IBM Focused On Cloud Despite Revenue Decline
IBM (NYSE:IBM) says it will continue to aggressively invest in growth areas, despite suffering sixteen straight quarters of declining revenue.
The world’s largest technology services company this week reported its worst quarterly revenue numbers in 14 years with a 4.6% decline in sales to $18.68 billion in the first quarter, but it beat analysts' average estimate of $18.29 billion.
During an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Mornings With Maria, IBM Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President Martin Schroeter discussed the company’s transformation and focus on growing its businesses.
“We invest quite heavily in what we call our strategic imperatives,” Schroeter told host Maria Bartiromo. “And our strategic imperatives really represent the areas our clients are moving to, the areas our clients are asking us to move them to.”
The company’s latest strategy includes new cloud-based design, analytics capabilities and new ways of engagement with its own clients to maximize its growth potential.
Schroeter said the company has been very aggressive in acquisitions, spending $9 billion over the last 12 months.
“Now we are focus on building out a cloud platform that is global,” Schroeter said. “We have a video offering in the IBM cloud that will allow not only the leaders, if you will, and those who are bringing videos like media entertainment companies through a cloud offering, but now we are bringing new clients onto these types of platform.”
Schroeter also discussed IBM’s impact on healthcare through its Watson super computer, named after the company’s first CEO and industrialist Thomas J. Watson.
“Watson Health, we continue to believe will change healthcare in the world and the essence of that is applying cognitive technologies to the massive data we have to get better outcomes,” Schroeter said.