IBM Insights

Please see below selected recent external intelligence about IBM.

 

June 2016

 

 

• IBM and Deloitte Financial Crime Strategy and Response Network teamed up on mitigating financial crime in Asia. Deloitte will use the IBM Counter Fraud Management (CFM) platform to deliver advanced financial crime data analytics services across the region. IBM CFM is an integrated set of solutions that are designed to address all phases of enterprise financial crime measures. A modular set of analytics, intelligence, and visual technologies will expand and reinforce the fight against financial crime.

 

 

 

May 2016

 

 

• Scientists at IBM Research demonstrated reliably storing 3 bits of data per cell, using a relatively new technology known as phase-change memory (PCM). The current memory landscape spans from venerable DRAM to hard disk drives to ubiquitous flash, but in the last few years, PCM has attracted the industry's attention as a potential "universal" memory technology, based on its combination of read/write speed, endurance, non-volatility and density. This research breakthrough provides fast and easy storage to capture the exponential growth of data from mobile devices and the Internet of Things.

 

 

• IBM announced it had completed the acquisition of Bluewolf , one of Salesforce’s top partners and a globally recognised leader in cloud consulting and implementation services, to join IBM Interactive Experience (IBM iX). Financial details were not disclosed. Together, Bluewolf and IBM iX will form a deeper consulting capability for clients adopting Salesforce solutions to transform relationships with their customers. IBM iX’s deep proficiency in analytics, experience design and industry consulting leadership will combine with one of the world’s leading Salesforce consulting practices to deliver differentiated, consumer-grade experiences via the cloud.

   

   

• Sesame Workshop, the not-for-profit org that produces “Sesame Street,” and IBM entered into a partnership to develop new personalised educational products and platforms for preschool-age kids - with the goal of transforming the ways children learn and teachers teach. Under the three-year agreement, Sesame Workshop and Big Blue will design interactive educational experiences for use in homes and schools that adapt to the learning preferences and aptitude levels of individual preschoolers. For now, the organisations are treating the project as an R&D investment. IBM and Sesame Street will deploy engineers, educators and researchers to work side-by-side in classrooms and in their own labs and learning facilities. Later this year, they plan to test and share prototypes with leading teachers, academics, researchers, technologists, gamers, performers and media execs to solicit feedback and brainstorm ways in which cognitive computing can best help preschoolers learn.

 

 

 

April 2016

 

 

• IBM and SAP are expanding their cloud partnership in an effort to increase customer value through cognitive extensions, enhanced customer and user experiences and industry-specific functionality. This new effort, dubbed a "digital transformation partnership," will include multiple elements, from cloud solutions, to cognitive capabilities and more. The companies said they will aim to scale the IBM cloud platform to meet growing demand. This effort will pull from IBM's partnership with SAP for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud services. The two also plan to expand current SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud offerings to include application maintenance and support services.

 

 

 

March 2016

 

 

• IBM acquired Salesforce consulting firm Bluewolf Consulting LLC. Terms of the deal were not officially disclosed but the price is reported by to be around $200 million. Founded in 2000 and providing services to Salesforce since 2002, Bluewolf claims that their technology-driven method combines their team’s years of experience with cloud solutions that continually connect their clients with their customers. While specialising in Salesforce, the company does provide support for other cloud solutions, and claims to have worked with over 9,500 clients from its offices in several countries. Post acquisition Bluewolf will join IBM Interactive Experience, Big Blue’s global services arm that provides support to customers who use platforms including Salesforce, SAP and others.

 

 

• IBM claimed the number one ‘thought leadership’ spot on the White Space Thought Leadership rankings. Companies were ranked on differentiation, appeal, resilience and prompting action, with IBM edging out Deloitte with the highest average total across the four categories. The tech giant beat the second-placed professional services firm on resilience and prompting action, yet Deloitte scored better than IBM on both differentiation and appeal. The bi-annual report, compiled by Source Global Research, ranked 24 global consulting firms, with IBM leapfrogging Deloitte to claim the title for the second half of 2015. The Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini Consulting and Bain made up the rest of the top five thought leaders in the global consulting industry.

