Maureen O'Gara

Amazon and Salesforce are getting so popular they’ve started infiltrating top accounts that have historically belonged to IBM. Amazon’s new partnership with the Nasdaq announced the other day is a good for instance.

So IBM has decided to fight fire with fire by going after the mid-sized businesses – concerns with less than a 1,000 employees – where Amazon and Salesforce are quite at home and peddle these companies Big Blue clouds they probably never knew IBM had or thought they could afford given IBM’s penchant for carriage trade pricing.

Reportedly IBM is going to adjust its pricing and trust its reputation and techno-smarts to make up any difference.

Big Blue is apparently hoping little sales – little by its lights – will add up to something substantial.


IBM's Cloud VP Rich Lechner gave a General Session at 9th Cloud Expo

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff claims IBM has lost its mojo and told the Wall Street Journal it “doesn’t own the technology like they did in the last wave.” He certainly hasn’t been seeing IBM in his accounts.

IBM, however, will be using partners such as Infor, Highland Solutions and 1,400 MSPs to penetrate his flanks with IBM PureSystem technology and rebranded OpenStack-beholden SmartCloud software for building public, private, and hybrid cloud. Naturally there will be analytics too.

They will be using their own data centers and IBM’s money (in the form of zero percent loans).

IBM has got so-called centers of excellence in Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and Germany where MSPs can get training and aims to devote a “substantial part” of a $100 million marketing budget to the cause.

IBM is depending on the cloud as well as emerging markets, analytics and smart cities to increase its revenue stream.

Gartner estimates the sale of cloud computing services will reach about $58 billion this year, up about $8 billion since 2011.