If elephants want to dance, they have to turn into start-ups first?

If elephants want to dance, they have to turn into start-ups first?

IBM this elephant wants to transform, rely solely on cams (cloud computing, big data, mobile, social) the general direction is not enough, how to transform internal organization to enhance agility is absolutely another big challenge.

How important is the latter? Look at IBM's transformation 20 years ago.

You must be familiar with the story of Gerstner to help IBM "transition to service," but not necessarily understand IBM's internal "big surgery" IPD (Integrated product development) in fact also wrote a heavy. "IPD is the key!" ...... Every IBM needs to be familiar with IPD, because we are running IBM in this process. "Gerstner once evaluated the value of IPD.

So how is IBM going to turn around today? The author recently discussed this issue with IBM Strategy Senior vice President Ken Keverian Exchange. Interestingly, unlike other IBM core executives, he is a "new employee" who only joins IBM6 months. But he is also very familiar with IBM, has been in Boston consulting firm for IBM for more than 20 years. In his view, "IBM will one day become the largest start-up ever seen in human history." ”

Watson is a start-up?

As we all know, IBM is headquartered in the eastern United States New York State, not in the western Silicon Valley. But the West has Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley), and the east has risen in recent years to a Silicon Harbor (Silicon Alley).

At the "Silicon Alley" in New York, the Astor Plaza 51st (Astor place) also has a glass structure, such as the New York Apple flagship store, which is the first of its kind to be built in January. Interestingly, many Silicon Valley companies in the eastern offices are concentrated in the "Silicon Harbor", the Watson building opposite the Facebook,twitter and Google are only a few blocks apart. New York is emerging as a hotbed of high-tech innovation in the eastern United States, echoing Silicon Valley in the west. The city is surrounded by famous Ivy League schools, becoming a place of high-tech innovation after Silicon Valley.

Unlike the office at IBM's New York headquarters, the Watson building looks and builds more like a start-up. Not only that, after Watson became an independent business group, IBM's largest migration in history began, with a total of more than 2000 employees coming from their respective departments to the Watson Group. They either come from research institutions, or from the sales consultancy team, or from the hardware, software, and services sectors, so that the Watson Group is also a stand-alone "start-up" from the internal organization, focusing on the commercial development of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence.

"Getting rid of complex internal operations and emphasizing agility will not miss the opportunity." and the integration of resources will be more conducive to the rapid development of the group. Ken Keverian even revealed that IBM also sees the company as a start-up and will have more similar departments in the future. ”

The cloud followed "entrepreneurship."

Not only that, IBM's research and development structure for the first time in 40 years to adjust, in the software, hardware, services, the traditional categories, set up in accordance with CAMS transformation strategy leading research and development direction. Following the Watson Group, the cloud business was also adjusted internally. It is reported that, and the staff structure similar to the group, IBM is also from different departments from the cloud-related personnel, "all single point of advance", cloud business is expected to become the next "entrepreneurial enterprise."

In fact, this kind of sign early in a year ago IBM buys the public cloud enterprise SoftLayer to have already begun to clue. In the past, these companies and technologies were quickly "blue" and finally integrated into IBM. SoftLayer, a mere 2 billion-dollar takeover, became the "catfish" within IBM. Softlayer CEO in the interview with the author, stressed that Softlayer not only has not been "blue", in the public cloud market and public cloud services to play the role of leading IBM. SoftLayer not only continues to operate independently, but IBM also invests 1.2 billion of billions of dollars to help it build a global cloud data center.

It also sends a strong signal to the outside world that IBM is embracing the new world in full.

Turn into a good Wall Street?

Of course, perhaps another important point is that Wall Street's view of IBM may change. IBM's earnings per share is expected to reach $18 this year, when Rometty, President and CEO of IBM, announced in October to give up her predecessor, Palmisano's five-year performance target of 20 dollars per share by 2015. But investors apparently demand real money from IBM, but demand for market space for emerging companies, such as Amazon's AWS Cloud, is rose by Wall Street.

and IBM's internal organizational transformation on Watson and the cloud perhaps the future will also be around the CAMS strategy will continue to repeat, these have the potential, the topic of the business from the traditional hardware, software, services, the three sectors independent of the growth of these new business expectations is undoubtedly to make investors more exciting. More or less, Wall Street will see IBM embracing the New World from another perspective, after all, the cams business also accounts for $20 billion trillion in IBM's billions of dollars in revenue. Perhaps in the future, the financial reports to be refined by the three traditional businesses of hardware, software and services will become the past, replaced by the new directions of Watson business, cloud business, large data service, mobile business, social service, etc.