 

 

• IBM acquired Optevia to strengthen position in the public sector CRM market. IBM claims the acquisition of Optevia will improve its position as a SaaS and digital consultant in the lucrative market. Optevia has a track record of working with UK Emergency Services, Central Government, Local Government and Social Enterprises, including the Ministry of Justice’s National Taxing Team’s rollout of Dynamics CRM. In Gartner’s CRM Forecast Overview, published last summer, the global CRM market was valued in the region of $23bn, with around 50% of the market accounted for by the top 5 services providers. SaaS continued to demonstrate strong demand, with almost 47% of the revenue attributed to the service. According to Gartner, Salesforce.com is the market leader, with IBM claiming 4% of the CRM segment. While IBM already has an established position in the public sector market, the company has 98 current offerings on G-Cloud, the acquisition of Optevia signals its intentions of increasing its share of the public sector CRM segment.

 

 

• In the US, KPMG signed an agreement with IBM to apply IBM’s Watson cognitive computing technology to its audit offerings. IBM said, “Auditing and similar knowledge services are increasingly challenged with tackling immense volumes of unstructured data. Cognitive technologies such as Watson can transform how this data is understood and how critical decisions are made. By applying Watson, KPMG is taking a forward-looking approach to extending its expertise, helping professionals and clients gain new insights from critical enterprise information.”

 

 

• INSEAD examined what has happened since IBM launched its 'Smarter Planet Strategy', back in 2008, as an initiative to help firms achieve their economic, operational and environmental sustainability objectives by leveraging technology innovation and business analytics. By tapping into and interconnecting with new (often global) production systems and workforces, the strategy helps companies gain deep industry insight, giving them the competitive advantage of being able to identify opportunities not previously visible, and the capability to transform the way things are done. Along with business potential, this increased knowledge opens the way for organisations to link sustainability to the purpose of their business, to integrate it into their strategy and, in the process, help change the world.

 

 

 

February 2016

 

 

• IBM bought data company Truven Health Analytics Inc. for $2.6bn, in a bid to expand its already considerable presence in the healthcare industry. The medical data will be used to improve IBM's Watson artificial intelligence system.

 

 

• IBM said its new "Open for data" slogan encompasses a slew of new cloud data services and analytics offerings designed to make it easy for enterprises to quickly get started with big data in the cloud, even if their workloads require secure on-premises implementations.

 

 

 

January 2016

 

• IBM was granted the most US patents for the 23rd year in a row in 2015, according to a ranking by patent analysis firm IFI Claims Patents Services. There were 298,407 utility patents granted in 2015, down slightly from 2014. IBM gained 7,355 patents last year. Utility patents cover function rather than design.

 

 

 

December 2015

 

 

• IBM announced the launch of a new global headquarters for its Watson IoT business unit in Munich in what the company says is its largest commitment to Europe in more than twenty years. The new facility, which will feature more than 1,000 employees on the research and customer-facing sides, will be the centrepiece of a group of eight global regional customer centres that suggest IBM plans to win major IoT business by deemphasising its American roots. IBM’s client experience centres will be based in Beijing, Boeblingen (Germany), Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo as well as Massachusetts, North Carolina and Texas in the U.S. Placing the headquarters in Germany is a deeply symbolic move, says analyst Frank Gillett of Forrester Research. With European companies, especially major ones in Germany, the continent’s largest economy, concerned about American tech companies exporting the value from the rise of Internet-connected sensors in their businesses, IBM’s base in Munich will be intended to demonstrate that the company can be trusted, the analyst says.

 

 

• IBM announced it had completed its acquisition of Cleversafe, Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of object-based storage software and appliances. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will strengthen IBM's leadership positions in storage and hybrid cloud and support clients' drive to next generation mobile, social and analytics applications. Founded in 2004, Cleversafe is a privately held company based in Chicago and a recognised market leader with more than 350 patents in object-based, on-premise storage solutions that enable clients to scale to exabytes of storage, or billions of gigabytes. Clients across multiple industries use the company's solutions for large-scale content repository, backup, archive, collaboration and storage as a service.

