With cognitive computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud utilities and so many other bleeding-edge technologies changing the face of tech, the biggest companies are having to find ways to update rapidly without throwing their massive infrastructures into chaos.

As the second day of this year’s IBM Edge conference kicked into action, James Governor, principal analyst and cofounder at RedMonk, joined Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about the larger scope of IBM’s latest power plays and those of its competitors.

Courting customers

Giving an initial overview of the IBM Edge conference, Governor said, “The key messaging that I’ve been seeing, really, [is that] it’s the customer’s story,” something he returned to in addressing the demographic focus of IBM as it retools its image.

On another note, the expanding role of IBM into IoT, cognitive computing and other fields was an encouraging sight to Governor. “Traditionally we had enterprise IT … to see all these other things is frankly vital for IBM to invest in Power [OpenPOWER Architecture],” he said.

But while the turnout and announcements are stirring up interest, some sides of the business equation seemed under-served to Governor. “This is mostly a customer conference. … It’s also an education conference. We don’t necessarily see the devs allowed to come,” he said, though he noted that there were a number of other conventions that did spotlight developers.

Business shifts

Turning to other parts of the business, Governor said, “These days, I feel like the VCs are one of the most important channels. … We are in an era where there’s a lot of talk of disruption, but the threat posture has changed.”

And with that disruption comes the “ground war” for products looking to become the default choice for handling the new ways. “We keep running into all sorts of companies that are using [Pivotal Software’s] Cloud Foundry technologies in earnest,” Governor shared, going further into detail on the battle for customers between Pivotal and IBM’s Bluemix cloud Platform as a Service.

“It’s a cultural change as well as a technical one,” Governor stated, moving from that conflict to other changes in the operations sphere of current-day tech. “You can’t go to a web developer and go, ‘You’re going to use Red Hat now,’ when they have very different expectations.”

From there, a number of other topics were addressed, including RedMonk’s plans for the near future. But a large point of interest came down to Amazon’s elephantine presence in the marketplace and how other companies are trying to edge around it.

“Everyone is, from a vendor perspective, worried about Amazon,” Governor said. “I would not want to be in a price war with Amazon. That does not feel like a great place to be.”

Watch the complete video interview, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Edge 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE