IBM: Cloud Revenue Hit $7B In 2014

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)’s decision to focus most of its efforts on cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security seems to have been the right one. Headquartered in Armonk, New York, Big Blue on a Tuesday earnings call with investors said its total cloud revenue for fiscal year 2014 hit $7 billion, up 60 percent from the prior-year period.

“We are making significant progress in our transformation, continuing to shift
IBM’s business to higher value, and investing and positioning ourselves for the
longer term,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive
officer, in a statement.

Big Blue also reported that its cloud delivered as a service revenues of $3 billion are up approximately 75 percent year over year.

Big Blue’s cloud portfolio generated $4.40 billion in cloud revenues in 2013, up from $2.60 billion in 2012. IBM’s cloud computing solutions include SaaS business applications, IaaS infrastructure services, a PaaS developer platform, private and hybrid cloud, and cloud consulting.

The company recently snagged the number one spot in the growing cloud services market, according to the 2014 Talkin’ Cloud 100, which ranks the world’s top cloud service providers, aggregators, brokers and more according to cloud revenues and other metrics. Companies on the 2014 list were ranked based on an internal formula that places heavy weighting on recurring cloud revenues for 2013.

IBM recently opened a cloud data center in Queretaro, Mexico, intended to help strengthen IBM’s cloud presence in Latin America. It additionally announced the opening of a cloud data center with SoftLayer in Germany — a first for Big Blue.

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Other notable upsides:

• Business analytics revenue up 7 percent to nearly $17 billion.
• Mobile revenue more than tripled.
• Security revenue up 19 percent.

The company reported its revenue for Q4 to be $24.1 billion, down 12 percent from the year-ago quarter. IBM’s revenues have declined for the 11th consecutive quarter.

IBM’s Q4 net income dropped to $5.5 billion, down 11 percent from Q4 2013.

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