IBM 2014 Annual Report Download - page 28

27
Management Discussion
International Business Machines Corporation and Subsidiary Companies
Cloud: reinventing IT
Cloud is at the heart of the digital revolution. No enterprise is
untouched by this revolution and the shifts are occurring rapidly.
Enterprises are benefitting from cloud by using it to transform
their IT and business processes into digital services. Much has
been written about how cloud enables the sharing of infrastruc-
ture—this is true. However the real promise of cloud is much more
profound. By forcing greater levels of standards up and down the
technology value chain, new products and services, and even
entire business models, are able to be created in weeks rather
than months or years.
Cloud is a catalyst for innovation. IBM has invested more than
$8 billion to acquire 18 companies related to cloud, and is investing
more than $1 billion to expand its global footprint to 40 datacen-
ters worldwide. IBM now has more than 120 software-as-a-service
(SaaS) offerings, and IBM Cloud supports 24 of the top 25 Fortune
500 companies, driving $7 billion of revenue for cloud-based solu-
tions in 2014.
• SoftLayer is the foundation for IBM’s expansive infrastruc-
ture-as-a-service portfolio. It offers bare metal, private cloud
and virtual server instances, which means it can cover many
different workloads with unprecedented performance. Soft-
Layer offers a built-in private network which can handle huge
capacity and gives users the ability to isolate public/private
networks with controls for access and location of data.
• Bluemix is IBM’s platform-as-a-service, built on the open
standards foundation of Cloud Foundry and powered by
SoftLayer’s cloud infrastructure. SoftLayer offers cloud-
based services, APIs and leading third-party services to
developers in an integrated platform. Bluemix also allows
them to mix and match different tools to build apps in
the cloud for mobile, Web, big data and analytics—to name
just a few.
• IBM Cloud marketplace brings together the company’s vast
portfolio of cloud capabilities, delivering a self-service, digital
experience for developers, IT and business leaders. Visitors
have access to a growing portfolio of cloud capabilities from
IBM and qualified third-party vendors. Open integration
including pre-built APIs and hybrid options enable enterprise
integration and composable business models.
The IBM Cloud is the most powerful choice for enterprise-grade
environments—bringing unparalleled levels of security, perfor-
mance and scalability. As a result, in 2014, IBM formed a strategic
alliance with SAP to run its business applications on IBM’s cloud.
Engagement: re-imagining work
Social, mobile and unprecedented access to data are changing
how individuals and institutions work together. A new class of
customer has emerged: one who is empowered with knowledge,
enriched by networks and expects value in return for sharing infor-
mation. Enterprises must create a systematic approach to engage
these newly empowered customers through more personalized
interactions. IBM calls these new forms of interactions “engage-
ment”—and includes social collaboration and mobile—both
underpinned by high levels of security.
In 2014, the mobile, social and security portfolio generated
double-digit growth with mobile revenue more than tripling versus
2013, security revenue up 19percent and social business growing
3percent. In addition, IBM has acquired 23 companies related to
mobile, social and security.
On the mobile front, IBM and Apple formed an historic part-
nership to transform enterprise mobility as we know it today.
Together, IBM and Apple are joining forces to bring the ease-of-use
of personal apps to the enterprise environment. Together, the two
companies are bringing the first wave of industry-specific apps to
the market—targeting the needs of individual workers and helping
to solve long-standing industry challenges.
In addition, MobileFirst remains IBM’s unified approach to help
clients and partners deliver best-in-class mobile solutions, take
advantage of more commercial opportunities and provide a supe-
rior customer experience.
On the social collaboration front, in 2014, IDC named IBM the
worldwide market share leader in Enterprise Social Software for
the fifth consecutive year.
(1)
In addition, IBM Verse, powered by IBM
analytics and advanced search, is a new cloud-based messag-
ing and social collaboration solution to manage the workday. It
provides a seamless user experience across social networking,
meetings, chat, documents, mail, and an array of intelligent, secu-
rity-rich and engaging social apps on mobile devices or the Web.
Security is a boardroom-level issue. It is also a key enabler
for the continued growth of data, cloud and engagement. Enter-
prises—and their clients—demand that these activities be secure
as a requirement for participation.
The magnitude, sophistication and complexity of today’s secu-
rity threats are growing. With the proliferation of data on mobile
devices, in social media and in the cloud, breaches are more vis-
ible and occur on a heightened scale. IBM Security solutions use
sophisticated analytics to identify and thwart attacks in real time—
protecting our clients’ information, processes and people.
IBM Security brings to our clients high-end consulting,
advanced fraud and threat protection, identity and access man-
agement, application and data security, mobile and cloud security,
network and end-point protection with services for cloud.
(1)
IDC Worldwide Enterprise Social Networks 2014–2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor
Shares, July 23, 2014.