 

 

 

November 2015

 

 

• In IBM’s Design-Centred Strategy to Set Free the Squares, The New York Times argued that IBM, like many established companies, is finally embracing digital advancements instead fighting against them. To build empathy with users, IBM is attempting to empower employees to observe behaviour and draw conclusions about what people want and need. Organisations that ‘get’ design use emotional language (words that concern desires, aspirations, engagement, and experience) to describe products and users. At IBM, they talk about ‘iteration cycles’, ‘lateral thinking’ and ‘user journeys’ within teams of professional designers and managers.

 

 

 

October 2015

 

 

• IBM confirmed the purchase of The Weather Company, which includes the Weather Channel and its related technology platforms and sensors, to enhance its cloud ecosystem. Terms of the deal, including the price, were not disclosed, but IBM said the purchase adds to the $3 billion investment IBM committed earlier this year to build out products and services in the Internet of Things.

 

 

• Swiss Re and IBM announced that they are developing a range of underwriting solutions that rely on IBM Watson's cognitive computing technologies. One of the first applications will be in Swiss Re's Life & Health Reinsurance business unit. To compete successfully and profitably, insurers must identify and act on emerging trends. In addition, insurers need the ability to spot operational issues or opportunities in real time and respond proactively. Cognitive technologies, coupled with human experience and insights, can enhance and help inform timely decision making. By applying Watson’s capabilities, the new platform could allow Swiss Re professionals to make better informed decisions and more accurately price risk.

 

 

• IBM posted a bigger-than-expected drop in revenue and cut its full-year profit forecast, as a stronger US dollar accentuated weakness in demand from China and emerging markets. It was the 14th quarter in a row that IBM has posted a reduction in revenue, as the world's largest technology services company gets rid of low-margin businesses, but has so far failed to make up the shortfall with newer initiatives in the more lucrative area of cloud computing.

 

 

• IBM launched a new consulting initiative, Cognitive Business Solutions, drawing in 2000 consultants globally, who specialise in machine learning, advanced analytics and data science & change management. IBM’s John Kelly commented, "Though cognitive computing includes some elements of the academic discipline of artificial intelligence, it's a broader idea. Rather than producing machines that think for people, cognitive computing is all about augmenting human intelligence."

 

 

• IBM and AT&T are teaming up to provide a mobile cloud security solution that is designed to allow users "to be productive without compromising security and the mobile user experience". AT&T and IBM's mobile cloud security solution is designed to provide enterprise users with "simple tools" that can be deployed to "properly enable" a growing mobile workforce while ensuring it remains secure from threats posed by hackers and cyber criminals.

 

 

 

September 2015

 

 

• Harriet Green, who quit as chief executive of Thomas Cook last November, has been appointed as head of two new business units at IBM. Ms Green has as vice-president and general manager of two new divisions related to the Internet of Things (IoT) and education. The launch of the two divisions follows 13 consecutive quarters of falling revenues at IBM, as the company hives off lower margin hardware businesses to focus on faster growing ventures, including in cloud computing and data analysis. IBM said its new education unit was expected to launch this year, while Ms Green would lead a staff of 2,000 at its IoT arm, which was created in March.

 

 

• IBM announced that it will invest $3 billion and hire 2,000 workers to staff its new Internet of Things (IoT) Business Unit. This reinforces the computing powerhouse’s dedication to powering connectivity and playing a major role in the development of mainstream IoT applications. According to a recent IoT Strategies Service report by Strategy Analytics, to date, IBM has invested more than $10 billion to spearhead its interrelated IoT, analytics and cloud initiatives. The SA report provides a detailed overview of IBM’s multi-pronged approach to advancing its IoT initiatives. There are four foundational elements to the strategy: devices and networks, platforms, applications and solutions, and industry-specific transformations.

 

 

 

August 2015

 

 

• IBM will begin to use its Watson artificial intelligence system to improve patient care for a growing number of people, especially those with chronic diseases. Teaming up with CVS - which has more than 7,800 pharmacies and more than clinics - will give IBM a chance to unleash its Watson Health platform on the massive population of patients served by the pharmacy giant. The resulting analytics, IBM suggests, could help patients manage chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension and help predict which patients are getting sicker - sometimes before they even know it.

