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IBM's Business-Driven Managed Cloud

Key Points

  • IBM stresses that cloud initiatives should be driven by specific business problems and agility goals, not just by technology hype.
  • Managed Services are a high‑margin growth area for IBM—potentially 2‑5 times the revenue of pure infrastructure services—because enterprises increasingly need end‑to‑end operational support.
  • IBM must offer a full spectrum of cloud deployment options (pure public cloud, hosted, hybrid, or minimal cloud components) to match each client’s current workload and migration stage.
  • Investing in OpenStack standards gives IBM a unified interface that lets customers shift workloads across deployment models seamlessly, a capability most competitors lack.

Full Transcript

# IBM's Business-Driven Managed Cloud **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymKwJcvDdSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymKwJcvDdSI) **Duration:** 00:02:33 ## Summary - IBM stresses that cloud initiatives should be driven by specific business problems and agility goals, not just by technology hype. - Managed Services are a high‑margin growth area for IBM—potentially 2‑5 times the revenue of pure infrastructure services—because enterprises increasingly need end‑to‑end operational support. - IBM must offer a full spectrum of cloud deployment options (pure public cloud, hosted, hybrid, or minimal cloud components) to match each client’s current workload and migration stage. - Investing in OpenStack standards gives IBM a unified interface that lets customers shift workloads across deployment models seamlessly, a capability most competitors lack. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymKwJcvDdSI&t=0s) **IBM Cloud Business Transformation Pitch** - The speaker stresses framing cloud as a business problem, highlighting IBM’s managed services revenue potential, multi‑cloud support, and OpenStack‑based standards to enable flexible, enterprise‑focused solutions unlike competitors. ## Full Transcript
0:02the world loves to talk about cloud 0:05technology this is not about technology 0:07as for business transformation if I want 0:09to engage to help you my questions are 0:11what is the business problem that would 0:13most transform your business what is the 0:16agility dimension as its speed isn't 0:18reached what is it that that you need to 0:21accomplish your goal and then find our 0:23cloud interest the beauty of IBM is that 0:25we have a rich enough portfolio to help 0:28almost any business in that space but 0:31we've got to get them to think of it as 0:32a business problem not a technology 0:34problem everyone talks about cloud 0:39services but enterprises need things 0:41managed for them and for IBM that 0:44opportunity of Managed Services is two 0:46to five times the revenue of potential 0:48of the infrastructure service that's 0:50number one the second thing is really we 0:52support IBM supports and our clients 0:54need us to support a spectrum of cloud 0:56choices some are pure cloud some are 0:58cloud hosting some have only a small 1:01element to cloud but depending on where 1:03the client is on the workload and the 1:04journey they need us to do all of that 1:05and that's how we built our platform the 1:08third thing is for that to to work and 1:10have lasting and persistent value we 1:12need to address the standards in the 1:13interface and that's what our OpenStack 1:15investments are about so that people can 1:17start with one model do the work once 1:19and if they need to move to another 1:21deployment model they can do that with 1:22open set none of our competitors cover 1:29the range that we do amazon doesn't do 1:31managed services other people do it for 1:33them or for the clients HP does manage 1:35services but only works in the local or 1:38private cloud deployment model from a 1:39client perspective being able to have a 1:41supplier that they trust IBM able the 1:44balance their needs no matter what the 1:45deployment model and no matter where 1:47your pure infrastructure or managed 1:49services that's our differentiated value 1:51for IBM to winning cloud we we have to 1:53understand that we're solving business 1:54problems so we have to engage with the 1:56client to solve the problem that they 1:57have 1:58we have to make what we do consumable we 2:01still struggle sometimes to make it easy 2:03to use what we do and that's an offering 2:06a product development thing and we must 2:08move with speed we are in a new world 2:10the world is moving whether we like it 2:12or not we have to move with that thought 2:14world it's really those two things here 2:19the understanding the importance of 2:20managed services to our clients 2:21understanding the choice and the reason 2:24that we have such a range of deployment 2:26models for our clients and understanding 2:28the role that OpenStack plays in 2:29providing consistency for all of that