Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I offer a sneak peek into my conversation with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, part of our special series, CEO Outlook 2025. Krishna outlines his vision for a decade-long tech boom driven by AI, customer delight, and strategic partnerships.
Highlights
00:09 — I was speaking with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who said that technology in its many forms, particularly with the booming new opportunities around AI, could be seen not only as the antidote for everything from disruption and global uncertainty, but also the foundation for the innovation that businesses need to be able to harness.
01:08 — He used the terms focus and delight repeatedly, particularly about how IBM’s culture has changed. One of the reasons that IBM got into trouble was that it was so fragmented. It was focused on internal revenue results and revenue goals, rather than externally on customer outcomes. Krishna has done a great job over the last five years in changing that.
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02:36 — I think the other big part about it was, up until a handful of years ago, I don’t think a lot of people would have associated IBM with risk-taking. But Krishna said that’s now a big part of the culture and a big part of the business model. And he said it’s all predicated on the notion of make the pie bigger, expand the pie for everybody.
03:29 — In Q3, IBM said that software now accounts for 45% of the company’s total revenue. Krishna said this is a very intentional move on its part. He had a pretty good line about venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who came up with the notion that “software is going to eat the world.” Krishna said he has believed that since he was in college, and Marc Andreessen was still in diapers.
05:05 — It’s a fascinating outlook. Krishna is a thoughtful, intelligent person, and he oriented a lot of his comments about what customers and clients need this year and how IBM and others are adapting to jump into that. I hope you’ll be able to take a look at the full interview and later today, I’ll have the full-length article in which I try to put into context a lot of the things that Krishna and I talked about.