 

 

 

July 2015

 

 

• IBM announced on release of a cloud-based data warehouse service. The company says it will offer businesses a way to reach and analyse their data without having to go through many steps, as was the case earlier. “You used to have to go through a number of steps to get to the data. That is changing. People now want immediate access to the data,” said Derek Schoettle, IBM general manager for cloud data services. The IBM DashDB Enterprise MPP (massive parallel processing) is available on the IBM Bluemix portal of platform services and offers a fully managed data warehouse.

 

 

• IBM’s attempted turnround was battered by stronger headwinds during the second quarter as the software division that produces nearly half its profits saw profit margins slip and company-wide revenues fall for the 13th quarter in a row. Shares fell more than 5% per to $164.50 in after-market trading as it also indicated that earnings per share were likely to be in the lower part of its guidance range for the year. However, it predicted that free cash flow would rise “modestly” compared to its previous prediction of no growth in 2015. Despite the latest signs of IBM’s struggles with its drawn out turnround launched by chief executive Ginni Rometty, the group’s chief financial officer said the results highlighted an investment in growth markets that had yet to pay off and were “a reflection of the transformation of our business as we move to where we see long-term value in IT”.

 

 

• IBM showed off prototype computer chips with features just seven nanometres apart (the width of a few strands of DNA), a world first. Though smaller single transistors have been made, the semiconductor industry is fast approaching the physical-size limit beyond which smaller transistors will not lead to faster chips. The 7nm “node” is perhaps the last at which it is economical to try.

 

 

 

June 2015

 

 

• The UK’s Minister for Universities and Science recently announced a partnership with IBM valued at £313m to boost big data and cognitive computing research in the UK. IBM’s partnership with the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) will result in technology transfer of advanced computing and big data analytics in new and improved products, services and manufacturing processes. Researchers, doctors, engineers, economists and retailers will be able to use big data to make quicker and cheaper discoveries, as well as better decisions. As part of a five year investment, STFC will tap into IBM innovations including Watson and Power Systems in addition to technologies from the OpenPOWER Foundation.

 

 

 

May 2015

 

 

• IBM plans to deploy its second data centre in India to serve various sectors, including financial services and the government. IBM currently has a data centre in Mumbai. No details have yet been released relating to the amount of the investment in the project or the date for the new data centre launch.

 

 

• Deloitte and IBM announced the latest step in their longstanding strategic alliance, creating a transformative series of risk management and regulatory compliance solutions. Deloitte and IBM are developing solutions for financial services firms to more efficiently address their immediate compliance and conduct requirements. One of these is a regulatory compliance and control solution, which combines Deloitte's regulatory intelligence with advanced technology from IBM. It will leverage IBM Analytics and cloud capabilities, with plans to incorporate Watson cognitive computing to disaggregate and classify regulations, paragraph by paragraph, helping clients to compare their control framework in direct relation to current and emerging regulatory mandates.

 

 

• The Genome Institute at Washington University is one of 14 big-name cancer centres partnering with IBM to use the computing giant’s Watson artificial intelligence system to compare patients’ genetic data with databases of cancer genes and every scientific paper published about cancer genetics. What takes a team of experts hours or days can be accomplished in minutes.

 

 

• Facebook and IBM are teaming up to help retailers better target advertising on the world’s largest social network. The two companies announced that they’re working together to integrate Facebook’s existing ad targeting technology into IBM’s own line of tools and services for retailers. By combining retail data, such as purchase history or items viewed, with Facebook’s user data, the two companies hope to create more finely personalised marketing campaigns on behalf of their customers.

 

 

• Researchers at IBM have stitched together a prototype circuit that could become the basis of quantum computers a decade hence. The circuit, an assemblage of four supercooled, superconducting devices known as qubits, checks for the critical errors that make quantum chips so difficult to build. The IBM research is set to be described y in a paper published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Alternative processors such as quantum chips are becoming important. Although today’s computer chips continue to pile on transistors at the heady clip predicted by Moore’s Law, their components are so tiny they’re becoming harder and harder to shrink.

