INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Arvind Krishna is not the only CEO to step into a new job this week, but he is the only one charged with helping turn around one of the
world most iconic companies
Adding to the degree of difficulty, he took the role in the midst of a global pandemic and economic crisis
No pressure or anything.
IBM has struggled in recent years to find its identity as technology has evolved rapidly
While Krishna predecessor Ginni Rometty left a complex legacy as she worked to bring IBM into the modern age, she presided over a dreadful
string of 22 straight quarters of declining revenue, a record Krishna surely hopes to avoid.
Ginni Rometty leaves complex legacy as she
steps away as IBM CEO
Strong headwinds
To her credit, under Rometty the company tried hard to pivot to more modern customer requirements,
like cloud, artificial intelligence, blockchain and security
While the results weren&t always there, Krishna acknowledged in an email employees received on his first day that she left something to
build on.
&IBM has already built enduring platforms in mainframe, services and middleware
All three continue to serve our clients
I believe now is the time to build a fourth platform in hybrid cloud
An essential, ubiquitous hybrid cloud platform our clients will rely on to do their most critical work in this century
A platform that can last even longer than the others,& he wrote.
But Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, says
the market headwinds the company faces are real, and it going to take some strong leadership to get customers to choose IBM over its primary
cloud infrastructure competitors.
&His top challenge is to restore the trust of clients that IBM has the latest technology and solutions and
is reinvesting enough in innovation that clients want to see
He has to show that IBM has the same level of innovation and engineering talent as the hyper scalers Google, Microsoft and Amazon,& Wang
explained.
Cultural transformation
