In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss Arvind Krishna’s vision for transforming IBM into a growth-focused company.
Highlights
00:15 — IBM has been among the slowest-growing of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies. I wonder if that’s going to start to change. I was at an event last week with Krishna and other industry analysts. One of the things he said was that last year, IBM hired 30,000 people, so “We’re bringing in a lot of new talent.” It’s all part of changing the mindset and the culture inside the company.
01:10 — He said, “I think about 80% of our people are ready to do this.” He said it’s ready to go. He said there’s another 20% that aren’t. This is a big step, but it’s part of a series of steps that Krishna has made here, and I think there are a lot of them. He’s overhauled the product line. He’s heavily emphasized things it’s doing with partnerships and on the products.
02:22 — One of the examples Krishna gave was very effective. He said if the company is not doing well, it’s easy for a risk-averse attitude and mindset to seep in. In a risk-averse place, they’ll overestimate how long the project will take. They’ll overestimate how much budget they’ll need, and they will underpromise on what sort of a product or service can be delivered in that time.
03:05 — He said, you get to that point and the competition is just too good; customers are too demanding and they will not settle for that. Finally, the position of the company: Krishna said, “Hey, four or five years ago, we were talking about AI and hybrid cloud.” He said, “Maybe we were a little early on those.” He said, “But that’s where the mainstream is now.”
04:25 — I refelt that Krishna has points of view about people and the other things we talked about here: the power of the consulting business coming back, their position around AI, data security, and hybrid cloud. Anyway, we’ll see tomorrow what IBM’s Q3 numbers are. I think they’re going to look pretty good.