 

 

April 2015

 

• The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.30 per common share, payable June 10, 2015 to stockholders of record May 8, 2015. Today’s dividend declaration represents an increase of $0.20, or 18 percent higher than the prior quarterly dividend of $1.10 per common share. This is the 20th year in a row that IBM has increased its quarterly cash dividend, and the 12th year in a row of a double-digit percentage increase.  IBM has doubled its quarterly dividend over the last five years. With the payment of the June 10 dividend, IBM will have paid consecutive quarterly dividends since 1916.

 

• IBM announced that SoftLayer, an IBM Company it has opened a second cloud data center in the Netherlands, located in Almere, just outside of Amsterdam. The new facility helps meet the rapid growth of IBM Cloud by doubling its SoftLayer capacity in the region, and provides even more options in the country and region for redundant data storage and geographically isolated services, ideal for creating secure and comprehensive backup and recovery strategies.

 

• IBM created a research group to test Numenta, a brain-like artificial intelligence (AI) software. The IBM team will work on algorithms created by Numenta, whose founder spent time creating a theory to explain the inner workings of the human brain, and then applied the concepts to a software blueprint. His algorithms operate in a network, aimed at recreating the behaviour of repeating circuits of about 100 neurons in the brain. IBM’s 100-person research team has already started using the algorithms to analyse satellite imagery of crops and spot malfunctioning field machinery.

 

• IBM is taking its Watson artificial-intelligence technology into health care in a big way with industry partners, a pair of acquisitions and an ambitious agenda.The initial three industry partners are Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. On Monday afternoon, after the close of stock trading, The IBM plan, put simply, is that its Watson technology will be a cloud-based service that taps vast stores of health data and delivers tailored insights to hospitals, physicians, insurers, researchers and potentially even individual patients.

 

• IBM outlined a major Internet of Things strategy, with a series of announcements that included a $3bn investment to establish an Internet of Things unit inside of Big Blue along with a partnership with The Weather Company. The intent of the new initiative is to put IBM at the forefront of the Internet of Things and provide a common platform on top of which customers can build useful applications to take advantage of all that data. IBM suggests that partnerships like the one with The Weather Company and the one announced last year with Twitter are the cornerstones of a strategy to put them on the cutting edge of a burgeoning technology.

 

March 2015

 

• IBM and Twitter are bringing out their first joint products - developer tools and cloud-based data analysis services that mine Twitter data. IBM is betting a fair share of its future on exploiting large troves of data for its business customers, and Twitter is a big-data firehose with 6,000 tweets a second, more than half a billion each day. And Twitter’s data-licensing business, though still a small part of the company, is growing rapidly. The data services run on IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence technology and on its flavour of Hadoop, the open-source software for processing big data across computer clusters, IBM BigInsights. The developer tools will allow people to write applications that pull in Twitter data.

 

• The PwC US Research & Analysis team prepared a deep dive analysis on IBM. With a rich history dating back to the late 19th century, IBM has successfully emerged to become a leading global enterprise tech player with over $85B in annual sales.  ndustry shift away from on-premise solutions toward cloud based subscription offerings are presenting secular headwinds for IBM's legacy business. Will IBM's focus on strategic imperatives be enough to reignite top line growth?

 

 

 

February 2015

 

• IBM is targeting $40 billion in annual revenue from the cloud, big data, security and other growth areas by 2018. The aggressive target, set by IBM executives at the company's annual investor meeting in New York, is the latest step for the technology giant towards emerging, high-margin businesses, and away from its previous strongholds in hardware and servers. The $40 billion will come from areas which IBM calls its "strategic imperatives," namely cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security software.

 

• IBM is rolling out a cloud-based analytics platform aimed at utility companies to provide them with real-time insights into the health of their infrastructure. It allows users to gauge the operating condition of their assets and – in turn - make judgement calls about when to carry out maintenance. The company claims this should mean utility firms are no longer forced to carry out costly and unnecessary equipment upgrades just because a piece of hardware has reached a certain age.

