WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.400 Over the years, IBM has spun off so many businesses that you might wonder what they 00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:09.840 even do anymore. I mean, they literally invented the personal computer, but they sold their entire 00:00:09.840 --> 00:00:15.600 PC division to Lenovo back in 2004. They stopped making consumer printers in 91, 00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:21.200 computer chips in 2014, and Lotus Notes in 2018. So despite the fact you probably haven't 00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:28.000 bought an IBM product in years, how the heck are they still pulling in over 70 billion dollars 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.720 in annual revenue instead of going the way of the passenger pigeon? Well, like many companies, 00:00:32.720 --> 00:00:39.280 IBM still has its fingers in what made it successful in the first place, IT. But it has shifted its 00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:43.440 focus to areas it thinks will be more profitable in the modern age. And it makes sense when you 00:00:43.440 --> 00:00:48.240 think about it. Although PCs were big blues bread and butter for a long time, they became 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:54.080 commodity goods over the years with relatively low profit margins. But these days, IBM is focusing 00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:59.920 on services rather than selling physical products. One huge area where IBM is trying to become an 00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:05.360 industry leader is hybrid cloud. You're probably familiar with cloud computing in general. You 00:01:05.360 --> 00:01:09.680 use it every time you rely on Google servers to give you information about a local restaurant, 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:14.160 or you ask your favorite virtual assistant what the weather is like outside. Hybrid cloud is a 00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:19.600 system that leverages public cloud systems that run public facing services like the example I just 00:01:19.600 --> 00:01:25.280 gave you in combination with an organization's own private cloud. A good example of a business 00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:32.160 that could use hybrid cloud is an online retailer like lttstore.com. Sensitive financial information 00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:36.960 could be kept on the retailer's premises with robust security measures to foil attackers. 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:42.480 Meanwhile, much of the store's data and transaction processing could be handled by a public cloud 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:48.240 system so that consumers aren't waiting forever for a page to load or for a payment to go through. 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:52.320 And the retailer could even buy more processing time and storage on the public cloud during 00:01:52.320 --> 00:01:58.480 heavy shopping periods such as the holiday season, making it a flexible solution that is more scalable. 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:02.800 Because it's usually much cheaper for organizations to just buy the cloud computing 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:07.600 muscle they need rather than hosting everything on site, IBM saw a huge opportunity to profit by 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:13.360 offering their own infrastructure as a service. In fact, IAAS is a common initialism for products 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:18.160 that offer cloud infrastructure as needed. Although IBM has a long way to catch up in 00:02:18.160 --> 00:02:22.720 this space compared to Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure in terms of market share, 00:02:22.720 --> 00:02:27.600 the explosive growth in cloud computing, fueled by higher data speeds and consumer demand, 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:33.360 makes it easy to understand why IBM is focusing on it rather than slinging PCs at Radio Shack. 00:02:36.880 --> 00:02:41.600 The other area IBM is really focusing on is artificial intelligence. You've probably seen 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:48.160 those commercials for something called IBM Watson while watching TV. Watson is a natural language 00:02:48.160 --> 00:02:52.960 AI that, believe it or not, was first designed to answer questions on Jeopardy. But since then, 00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:57.360 it's expanded to support everyone from medical providers who want to ask it about the likelihood 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:01.920 of a certain diagnosis, to large customer service departments who want to use Watson to 00:03:01.920 --> 00:03:06.640 replace their human workers in call centers. Unsurprisingly, this all means that IBM is 00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:11.520 courting business from large corporations like Citigroup and Verizon who want to automate their 00:03:11.600 --> 00:03:16.480 operations as much as possible rather than relying on human analysts. And Big Blue is also hoping 00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:21.920 that Watson's focus on natural language processing will give it a leg up in a quickly crowding 00:03:21.920 --> 00:03:28.640 AI field. IBM has actually been working on AI for a long time. In fact, it demonstrated an AI 00:03:28.640 --> 00:03:34.800 that could play checkers all the way back in 1956. And since IBM has been focused on doing its own 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:40.640 research for decades, they feel confident that AI and cloud are their ways forward. In fact, 00:03:40.640 --> 00:03:45.520 IBM is actually spinning off a large part of its more traditional IT business, which includes 00:03:45.520 --> 00:03:49.760 hosting network services and taking care of infrastructure for large organizations as a 00:03:49.760 --> 00:03:56.480 separate company called Kindrel later on in 2021. So it's clear that IBM has big ambitions. I just 00:03:56.480 --> 00:04:02.960 hope Watson doesn't replace the Techquickie staff one day. Or maybe they do. So thanks for 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:07.840 watching guys. If you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe and hit us up in the comment section 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:11.040 with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future.