Ibm Smarter Planet Business Strategy

1.What is IBM’s “Smarter Planet” business strategy? How does this strategy relate to IBM's mission and values?

As Ann Rubin points out “Smarter Planet’ is not an advertising campaign, it’s not even a marketing campaign, it is a business strategy.” This strategy is going to make the world smarter in all its aspects. Since huge stream of data is appearing every day, and new trends in every industry are becoming more and more popular, IBM decided to make all these ideas more efficient and productive, so that it will correspond to IBM’s core values and mission. There is nothing more important as to see client’s success, so that’s why in order to satisfy client’s needs IBM is continuously observing and studying new trends and market demands, that will matter for the company and for the world, and then apply these innovations into life. These values help to define the organizational culture at IBM through the strategies employees choose and the plans of how to accomplish them.

To sum up, I would like to say that Smarter Planet strategy helps to improve efficiency and increase productivity for industries, companies and cities and this result we can observe not only through clients’ feedback but also through comparison of how the world changes every day.

1. Conduct a SWOT analysis for IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative. What are the relevant trends to consider for the next three to five years?

Strengths:

Strong IBM brand name

Well defined targeted audience

Ability to create value for the clients

Ability to satisfy customers needs and demands

Weakness

IBM company size may cause miscommunication in decision making

Too quick growth of new trends

Customers’ demands are different

Spending much time for a trend research and how to apply it into life

Opportunities

Applying new initiatives

Opening new offices around the world

Continues revenue growth

Offering new services for the countries

Threats

Economic crises in some of the European countries

Big landscape of competitors

Intellectual property issues

Much time to get up to speed for the developing countries where IBM’s offices are located

What considers relevant trends, I think that we should take into consideration growth of IT that influences our lives. Cloud computing is what we notice now becoming more and more popular. Everything stores on the private cloud networks as this solution allow for low-cost, on-demand scalability. One more fast growing trend is a mobile device. Every PC market is on the verge of being replaced by tablets and smart phones. Developing new applications that increase productivity and employee efficiency is one more relevant trend since applications for video conferencing and communication help employees who are located in different offices around the world work collaboratively.