 

• IBM regenerates African tech and Johannesburg’s inner-city - Telegraph

 

 

• IBM Research and Mars, Incorporated Launch Pioneering Effort to Drive Advances in Global Food Safety

 

• IBM Reveals Proof of Concept for Blockchain-Powered Internet of Things

 

January 2015

 

• An IBM spokesman dismissed a Forbes magazine report claiming the technology giant was preparing to cut about 26 percent of its workforce. IBM is in the process of layoffs, as disclosed in its latest earnings report last week, but it will affect "several thousand" employees only, according to an emailed statement from IBM to Reuters.

 

• IBM reported a decline in revenues for the 11th consecutive quarter on, as it tries to divest unprofitable businesses and focus on cloud computing, big data and cybersecurity. The New York-listed company said revenue had fallen 12% to $24.1bn in the fourth quarter, compared to the same period the year before, lower than the average analyst estimate of $24.8bn. Fourth-quarter earnings were down 6% to $5.81 per share on a non-GAAP basis, beating the average prediction of $5.41 per share. Earnings per share on a GAAP basis were $5.54 and net income was $5.5bn, down 17%.

 

• EY is building on its collaboration with IBM to help global clients leverage new advanced analytics and accelerate their adoption of technologies. EY will work directly with IBM on joint go-to-market activities and new applications based on IBM’s portfolio of analytics, big data products and cloud solutions. EY will also have access to IBM’s test and demo software catalogue, technical support and training resources.

 

• IBM unveiled a new version of its mainframe computer, the 51-year-old product for which it is still best known, in an attempt to end a slide in its computer hardware business and buy chief executive Ginni Rometty time for her attempt to turn the business around. Sales of the new machines are expected to lead to a stabilisation in IBM’s hardware business after a 16% revenue decline in the first nine months of last year that exacerbated broader problems as customers switch parts of their IT needs to cloud computing services from rival companies.

 

• IBM announced that it received a record 7,534 patents in 2014 - marking the 22nd consecutive year that the company topped the annual list of U.S. patent recipients. IBM inventors earned an average of more than 20 patents per day in 2014, propelling the company to become the first to surpass more than 7,000 patents in a single year.

 

December 2014

 

• Latest intelligence around IBM Watson included: How IBM’s Watson could change your business; Watson’s next mission: boosting primary medical care for veterans and Watson, Jeopardy and the obsolete know-it-all.

 

• IBM has secured new patents for the rapid analysis of cloud data and to make cloud service deployment more cost-effective and efficient. The tech giant said the newly-awarded patent, US patent #8,676,981 B2 "Routing Service Requests Based on Lowest Actual Cost within a Federated Virtual Service Cloud," uses analytics to increase cloud computing performance and reduce costs. By moving workloads between or within cloud data centers, IBM says automatic analysis can be used to determine the most effective use of available resources.IBM and Apple unveiled the first fruits of a collaboration announced earlier in 2014, a set of 10 apps designed to exploit the push by businesses to adapt to the mobile era.

 

• IBM and Apple unveiled the first fruits of a collaboration announced earlier in 2014, a set of 10 apps designed to exploit the push by businesses to adapt to the mobile era.

 

• Communications and marketing services group WPP is expanding its partnership with IBM, signing a $1.25bn seven-year deal that will see the tech giant help WPP expand its use of big data and cloud-based collaboration services. WPP has signed up IBM to help the firm deploy and manage new digital services to help support collaboration and decision making at the firm. As part of the seven-year deal IBM will help the company roll out a hybrid cloud platform, as well as a number of big data analytics technologies, and help streamline IT operations across WPP’s brands.

 

November 2014

 

• According to the Harvard Business Review, IBM’s global strategy is based on three pillars: cloud, data and engagement. Closely watched by the global investment community, the IT sector, and IBM’s 431,000 employees, IBM’s strategy has its fans and detractors -  but each of the three pillars says something about global growth and competition in the 21st century.

 

• IBM announced it has patented the design for a data privacy engine that can more efficiently and affordably help businesses protect personal data as it is transferred between countries, including across private clouds. IBM's new patented Data Privacy Engine invention – U.S Patent #8,695,101 – lets businesses aggregate international and organisational requirements for data transfers and apply them to individual projects. As a result, organisations can quickly see what restrictions have been put in place for different types of protected information when transferring it between two countries, including data stored in a private cloud.

