I just read an interesting comparison of IBM today and the situation Microsoft was in 10 years ago when they opted for a public cloud strategy. I hope that we will see a similar success in the future.
Here is an article with the comparison: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4379197-ibm-like-microsoft-in-2010-plus-5_2-yield
Go do a listing of physical sites in IBM Cloud, and compare that to either Azure or Amazon. It’s startling. IBM would need to massively inject money into building new data centers to be another Microsoft, but the only thing they know how to do now is reduce expenses.
Hockey analogy: 10 years ago, Microsoft skated to where the puck would be in 10 years. Today, IBM is asking "what the puck?"
IBM rejected this strategy 10 years ago and since then, IBM market cap has declined while microsoft is 6x what it was in 2010.
I can guarantee you that ibm won't see anything remotely similar because they have no "product leaders" including the newly promoted ceo Arvind. Has he (his teams) delivered any product which disrupted market and became market leader?
Companies like MS and Google have CEOs who have successfully delivered some disruptive product as product managers.
IBM's executive leadership have matrix of responsibility and they get bonuses whether they fail or succeed, can't succeed with this attitude.