Where is IBM?
I had been wondering this lately, and so have been asking people: who are IBM's software customers? My company sells into a wide range of Global 2000 companies, but we almost never bump into IBM databases or application servers (or hardware, for that matter). I can count the number of times on two hands, yet we often run into Oracle, Microsoft, BEA Weblogic, even Sybase. Rarely IBM.
IBM is doing a ton of revenue in software sales. But to whom does it sell its software?
I asked an analyst friend, and she had the same question (and had heard the same thing from other vendors). I asked a friend at a large competitor of IBM's, and she suggested that IBM's software business is mostly mainframe-based (where we would not compete).
What do you think? Do you see customers using IBM's software with your solution? Please let me know. I'm genuinely curious (and continue to be very surprised).
Savio?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
They are running the infrastructure of your life. My guess is that your bank, energy company, your insurance, your hospital, your cable company, state government, your federal government, airline, the companies that stock most of your refrigerator and pantry all run some IBM hardware and Software even though I have no idea where you live. Have you ever looked at the financials of the IBM services origination and know how many global 2000 companies they are running? What software do you thing they use? Come on, just google websphere. Even though you don?t see DB2 as much as Oracle more often than not Oracle is running on IBM hardware in the larger enterprises. I personally have empirical data on over 1000 of the global 5000 that are running IBM software which I?m obviously not going to disclose. All I can say is you and your friends are looking in the wrong places.
johnmwillis.com
Anyway, I did want to tell you that even though I tend to be critical in some of my comments I really enjoy your blog. It is one of the blogs that I check every day with out fail.
Thanks
John
- Why not look at our SEC filings?
- by Savio.Rodrigues July 30, 2007 7:51 PM PDT
- Matt, unfortunately IBM's business conduct guidelines don't really allow me (or any other IBMer) to give more details on customers or revenue than what is available in our public SEC filings or other public data.
- Reply to this comment
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(5 Comments)To your analyst friend who believes we make our revenue mostly from mainframe-based software, please pass him/her the url to our 2006 Annual Report here: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/annualreport/2006/2006_ibm_annual.pdf
On pg 32: Of the $18.161B software revenue in 2006:
$9.369B came from Key Branded Middleware and $4.522B came from "other middleware" which is defined as "products, including host software products such as compilers, certain tools and Other Storage and Printer software" on pg. 40.
Key Branded Middleware is made up of five key brands (WebSphere, Lotus, Tivoli, Rational, DB2/Information Management) which provide an integrated suite for the company?s customers.
The Key Branded Middleware revenue grew at 17.1% vs. the old host stuff which grew at -0.6% (i.e. declined).
I hope you can appreciate how awesome it is that our software revenues grow year on year when a $4.5B portion of our revenue (from host-based products) is declining and being replaced by revenue from Key Branded Middleware.