IBM Needs to Reposition Itself for the Cloud Computing Era
Ginni Rometty needs to reposition the tech giant in a hurry for the cloud computing era
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How’s this for bleeding edge: The average member of IBM’s senior executive leadership team started at the company in 1985, when the Internet was still a government project and Steve Jobs had just been fired from Apple. Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty joined IBM in 1981, two years out of Northwestern University’s engineering school, and has been there ever since.
That’s a deep and experienced bench. The question is whether the tech giant has the right managerial perspective for what confronts it in 2013. IBM finds itself on the wrong side of a major technology shift. In the cloud era, corporate clients can rent server capacity and processing power for far less than IBM charges to hire its consultants or buy its hardware.