IBM says it’s No. 3 in cloud sales; market says Google

IBM has struggled with declining revenue over much of the past decade as it was slow to adapt to the shift in computing to the cloud. — Dreamstime/TNS

When Alphabet Inc's Google published revenue from its cloud business for the first time last month, a feeling of bitter vindication swept through International Business Machines Corp.

Google, which is ranked the third-biggest cloud provider in the world by industry analysts, reported US$9bil (RM38bil) in cloud revenue for 2019. IBM lists US$21bil (RM89bil) in cloud sales, yet usually it’s relegated to fifth place. Research firm Gartner Inc even excludes it from their top-six rankings. After Google’s report, employees at IBM thought they’d finally get the credit they deserved.