IBM CEO Arvind Krishna Touches on How IBM MQ Contributes to the Overall Earnings Plans for IBM

During a June 2^nd interview at the Bernstein 38th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference, Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein’s IT Hardware and Electric Vehicles Analyst, talks with Arvind Krishna, the Chairman and CEO of IBM. In the interview focused on IBM financials, Mr. Krishna discusses the role of IBM MQ even as the new (sans Kyndryl) IBM is solely and “almost maniacally” focused on hybrid/multi cloud and artificial intelligence.

In the interview, Krishna talks about the focus on AI, despite IBM having divested Watson Health, saying that the “Watson Health divestment has got nothing to do with our commitment to AI and to the Watson brand.” His answer to “So, then why divest Watson Health?” is that it’s a question of verticals versus horizontals. The IBM play in AI is looking to provide a horizontal solution.

“We will always have an industry lens,” he explains, “but through our consulting team, we want to work on technologies that are horizontal across all industries. Verticals should belong to people who really have all of the domain expertise, they have credibility in that vertical.”

Toni then pointed out that the original strategy for Watson was horizontal and then it became vertically-focused and Arvind explained that decision was based on two trends: A demographic shift where there are fewer people with specific tech skills, combined with inflation and labor cost increases. “You put those two together and that will then argue for AI and automation in general being applied to more and more domains,” Arvind emphasized.

From there the discussion moved to geographical ma