CNN is reporting that investors are growing increasingly restless with IBM’s cloud strategy and are anxious to see results.
IBM may be one of the most trusted names in the tech industry, with a history going back decades, but that hasn’t prevented it from losing investors’ confidence. Recent years have seen it fall behind in the move to the cloud, surpassed by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
According to CNN, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty cut her price target on IBM and commented: “Despite significant investments, IBM remains challenged as workloads shift to cloud.” She also said that “views of IBM’s positioning in cloud haven’t improved materially and in some cases deteriorated over the past year.”
Some analysts believe a change at the top could help, along with a major cloud strategy announcement. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst is considered a prime candidate. Whitehurst was brought into the company when IBM acquired Red Hat in 2018. Several years prior, in 2014, he announced Red Hat’s own shift to a cloud-based strategy, and his leadership could be a valuable asset in the top role at IBM.
There has even been talk of activist investors buying a stake in the company in an effort to force a shakeup of the status quo. With Microsoft, Amazon and Google getting the lion’s share of the cloud market and news, IBM will need to do something to keep investors happy.