 

• IBM launched a new e-mail application for businesses that integrates social media, file sharing and analytics to learn a user's behaviour and predict interactions with coworkers. The application is part of IBM's attempt to shift its focus to cloud computing and data analytics from the hardware services that had long been the company's bread and butter. The new e-mail service, known as IBM Verse, includes a built-in personal assistant that can learn from a user's  behaviour and draft responses to e-mails based on similar previous interactions. It also allows users to transform e-mail content into threads for blogs and social media, view the relationships between different employees in an e-mail, mute a chain and search through attachments.

 

• Will IBM Rise Again?, asked Forbes, noting that has been very kind to Wall Street lately—with shareholder-friendly policies like stock buybacks and dividend hikes. But Wall Street has not returned the kindness to IBM. At a time most major equity indexes have been racing towards old and new highs, IBM’s shares are heading south. Obviously, Wall Street has been focusing more on the company’s prolonged sales and earnings slump rather than on the buybacks and the dividend hikes. Social and mass media criticism have added to Wall Street’s negative sentiment. But Wall Street may be missing several things about IBM that will eventually turn sales and earnings around. First is IBM’s brand, which occupies the fifth position in Forbes’s list of the world’s most valuable brands, thanks to its broad patent portfolio. Second is the nature of IBM’s growth – the company has been riding one technology shift after another in  computing, a sector IBM has pioneered through heavy investments in R&D.

 

• The IBM Corporate Service Corps, a hybrid of professional development and service, now deploys 500 young leaders a year on team assignments in more than 30 countries in the developing world. Employees engage in two months of training while working full time, spend one month on the ground on a 6- to 12-member team tackling a social issue, and then mentor the next group for two months. So far, IBMers have completed over 1,000 projects. The initiative follows the success of another IBM programme, IBM’s On Demand Community, which was launched as an online marketplace to connect nonprofits with employees and retirees, as well as a portal offering resources to nonprofits of all kinds. The objective was threefold: to support IBMers in their service engagements, to invest the intellectual capital of IBMers in tackling social issues around the world, and to develop the expertise and leadership of IBMers through volunteer opportunities that leverage their skills and abilities.

 

 

• IBM announced it had built the first intelligent security portfolio for protecting people, data and applications in the cloud. Built on IBM’s investments in cloud, security and analytics software and services, the new offerings are designed to protect a business’s most vital data and applications using advanced analytics across their enterprise, public and private clouds and mobile devices - collectively known as the hybrid cloud model.

 

 

 

October 2014

 

• IBM and Twitter Inc. announced a far-reaching alliance to apply data from the microblogging service to solve business problems. The deal is designed to marry IBM’s analytics software and large consulting staff with the huge volumes of information Twitter generates about users’ action and opinions.

 

• IBM will put its super-computing data crunching to use in Sierra Leone, as part of the fight against ebola. It has launched a system which allows citizens to report ebola-related issues and government, health agencies and others to keep track of the disease. Citizens can use SMS or voice calls that are location-specific. The data will then be analysed to identify correlations and highlight issues. Already, regions with growing numbers of suspected ebola cases have been pinpointed and the delivery of urgent supplies such as soap and electricity have been sped up.

 

• IBM reported a 4% drop in quarterly revenue as client activity slowed. Total revenue fell to $22.4 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $23.34 billion a year earlier. Analysts had expected revenue of $23.37 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. The company's net profit from continuing operations fell to $3.46 billion, or $3.46 per share, from $4.14 billion, or $3.77 per share in the same quarter last year. On an adjusted basis, the company earned $3.68 per share, missing the average analyst estimate of $4.31 per share.

 

• IBM said it would hive off its loss-making semiconductor unit to contract-chipmaker Globalfoundries Inc to focus on cloud computing, mobile and big data analytics. IBM will pay Globalfoundries $1.5 billion in cash over the next three years to take the chip operations off its hands, the companies said in a statement.

