UPDATED 11:07 EDT / MAY 05 2020

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Watch live: IBM Think 2020 goes digital with refreshed perspective from the top

“Let’s get thinking.” That’s the premise behind the IBM Think Digital Event Experience — set to kick off May 5 — that marks the new thinking forced onto the business world in the current pandemic environment.

Think Digital offers virtual attendees featured speaker sessions, real-time Q&As and technical training and credentials through virtual labs and certifications. TheCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, will be airing virtual interviews this week with key IBM Corp. executives and technologists. Click here to watch live.

In response to COVID-19, businesses are shifting operating models, requiring organizations to enhance information technology resiliency and ensure continuity while staying fully connected. IBM Corp. aims to lead the charge in helping organizations build IT infrastructure and software flexibility across their operations now and into the future.

Following IBM’s bombshell acquisition of Red Hat Inc. in 2019 to position Big Blue as a cloud powerhouse, its leadership also underwent a shakeup when Arvind Krishna (formerly senior vice president of cloud and cognitive software at IBM) was appointed chief executive officer of IBM after Ginni Rometty stepped down on April 6 and Jim Whitehurst transitioned from president and CEO of Red Hat to president of IBM. The company’s new leaders see multicloud management as crucial to helping clients’ digital transformations, pushing for easy transport of containerized, mission-critical applications. With the promise of Red Hat as a key investment and strategy for IBM, its market opportunities are underscored by Red Hat’s open-source OpenShift and Linux products, which powers most clouds.

“The IBM opportunity is to combo its market presence with Red Hat’s presence, extend Red Hat into their enterprise install base, and modernize applications and workloads,” said Dave Vellante, chief analyst at Wikibon Inc., SiliconANGLE Media’s sister market research company.

New thinking from new leadership

Promoting a culture of new thinking, Krishna has called out three pillars of IBM’s business: mainframe, services and middleware. But a fourth pillar is becoming a critical focal point for Krishna — hybrid cloud. If IBM hopes to gain significant market share in a cloud world dominated by Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, it must win in cloud management across the range of platforms and services.

Red Hat is strategic in IBM’s hybrid cloud play, assisting in the moving and management of mission-critical workloads. Its approach to handling containerized applications has made it a leader in enterprise Kubernetes deployments. Open source in nature, Red Hat is better able to bridge the gaps between legacy computing and cloud-native architectures. 

Contributing to IBM’s cloud revenue growth for first quarter 2020, Red Hat has so far proven a promising investment. IBM customers plan to increase spending on cloud services, including Red Hat, compared to last year, according to a recent survey from Enterprise Technology Research, a technology market research firm. Containers, cloud and infrastructure services comprise the top three areas of planned spending, all seeing increases from April 2019 despite the COVID-19 economic crisis. 

Given IBM’s expansive customer base around the world and Red Hat’s momentum, their combined forces could usher in new opportunities for Big Blue.

“IBM and Red Hat are in a unique position to create the de facto standard for integrating cloud and hybrid cloud,” Vellante said. “This includes on-prem, public cloud, cross clouds (multicloud), and the edge.”

New thinking for new opportunities

If Krishna is to succeed with his culture of new thinking, he’ll need to extend these expectations to the research and development department, according to Vellante. This has been an area lacking in investment from IBM for the past several years, falling behind AWS, Azure and Google. With a focus on dividends paid to shareholders, R&D decreased in its percentage of overall spending for IBM since 2007. 

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Source: Wikibon

“Krishna has to transform the portfolio by investing heavily in R&D,” Vellante said. “Somehow he has to convince the board to stop pouring money back to investors for a number of years and do whatever they have to do to protect the company from corporate raiders.”

It would be a risky move for Krishna, but it would be in line with analyst expectations for a leader that’s also a technologist. He has an opportunity to focus on bigger technical bets that could result in bigger returns over the long term.

As an acquisition, Red Hat falls somewhat in the category of R&D, but Vellante believes IBM needs organic research to truly innovate. He proposes that edge computing is a “huge opportunity” for IBM where other traditional players are missing this boat. To integrate solutions across the entire stack, from the data center to the edge and back, IBM needs Red Hat. 

“IBM has the opportunity to build end-to-end solutions, powered by Red Hat, to automate the data pipeline from factor to data center to cloud, and everywhere instrumented infrastructure lives,” Vellante said. “Rather than toss traditional Intel-based IT hardware over the fence to the edge, IBM can develop specialized systems and make new silicon investments that can power the edge with very low cost and efficient systems that process data faster in real time.”

How to watch theCUBE interviews

There are various ways to watch the live coverage of the IBM Think Digital Event Experience, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

Livestream of the IBM Think Digital Event Experience

The IBM Think Digital Event Experience is a livestream event, with additional interviews to be broadcast on theCUBE. You can register for free here to access the live coverage. You can also watch it on theCUBE’s dedicated page and YouTube channel.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

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

IBM Think Digital Event Experience Keynote Speakers Include:

  • Arvind Krishna, chief executive officer, IBM
  • Ginni Rometty, executive chairman, IBM
  • Jim Whitehurst, president, IBM
  • Amal Clooney, barrister, Doughty Street Chambers
  • Will.i.am, Founder and CEO of I.AM+
  • Mayim Bialik, writer, actress and neuroscientist
  • Imogen Heap, musician, producer, founder, Mycelia For Music
  • Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt, social psychologist and author of “Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do”
  • Eben Novy-Williams, sports business reporter, Bloomberg
  • Muriel Médard, Cecil H. Green professor of EECS, MIT
  • Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development, Institute for the Future
  • Ralph Clark, president and CEO, ShotSpotter
  • Robin Hauser, director/producer
  • Caterina Fake, investor, Yes VC
  • Saška Mojsilović, IBM fellow, head of trustworthy AI, and co-director of Science for Social Good, IBM Research
  • Riana Lynn, CEO, Journey Foods
  • Aithan Shapira, Consortium for Advanced Adult Learning & Development at McKinsey & Company and lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Dr. Dario Gil, director of IBM Research, IBM

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during the IBM Think Digital Event Experience

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during the IBM Think Digital Event Experience include IBM executives Jim Whitehurst, president; Ritika Gunnar, VP of data and AI expert services and learning; Jesus Mantas, senior managing partner of strategy and innovation; Sriram Raghavan, VP of IBM research AI; and Mani Dasgupta, CMO, IBM Global Business Services. 

We’ll also be talking with IBM’s Ed Walsh, GM of storage, IBM Systems; Rob Thomas, senior VP of the Cloud and Data Platform; Sarah Diamond, global managing director of banking and financial markets; and Jerry Cuomo, VP of blockchain technology and IBM fellow.

TheCUBE will also interview IBM’s David La Rose, GM of the IBM partner ecosystem; Justin Youngblood, VP of IBM security, product management and development; Rob High, VP, IBM fellow, and CTO of IBM edge computing; Abe Asfaw, global lead of quantum education, IBM Quantum; and many more.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. Neither IBM, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: IBM


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