IBM Cloud Unit CTO Retires, Watson Fails to Impress at CES

By theWHIR

Three top executives from IBM have retired over the past few weeks, including Danny Sabbah, whose 30-year career at IBM ended with his role as chief technology officer and general manager for IBM’s cloud unit.

According to Fortune, Sabbah retired late December. He joined IBM in 1988 and held various roles including leading its next-gen computing initiative and its Tivoli systems management software.

Elsewhere at IBM, Brendan Hannigan, general manager of IBM’s security group, retired in December after a four-year stint at the company that started when IBM acquired Q1 Labs, which he led as CEO and president.

Steve Mills, executive vice president software and systems, retired on New Year’s Eve. He was in charge of IBM’s software group, which included DB2 database, Rational, Tivoli, Lotus andWebSphere, according to a report by The Register.

IBM Shares Fall, IBM Watson the Future?

According to a report by 24/7 Wall Street, some areas of IBM are going to do more for revenue growth than others; “Cloud revenue was up more than 65% in 2015 at that time to $9.4 billion over trailing 12 months, and business analytics revenue was up 19%, if you adjust for currencies (or 9% as reported). Watson continues to grow as well, but the real growth for that will be in the years ahead.”

“Watson may be the software product of the future. However, so far, it is barely more than a demonstration tool for an IBM initiative that has not improved the company’s fortunes enough for investors to believe IBM has much of a future,” according to the report.

IBM’s shares are off nearly 6 percent over the past month and 17 percent over the past year, according to 24/7 Wall Street.

This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/ibm-cloud-unit-cto-retires-watson-fails-to-impress-at-ces