{"id":40273,"date":"2020-01-22T10:27:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T10:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=6c2098359b9f676a0421bc9d23e19ced"},"modified":"2020-01-22T10:27:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T10:27:54","slug":"cloud-fuels-ibms-first-quarter-of-growth-since-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/cloud-fuels-ibms-first-quarter-of-growth-since-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud fuels IBM\u2019s first quarter of growth since 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Keumars Afifi-Sabet<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
22 Jan, 2020<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

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IBM has pinned its first quarter of growth for more than a year on the changing fortunes of its cloud division, following five\u00a0 consecutive quarters of declining revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The technology giant grew by 0.1% in the final quarter of 2019 versus the same period the previous year, recording revenues of $21.8 billion (\u00a316.7 billion). This can be attributed to a 21% rise in total cloud revenue, which hit $6.8 billion.<\/p>\n

Full year revenue for 2019 declined by 3.1%,\u00a0however,\u00a0dropping from $79.6 billion (\u00a360.9 billion) in 2018 to $77.1 billion (\u00a359 billion) last year.<\/p>\n

“We ended 2019 on a strong note, returning to overall revenue growth in the quarter, led by accelerated cloud performance,” said IBM chairman, president and CEO Ginni Rometty in a statement.<\/p>\n

“Looking ahead, this positions us for sustained revenue growth in 2020 as we continue to help our clients shift their mission-critical workloads to the hybrid cloud<\/a> and scale their efforts to become a cognitive enterprise.”<\/p>\n

Its open source<\/a>\u00a0software subsidiary Red Hat, for which IBM closed its $34 billion (\u00a326 billion) acquisition last year<\/a>, also grew by 24% year-on-year. The company now forms part of IBM\u2019s cloud and cognitive software division, which in total grew by 8.7% to record revenues of $7.2 billion (\u00a35.5 billion).<\/p>\n

The firm initially submitted a bid to acquire Red Hat in late 2018 in order to enhance its hybrid cloud<\/a> portfolio.<\/p>\n

The move was largely seen as a shock and was branded a potential disaster by Puppet\u2019s vice president of ecosystem engineering Nigel Kersten. However, these latest figures seem to prove the naysayers wrong.<\/p>\n

“In 2019, we continued to invest in the higher-value growth areas of the industry and took bold actions \u2013 including several divestitures and a major acquisition \u2013 to position our business, which are reflected in our strong gross margin performance,” added IBM\u2019s senior vice president and CFO, James Kavanaugh.<\/p>\n

“After completing the acquisition of Red Hat, and with strong free cash flow and disciplined financial management, we significantly deleveraged in the second half.”<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, in terms of IBM\u2019s performance in the fourth quarter of 2019, its global business services division declined by 0.6%. Its global technology services, meanwhile, including infrastructure and cloud services as well as support services, dropped a sharper 4.8%.<\/p>\n

IBM’s systems division, however, sustained an impressive growth of 16%, which translated to revenues of $3 billion (\u00a32.29 billion). The main culprit was IBM Z, which alone saw a staggering 62% growth year-on-year. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keumars Afifi-Sabet<\/p>\n

22 Jan, 2020 <\/p>\n

IBM has pinned its first quarter of growth for more than a year on the changing fortunes of its cloud division, following five\u00a0 consecutive quarters of declining revenue.
\nThe technology g…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40274,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40273\/revisions\/40274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}