IBM 2014 Annual Report Download - page 31

30 Management Discussion
International Business Machines Corporation and Subsidiary Companies
Software Capabilities
WebSphere: delivers capabilities that enable organizations to run
high-performance business applications. With these applications,
clients can integrate and manage business processes across their
organizations with the flexibility and agility they need to respond
to changing conditions. Built on services-oriented architecture
(SOA), and open standards support for cloud, mobile and social
interactions, the WebSphere platform enables enterprises to
extend their reach and optimize interactions with their key con-
stituents. Smarter Commerce software helps companies better
manage and improve each step of their value chain and capitalize
on opportunities for profitable growth, efficiency and increased
customer loyalty.
Information Management: enables clients to integrate, manage
and analyze enormous amounts of data from a large variety of
sources in order to gain competitive advantage and improve their
business outcomes. With this approach, clients can extract real
value out of their data and use it to make better business decisions.
IBM’s middleware and integrated solutions include advanced
database management, information integration, data governance,
enterprise content management, data warehousing, business ana-
lytics and intelligence, predictive analytics and big data analytics.
Watson Solutions: the first commercially available cognitive com-
puting platform that has the ability to interact in natural language,
processing vast amounts of big data, and learning from its interac-
tions with people and computers. As an advisor, Watson is able
to sift through and understand large amounts of data delivering
insights with unprecedented speeds and accuracy.
Tivoli: helps clients optimize the value they get from their infrastruc-
tures and technology assets through greater visibility, control and
automation across their end-to-end business operations. These
asset management solutions foster integrated service delivery
for cloud and datacenter management, enterprise endpoint and
mobile device management, asset and facilities management, and
storage management. Tivoli includes security systems software
that provides clients with a single security intelligence platform
that enables them to better secure all aspects of their enterprise
and prevent security breaches.
Workforce Solutions: enables businesses to connect people
and processes for more effective communication and increased
productivity through collaboration, messaging and social network-
ing software. By remaining at the forefront of collaboration tools,
IBM’s social business offerings help organizations reap real ben-
efits associated with social networking, as well as create a more
efficient and effective workforce.
Rational: supports software development for both IT and com-
plex embedded system solutions, with a portfolio of products and
solutions supporting DevOps and Smarter Product Development,
transforming the way lines of business, development and opera-
tions work together to deliver innovation via software.
Mobile: spans middleware and offers customers true end-to-end
mobile solutions across platform and application development,
mobile security, and mobile device management. Leveraging pow-
erful analytics and usage data, customers are provided with the
ability to have more compelling interactions with their clients and
workforce, increasing touchpoints and deepening relationships.
The mobile offerings provide the ability to increase workforce pro-
ductivity through enhanced collaboration, improved knowledge
sharing and increased response speed.
In January 2015, the company made several changes designed
to more effectively align its key capabilities and resources to its
strategic imperatives. These changes will enable the company to
respond more quickly to critical client agendas and drive higher
value. Across Software, the company is transitioning its portfolio to
capture growth and continue to drive innovation. The focus will be
centered around analytics, security, and commerce—similar to the
action the company implemented in 2014 with Watson—utilizing its
software assets to improve speed and agility in bringing integrated
solutions to its clients.
Systems and Technology (STG) provides clients with innovative
infrastructure technologies to help meet the new requirements of
data, cloud and engagement—from deploying advanced analytics,
to moving to digital service delivery with the cloud, and securing
mobile transaction processing. Approximately half of Systems and
Technology’s server and storage sales transactions are through
the company’s business partners; with the balance direct to end-
user clients. In addition, Systems and Technology provides leading
semiconductor technology, products and packaging solutions for
IBM’s own advanced technology needs.
Systems and Technology Capabilities
Servers: a range of high-performance systems designed to address
capacity, security, speed and compute power needs for busi-
nesses, organizations and technical computing applications. After
the divestiture of the Systemx industry standard server business,
the portfolio includes System z, a trusted enterprise platform for
integrating data, transactions and insight, and Power Systems, a
system designed from the ground up for big data, optimized for
scale-out cloud and Linux, and delivering open innovation with
OpenPOWER. The company is also a founding member of the
OpenPOWER foundation, a group of industry-leading companies
working together to develop high-performance compute solutions
based on the IBM POWER architecture.
Storage: data storage products and solutions that allow clients
to retain and manage rapidly growing, complex volumes of digital
information. These solutions address critical client requirements
for information retention and archiving, security, compliance and
storage optimization including data deduplication, availability and
virtualization. The portfolio consists of a broad range of software
defined storage solutions, disk and tape storage systems and
Flash storage and solutions.