{"id":41438,"date":"2020-10-14T08:33:08","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T08:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=c2fc1e8544d3f19b409a351dc2dd3be9"},"modified":"2020-10-14T08:33:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T08:33:08","slug":"why-ibm-is-splitting-its-business-in-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/why-ibm-is-splitting-its-business-in-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Why IBM is splitting its business in two"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Jane McCallion<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
14 Oct, 2020<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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

\n

\u200b<\/span>Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one before: A giant of the tech industry with a history stretching back many decades and a footprint in most large organisations \u2013 and many smaller ones \u2013 finds itself struggling against the tide of digital transformation and the shift to cloud.<\/p>\n

Despite its best efforts to reform its business over a number of years, IBM has taken the decision to split its\u00a0company in two<\/a> in the hope that, as separate entities, they can pursue more successful growth strategies than they could under one umbrella \u2013 but they will maintain close ties.<\/p>\n

To be fair to IBM, the split it announced yesterday<\/a>, which will see its managed infrastructure services unit spun off into a separate entity,\u00a0is less fundamental than that of HP in 2015<\/a>, which saw the creation of Hewlett Packard Enterprise<\/a> and\u2026 HP. Nevertheless, it is meaningful.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear from the announcement\u00a0that the centenarian company does very much want to capitalise on its strengths in AI<\/a> and cloud<\/a>, with Red Hat taking centre stage as an example of its excellence in the latter and talk of being \u201claser-focused on the $1 trillion hybrid cloud opportunity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Reading between the lines, however, it\u2019s also clear that IBM has no intention of letting go of its core infrastructure heritage, either. While the paragraph on its Systems business is coated in a sweet layer of hybrid cloud, if you were\u00a0to bite down you would find there\u2019s a\u00a0traditional hardware business still sitting at the core.<\/p>\n

And why not? One of IBMs strengths is its enterprise hardware products and,\u00a0when it comes to things like mainframe<\/a>, it has very few competitors. While it may not be quite as sexy to talk about as more modern technologies, it\u2019s still fundamental to many large organisations in lucrative areas like financial services.<\/p>\n

What it won\u2019t be doing any more, however, is managing that hardware. This new company\u00a0will be\u00a0fundamentally IBM\u2019s managed infrastructure services business, packing up its belongings and striking out on its own. It\u00a0makes sense for this business unit to become independent, too \u2013 multi-cloud and hybrid cloud are all about flexibility and choice\u00a0and, while it\u2019s promised the company will maintain \u201ca strong strategic partnership with IBM\u201d, it will be able to work more freely across all cloud vendors.<\/p>\n

The split is expected to be complete by the end of next year, which gives the branding teams and consultants 12 months to come up with an\u00a0inspiring name for the new venture. Infrastructure Business Management Corporation, perhaps? <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane McCallion<\/p>\n

14 Oct, 2020 <\/p>\n

\u200bStop me if you\u2019ve heard this one before: A giant of the tech industry with a history stretching back many decades and a footprint in most large organisations \u2013 and many smaller ones \u2013 finds i…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":415,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41438","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\/415"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41439,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41438\/revisions\/41439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}