Ex-Employee Divulges Shortfalls In IBM's Cloud Business

CowboyRobot writes "IBM's cloud computing revenues are smaller and less 'cloud-intensive' than customers and Wall Street analysts might think. That's the claim of a former IBM employee who backed up more than a few of his/her critical assessments of the vendor's cloud prowess with a number of confidential internal documents shared with InformationWeek. The documents put IBM's 2012 cloud-related revenue at $2.26 billion, a figure the company has declined to disclose publicly. In 2011, IBM did issue a roadmap that set forth the goal of reaching $7 billion in annual cloud revenue by 2015, so the much lower figure raises doubts about whether the company is on track. Noteworthy is data that shows that roughly half of current IBM cloud revenues are tied to hardware, in many cases systems used to run customers' private clouds or partner clouds."

Cloud Often = Same Old Datacenter

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> roughly half of current IBM cloud revenues are tied to hardware, in many cases systems used to run customers' private clouds or partner clouds.

Does this really surprise anyone here? Isn't that the whole point behind "private cloud" to get top management derps to check the "cloud" box without actually changing how the existing datacenter and applications are run?

Re:Cloud Often = Same Old Datacenter

[Nyder]

>> roughly half of current IBM cloud revenues are tied to hardware, in many cases systems used to run customers' private clouds or partner clouds.

Does this really surprise anyone here? Isn't that the whole point behind "private cloud" to get top management derps to check the "cloud" box without actually changing how the existing datacenter and applications are run?

I miss the day when clouds were called servers...

There is no IBM

[rsilvergun]

there's a bunch of sales reps and H1-B contractors gathered round an old name nobody remembers....

if you cannot build, buy

[lophophore]

IBM bought SoftLayer, one of the larger Cloud Computing providers in the US. That will contribute to their revenue quite a bit.

The employee who disclosed confidential documents better lawyer up, IBM is known for hiring the sharpest-toothed lawyers money can buy.