Does IBM even do any business in hybrid cloud anymore. That was supposed to be the next big thing after getting Red Hat. I just don't hear anything about Hybrid cloud anymore.
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Sales leadership is decreeing that the sellers push cloud packs and open shift but nobody wants it. I dont know of any clients using this or any who are asking for it.
I'm sure somebody has the raw data, but I would be curious to see the number of actual cloud instances of IBM's "base" products (as opposed to Cloud Paks). DB2 UDB, for example, can be run on a private server (bare metal or virtual), on AWS, or on Azure. The number of licensed instances on private servers can be estimated, but how many instances are actually in use on AWS and Azure? Then compare those numbers to all the other competing relational databases, be they commercial ones like Oracle, all the open-source options, or the "home-grown" stuff from Amazon and Microsoft.
I can't speak for Azure, but I've set up virtual servers on AWS. Amazon makes it real easy to choose their options for your virtual servers (Amazon Linux, Amazon Aurora, etc.) Everything is installed and licensed for you, so deployment is much easier. I'm sure that DB2 has advantages, especially if your app is written to work with it, but deployment on the cloud (even WITH Cloud Paks) has got to be a PITA for the administrator.
I won't even mention configuring something like Websphere and all its products, heh.
I really like @gvo+1mwFGxZh answer. That is basically what "Cloud Pak" is.
Now imagine a world where IBM is a genuine leader. How may independent software vendors are lining up to say "what do I have to do to get my software included in one of your (way too many) Cloud Paks?"
The answer, so far at least, is zero. All of what we bought Red Hat for (for 34 billion dollars) is a play to keep some IBM software still being sold. But there is no one else coming to this dance.
All this talk about "Cloud Paks", "Hybrid Cloud", etc. mask the realities of what's going on. Customers now run a mixture of on-site, physical servers (the private "cloud") and internet-based server images that they rent from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. (the public cloud).
No matter where their servers are, private or public, the customers run a lot of IBM products on these servers...DB2, Websphere, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, etc. This presents a licensing and distribution issue that IBM had to solve. IBM had to issue licenses and find a way to get their stuff running everywhere in an "easily packaged" and "easily distributed" manner.
Enter "Cloud Paks"...an IBM supported way to deploy various bits of "IBM stuff" in different private and public cloud environments. It sounds exotic (like "cloud"), but don't be swayed by the terminology...it's yet another licensing, packaging and distribution scheme.
Does IBM do business in "hybrid cloud"? Of course it does. They'll sell you access to DB2, Websphere and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (among other offerings) no matter where you want to run it, and no matter what you want to run it with. But instead of buying "DB2" and "Websphere", you're now buying "Cloud Paks".
Yes Cloud Paks...
Our execs keep telling us we have thousands of clients using Cloud Paks...Keep em asking on AMAs to show real revenue from these CPs.