IBS Journal July 2017
quarters in a row. They fell from $18.7bn from a year ago. Sales forecasts were $200m higher than achieved.
• Net income of $1.8bn, down 13 per cent over the previous year
• Global financing revenues of $401m was a 1.2 per cent decrease on the year-ago quarter
• Systems revenues $1.4 billion, down 16.8 per cent on t2016 quarter.
• Cognitive solutions, the unit that includes Watson, reported revenues of $4.1bn, up 2.1 per cent
• Global business services revenues were $4bn, a 3 per cent drop
• Technical services and cloud revenues $8.2bn, down 2.5 per cent
• Earnings per share (non-GAAP) of $2.38, slightly better than analysts’ estimates of $2.35
discipline in itself, supported by an ecosystem of tool vendors and professional services firms.”
So it is interesting that Finastra has passed on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform all of which could have provided the solutions it needed and some of whom, arguably, have broader networks than IBM.
However, Datamation says that although it hasn’t always been considered one of the “big three” cloud computing vendors, IBM’s cloud business has been coming on strong. In its most recent quarterly report, IBM said that its “cloud-as- a-service revenue was up 50 percent,” and had an annual run rate of $6.7 billion.
The bigger picture
IBM’s most visible cloud service is its Bluemix PaaS, which is aimed primarily at enterprise development teams. The company also a lot of enterprise software on a SaaS basis, and it sells cloud infrastructure, cloud management tools and cloud managed services.
IBM’s revenues of $18.2bn have been down for twenty
The strategic imperatives for IBM are security, cloud, analytics, mobile and social businesses. The company has featured these high on its plans and they account for $7.8bn of its sales in the last quarter. Driving these business units to take their share of the load in revenue generation is essential if IBM wants to replace the huge losses in its systems division and all of the other declining markets.
The Finastra strategy closely mirrors IBM’s stated short-term strategy. Chairperson and CEO Ginni Rometty, talking to the New York Times, said recently: “In the first quarter, both the IBM Cloud and our cognitive solutions again grew strongly, which fueled robust performance in our strategic imperatives. In addition, we are developing and bringing to market emerging technologies such as blockchain and quantum, revolutionising how enterprises will tackle ever more complex business problems in the years ahead.”
Certainly the
FusionFabric.cloud architecture and open APIs from Finastra make it possible for IBM to incorporate its technology and cognitive capabilities directly into the Finastra banking solution.
FusionFabric.cloud, it is claimed, enables banks, Fintechs, consultants and students to collaborate in an app ecosystem for financial services.
On the face of it this is a fintech partnership which is closely aligned to the needs and directions of the company’s core businesses. IBM gets lucky with a sales channel into the top 48 banks in the world. The future is bright – the future is cloudy.
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