IBM gobbled up Softlayer for just $2 billion in 2013, a cloud computing platform. Now thanks to that very smart purchase , IBM is a powerful cloud company , behind just Microsoft and Amazon. At&t just gave IBM billions in a new contract to host its applications. Think about that for a second. Amazon , Microsoft , and IBM were building their clouds for 10s of billions less than at&t spent on buying directv and warnermedia. While the rest of the world was investing in cloud computing , Randy thought it’d be better to spend billions more on dying satellite business after his failed attempt to buy t-mobile. How is this guy still CEO ? WTF?
At&t could have been a dominant player in cloud computing. Probably the biggest missed opportunity of the century by any company.
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Regardless of IBM’s ranking , the point is they are one of a few ranking cloud companies and they did it by only spending a few billion.
But they didn't. Softlayer was more managed bare metal equipment than a cloud (more than 80% of softlayer customers used the bare metal. It was a failing strategy, IBM has abandoned their previous cloud initiatives in favor of a new cloud solution built using the Red Hat stack of tools, they spent $34 billion buying Red Hat to execute on that plan. That not "only a few billion".
Most of IBM's cloud customers are managed internal cloud (e.g. IBM took over running the vmware stack those companies previously had - like IBM is doing for AT&T).
IBM SOLD most of their managed "as a service" products like Connect Cloud (all the tools under collabserv.com) to HCL and HCL is shutting them down because there is not enough revenue to pay the infrastructure maintenance costs.
IBM Might become a player in the cloud space eventually in the back of Red Hat, but they aren't one now and they have invested at least $36 billion (even more if you could the watson health/AI costs)
Regardless of IBM’s ranking , the point is they are one of a few ranking cloud companies and they did it by only spending a few billion. Compare that to at&t who’s spent more like 150 billion acquiring directv and time warner. If they had invested 25 percent of that coin in the cloud , they’d probably be number one. Think of all the CO’s that could have been easily converted to data centers or COLOs. Most COs today are sitting there with tons of empty space. They’re just roach motels now.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-03/google-cloud-worth-double-ibm-s-market-cap-deutsche-bank-says
IBM is a powerful cloud company , behind just Microsoft and Amazon
lolwut?!?
IBM is a very distant also ran in cloud computing. They are behind the Chinese Alibaba cloud and Oracle's cloud offering in terms of revenue. Salesforce.com is arguably a bigger cloud player even though they are more SaaS.
Most of what they are calling "cloud" isn't close to comparable with AWS, Azure or GCP.
They just spent $34 BILLION to buy RedHat in a desperate play to become more relevant as a cloud player, because the SoftLayer and Watson AI cloud initiatives were sinking fast.
I do agree that AT&T missed an substantial opportunity with our data center real estate and owning the backbone of the internet to be a major cloud player and have had a headstart over the new comers, but that would require leaders with some vision.
I remember an external town hall Randall bragging on how T created google pay under a different name and sold it to them. But when asked why didn't T monetize the service and keep it within T, clearly Randall wasn't expecting that and tried to make it seem like its not profitable. He totally changed the tone to something he was so proud of to something which is useless.
there are lots of competent people out there, why did we settle with Randall? is like a marriage from hell, and bad looking 2
Old enough to remember when IBM was almost a monopoly in the computer world. If you had a computer on your desk it was from IBM. They are far from the company they used to be. Competition came in and they slashed and burned through their workforce. Know people (including relatives) who were part of those massive purges. Some of their people I have spoken with say it is brutal over there. Will cut you at the drop of a hat and rehire you in a couple of months. Perhaps they have found their new niche but it took many years.
They also bought redhat which didn’t hurt. Anybody thinks att is a tech company or is gonna beat google or any other video or tech company is delusional.
@11mSHKIy < usual approach of the T manager to the opinions of engineers. "Damn, ok, great idea, but now go ahead and update assets in GPS ..."
@11mSHKIy Damn... if only you were running the company. You are obviously too smart to work here. You should definitely quit and look elsewhere where your opinion matters.