IBM reports 13th consecutive fall in revenues, looks to the cloud

IBM has announced its latest financial results, revealing that revenues remain uninspiring, but adding that the cloud and services businesses are helping to turn the tide.

Revenue for the first half of 2015 is some $40bn, which is a fall of 13 percent against the previous year, but the cloud, for example, increased its value at the firm and its revenue increased by 70 percent. This is a recurring theme at the firm which made similar statements at the end of the last quarter.

Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer, said that the results were evidence of an ongoing successful transition, adding that the cloud and analytics were finding favour among its customers.

"Our results for the first half of 2015 demonstrate that we continue to
transform our business to higher value and return value to shareholders" she said.

"We expanded margins, continued to innovate across our portfolio and delivered strong growth in our strategic imperatives of cloud, analytics and engagement, which are becoming a significant part of our business."

IBM describes its revenues as flat, but said that new strategies, services and Power Z systems were leading to changes.

The $20.8bn in revenues includes $8.1bn in global technology services revenues, $4.3bn in global business services and $5.8bn in software (PDF). While the GTS revenues increased by one percent year on year, a three percent drop is shown in the other categories.

"There are parts of the business that are impacting our second quarter performance, but the transformation will pay off over the longer term. Parts of our services business aren't delivering sufficient productivity in the base to fund the investments we're making, and to offset the impact of currency," said Martin Schroeter, IBM senior VP and chief financial officer.

"Now we'll get return on the investments over time, but it is impacting profit growth now. We are making the shift in our offerings, [but] we need to drive more productivity to improve the profit profile."

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