A Quiet Statement of Direction from IBM

An innocuous Announcement Letter may be more telling than it seems ...

With the $1.8B transaction  selling off chunks of its software business barely completed IBM sends another bold message ...

... in a rather unassuming Announcement Letter IBM has laid out a clear strategy to get clients off-premise, and on to the Cloud. 

What does it mean? In summary, no more entitled discounts for an array of on-premise software.

While discounts will remain for hybrid and cloud platforms, as of 1st July these will no longer apply to your on-premise installations. With statements such as:

"where we will continue to focus our investment and innovation"

And ...

"it is recommended that your company evaluate and plan a transition to the equivalent, cloud- and/or hybrid cloud-based offering"

The message seems pretty clear that the future as IBM sees it is ​all in the Cloud, certainly if you're looking for discounts on your next purchase of PA software. It will be interesting to see what might follow in IBM's plans to further 'encourage' cloud migration, and how others might adopt similar strategies.