 

• Believing that "next generation leaders" push themselves everyday to answer the key question: how can my organisation make a difference?, IBM claims t0 be helping deliver the answer with new apps that are powered by Watson from Ecosystem Partners to improve the quality of life – from better managing health and enriching the customer experience, to enabling new research and education.

 

• IBM is set to give a concerted push to the artificial intelligence system it is relying on to help revive its flagging growth and give it a new edge over rivals in the computing industry. The company plans to officially open a base for the system, known as Watson, in New York’s Silicon Alley neighbourhood and show off a range of examples in which the technology is already being applied in industries like finance, healthcare and retailing. However, its slow start in commercialising the technology and the complexity of applying it in practical business situations has drawn scepticism from some AI experts.

 

 

August 2014

 

• IBM announced a cognitive computing cloud service as part of its Watson technology to help scientists use big data analysis to accelerate research. IBM said its Watson Discovery Advisor is designed to scale and accelerate discoveries by research teams. The cloud supercomputing service "reduces the time needed to test hypotheses and formulate conclusions that can advance their work - from months to days and days to just hours - bringing new levels of speed and precision to research and development," the firm claimed.

 

• British mobile money company Monitise signed a partnership agreement with IBM in the latest sign that technology groups are pushing further into the lucrative financial services sector. The tie-up will give lossmaking Monitise access to IBM’s client base of big corporate customers using cloud-based technologies, including global banks. A fifth of the company’s staff - about 200 workers in its professional services division - will move across to Big Blue.

 

• IBM launched three cloud services and a consultancy practice aimed at helping HR departments identify and retain talent within their organisations. The offerings are part of IBM’s Smarter Workforce initiative and will use behavioural science, statistical analysis and psychological principles to help firms improve employee engagement and organisational  performance.

 

• IBM acquired the business operations of Lighthouse Computer Services subsidiary, Lighthouse Security Group. The purchase provides IBM with additional technology to build identity management services and tools.  Lighthouse offers businesses a cloud-based platform for identity and data protection. Earlier this month, IBM acquired Italian security software company, CrossIdeas. IBM plans to integrate Lighthouse Security Group and CrossIdeas with IBM's identity and access management tools to offer "a full suite of security software and services that protect and manage a user's identity". Lighthouse's senior leadership team will be kept on after the acquisition. However, Lighthouse will not retain its branding.

 

• IBM announced it had acquired CrossIdeas, a privately held provider of security software that governs user access to applications and data across on-premise and cloud environments. Financial terms were not disclosed. Under the burden of more government regulations and increasing sophistication of security threats, business leaders are demanding that IT and security executives implement access governance policies and solutions that provide visibility into operational and IT risks.

 

July 2014

 

• Aero-engine maker Pratt & Whitney is teaming up with IBM for a big data project in which data from some 4,000 commercial engines will be analysed in order to predict maintenance problems before they arise. The arrangement will provide Pratt & Whitney customers with longer time "on-wing", complement current maintenance schedules, and deliver deeper insight into flight operational data.

 

• IBM failed for a ninth straight quarter to boost revenue, but the bottom line benefitted from recent cost-cutting. It posted a 28% second-quarter net gain, partly reflecting a restructuring charge that held down its year-earlier results. Revenue declined 2.2%. The company's flagship mainframe-computer business performed better than analysts expected. But revenue from another key line of server systems continued to slump, while IBM's software and services businesses didn't show the growth that some analysts had projected. IBM shares were up nearly 3% since the beginning of the year. Following the after-hours earnings release, they fell about 2%.

 

• Apple and IBM agreed a "landmark deal" that will see the technology firms work together to develop apps for iPhones and iPads. Under the agreement, IBM will sell Apple devices to its corporate customers. These will be loaded with 100 business apps the two companies will develop, targeting industry-specific issues in retail, health care, banking, travel and telecommunications.

 

• IBM shed more light on its long-term plans to develop new forms of chips, in an attempt to overcome fears among customers that its pending hardware disposals signal a retreat from a core part of its business. Big Blue disclosed that it has earmarked $3bn for chip research and development in the next five years, with its most advanced research unlikely to come to fruition for more than a decade in new materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes.