Over the past year, IBM has made clear its intention to evolve in support of a transformed digital enterprise market. 2018 saw the company reach a few notable benchmarks in its multi-year digital transformation, including its promising first signs of revenue growth in more than 20 quarters. IBM’s cloud business grew 12 percent to a total $19.2 billion in 2018, expanding the company’s gross profit margin to 49.1 percent.

While a snowballing cloud market remains dominated by its big three providers — Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud — traditional information technology vendor IBM considers itself uniquely positioned to address the transitional challenges faced by legacy enterprises in need of custom, often multicloud based, modernization strategies.

Equipped with a new open-source angle on its hybrid strategy through the company’s recent Red Hat Inc. acquisition, will IBM be able to provide the much-needed bridge between on-premises and cloud environments?

Looking to answer these and other questions, SiliconANGLE Media Inc. is at IBM Think 2019 in San Francisco with exclusive commentary and interviews from our roving news desk, theCUBE. TheCUBE coverage will begin on Monday, February 11, at 10 a.m. PT and ends on Thursday, February 14, at 5:30 p.m. PT. (* Disclosure below.)

The AI, multicloud springboards

Though IBM is rooted in bare metal, the veteran IT leader’s history in artificial intelligence innovation has proven a successful springboard for participation in a digital economy burdened by an overwhelming amount of data. The company’s cognitive software arm, which boasts AI platform Watson, surpassed analysts’ expectations with its most recent report of sales at $5.46 billion. This growth comes after a series of AI-backed initiatives within the company.

Projects like the AI OpenScale platform for bias identification and the Nvidia Corp.-backed converged system for greater value extraction in AI workloads illustrate the potential IBM has to offer in a market where AI is only becoming more relevant.

Key to IBM’s reinvigorated cloud and AI strategy is its acquisition of open-source provider Red Hat Inc. The $34-billion grab is a historic one for IBM, signifying a tangible pivot to microservices and hybrid cloud. The containerization software now available to IBM via Red Hat and its flagship offering OpenShift gives the company relevance within a new developer audience through its direct line to Kubernetes, a significant force in hybrid cloud simplicity.

The newly acquired asset is intended to bolster cross-platform processes through IBM Cloud Private, a service that delivers digital infrastructure and AI data analytics to various custom enterprise environments.

“Cloud is absolutely a big piece of it. IBM’s real positioning today is multicloud,” said Stu Miniman, an analyst with Wikibon Inc., SiliconANGLE Media’s sister market research company. “The reason for buying Red Hat is multicloud. Do they have their own cloud? Sure. But they ultimately want to tie you into their cloud, rival clouds, and your own data center.”

Will IBM be successful in leveraging its mainline to the world of open source and Kubernetes in a future driven by microservices, machine learning, and multicloud? All this and more will be explored at this year’s IBM Think.

Speakers at IBM Think include Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and chief executive officer, IBM; Joe Montana, legendary NFL Quarterback; Tony Hawk, legendary skateboarder, entrepreneur and founder, The Tony Hawk Foundation; Tiffany Pham, founder and chief executive officer, Mogul; Arvind Krishna, senior vice president, hybrid cloud, and director of IBM Research; and Dr. Kate Darling, research specialist, MIT Media Lab & Harvard University.

Other event speakers include Jim Whitehurst, president and chief executive officer, Red Hat; Taylor Richardson, astronaut, StarBright; Michelle Peluso, senior vice president and chief marketing officer IBM; Rodney Mullen, legendary skateboarder and entrepreneur; Marc-Antoine Auger, master product owner, National Bank of Canada; and Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM global industries, clients, platforms and blockchain.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at IBM Think, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s event on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE’s dedicated website and Ustream

All of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews from IBM Think 2019 will be available on theCUBE’s dedicated website.

You can also watch all the interviews on the dedicated Ustream channel.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from IBM Think, which runs from February 11-14, will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE at the IBM Think

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE include Eric Herzog, chief marketing officer, IBM Storage, and  vice president, storage channels, IBM; Nataraj Nagaratnam, distinguished engineer, chief technology officer and director, cloud security, IBM Hybrid Cloud, IBM; Bina Hallman, vice president, offering management storage and software defined, IBM; Alistair Symon, vice president, storage and software defined infrastructure development, IBM; and Stefanie Chiras, vice president and general manager, RHEL Business Unit, Red Hat.

Also being interviewed are Sam Werner, vice president, offering management, SDI and storage software, IBM; Calline Sanchez, vice president, IBM Systems Lab Services, IBM; Dave Russell, vice president, enterprise strategy, Veeam; Stephanie Trunzo, vice president, worldwide cloud garage, IBM; Bala Rajaraman, IBM fellow and vice president, IBM Cloud, IBM; Bina Hallman, vice president, offering management, storage and software defined, IBM; and Murali Nemani, chief marketing officer, ScienceLogic.

Other guests include Bob Picciano, senior vice president of cognitive systems, IBM; Mark Gildersleeve, vice president, head of business solutions Watson Media and Weather, The Weather Company, IBM; John Wheeler, vice president, global security services, IBM Security; Wyeth Goodenough, vice president of strategic product partnerships, Salesforce; Ajay Patel, senior vice president/general manager, cloud provider software business unit, VMware; Harish Grama, vice president and general manager of IBM Cloud; Jason McGee, IBM fellow, vice president and chief technology officer, cloud platform, foundation services tribe leader, IBM Hybrid Cloud, IBM; Mary O’Brien, general manager, IBM Security; Ed Walsh, general manager, IBM Storage, IBM; and Jay Bellisimo, global general manager, cognitive process, transformation, IBM Global Business Services, IBM.

Livestream of IBM Think

If you are unable to attend the IBM Think event in San Francisco, you can watch live and on demand here.

(* Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: IBM