future of IT infrastructure.
Everything will come down to execution, and history has seldom been kind to incumbents in the face of major technology and business model disruption. But based on the two days I spent with IBM, I believe that IBM has more than a fighting chance to successfully make this transition.
Photo credit: Irish Typepad
