IBM Corp.’s revenue has declined for 19 straight quarters; but in the scheme of things, this is not so dire as it may seem, according to Dave Vellante (@dvellante — pictured, right), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio.

“HPE’s not growing, Oracle’s not growing, Dell’s not growing, Cisco’s not growing, Microsoft’s not growing,” he said in relation to the legacy tech market. What may give IBM an advantage in the cloud market and jumpstart growth is enterprise-readiness, Vellante explained.

Vellante and co-host John Furrier (@furrier — pictured, left) analyzed the industry during this week’s IBM InterConnect event in Las Vegas, NV. (*Disclosure below.)

Both analysts agreed that out-of-the-box enterprise solutions win out over the flash that some younger companies purvey. While it is true that Amazon is progressing in the enterprise, other cloud newcomers are flailing.

“Google has no clue on the enterprise — they’re trying to do it their way,” Furrier said.

IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty called out some of these new companies for loose ethical standards in data and artificial intelligence models.

“She also took a swipe at Google, basically saying, ‘Look, we’re not taking your data to inform some knowledge graph that we’re going to take your IP and give it to the rest of the world. We’re going to protect your data; we’re going to protect your models.'” said Vellante.

He added that IBM is making a strong statement in that regard, which is important for chief information officers, chief data officers and CEOs today.

Internet of Things winner takes all

IBM’s strategy involves more than old-school ethics, though, said Vellante. “IBM is making bets, I mean big bets: blockchain, quantum computing — we’ll see where that goes — cloud.”

IBM’s cognitive platform Watson, artificial intelligence and IoT are also areas of investment, he said.

Among all of these areas, IoT is where IBM and others would do well to focus, according to Furrier. “You’re starting to see IoT be a proof point of operationalizing data,” he said.

Whoever gets their first — legacy companies with enterprise-readiness or newcomers with a cloud-native cache — will take all. IoT will “force people to come out with real solutions. And if you don’t, you’re gone. You’re dead,” Furrier concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM InterConnect 2017. (*Disclosure: SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE is a media partner at InterConnect. Neither IBM nor other conference sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE