My confidence in our future together

Below is the letter I shared with IBMers today.

Dear IBMers,

One year ago today, I was honored to become the CEO of IBM. While the year has been challenging for all of us, I’ve been inspired by how IBMers have come together to support each other, our business, and our clients. The way we kept working, inventing, and partnering to write the next chapter of this storied company has reaffirmed my belief that IBM’s greatest strength is you—the IBMer.

Our one-year report card

This anniversary marks more than a symbolic milestone. It provides an opportunity to candidly assess how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.

Our progress can be summed up in one word: focus. Over the last year, we stayed focused on our clients and the financial stability of our business, even while navigating the health and safety challenges of the pandemic. We also honed our corporate strategy around the transformative power of hybrid cloud and AI, making a series of bold and decisive moves—from the announcement to separate our managed infrastructure services business, to the more than 10 acquisitions underway or closed, as well as the investments we are making to expand our ecosystem of partners. Meanwhile, Red Hat continued its strong performance. This strategic focus provides a solid foundation to unlock future growth.

Which brings me to the goal ahead of us: growth. Revenue growth is our top priority and where we must concentrate our efforts. The significant changes we are making to our portfolio and our go-to-market strategy are well-conceived. But we must do more here to accelerate the pace of these changes so they can drive sustainable growth.

A sense of optimism

I couldn’t be more optimistic about our future as a hybrid cloud and AI platform company. Simply put, hybrid cloud is where the world’s businesses are going (75% of enterprise workloads have yet to move to the cloud). It’s what our clients are asking for (+2800 hybrid cloud platform clients and growing). It’s what delivers clients the most value (2.5x more than a public cloud only approach). And it’s where the money is (a $1 trillion opportunity).

In the past year, more businesses chose IBM to help them realize the true potential of hybrid cloud and AI. We are helping companies like Siemens to unlock value from their trove of industrial IoT data, and Schlumberger to allow its customers to deploy applications across any infrastructure. At a moment when connectivity has become so vital, we are helping telcos, such as Bharti Airtel, AT&T, Telefonica, Telecom Egypt or Vodafone Portugal transform their networks. And major global companies across every industry are turning to us to emerge stronger from the pandemic.  

Innovation is at the root of these successes. IBM continues to deliver important innovations —from Watson AIOps, to IBM Cloud Satellite, to quantum. The critical innovations we bring to each new generation of IBM Z continue to spur renewed interest and drive client demand. z15 is now shipping the largest capacity in the platform’s history. And we are innovating through partnership, like our collaboration with Intel to accelerate advancements in the semiconductor industry, or our announcement with Cleveland Clinic to increase the pace of discovery in healthcare.

All these examples illustrate the same point: We are building a platform that is both a destination for the world’s massive computing needs and a powerful catalyst for innovation. But our platform is only part of the story. What clients also need from IBM is a trusted partner that can work with them side-by-side to deeply transform their business and drive growth. This is why our ingenuity and technical expertise matter more than ever.

Tech for good

Leadership is not a birthright. To seize it, we must be willing to change everything about our company, except one thing—our values.

We are continuing to use our scale, scope and trust to live those values and make an impact on important societal issues. For instance, to help tackle the climate crisis, we set a new goal to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030—without the use of carbon offsets. And the State of New York in the U.S. just rolled out the Excelsior Pass—built on the IBM Digital Health Pass and blockchain—to help businesses safely reopen.

I also encourage all of you to read our upcoming Diversity and Inclusion report, which will come out next week, to see the steps we have taken to create a culture where employees of all backgrounds can thrive.

Tech for growth

A year into my tenure, and I love this company more than ever. The reason is simple. Technology is one of the greatest forces in the world today. As computing becomes even more ubiquitous and data grows exponentially, we have a tremendous opportunity to infuse greater intelligence into the systems that underpin business, commerce and society and help our clients emerge stronger from the pandemic.

I’m extremely proud of what we have achieved together so far. It’s been a year of intense focus. And now we turn our attention to our future growth—and I’m using the most expansive definition of growth. Growth as a company. Growth in our ability to serve clients. Growth as individuals. And growth in terms of the impact that we have on the world.

I am excited and confident about what we will accomplish together.