IBM draws a red line

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Welcome to Protocol | Enterprise, your comprehensive roundup of everything you need to know about the week in cloud and enterprise software. This Monday: IBM's new red line, Salesforce readies a return to the mothership and a Q&A with one of Microsoft's neurodiverse employees.
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Under CEO Arvind Krishna, IBM is in the midst of the biggest transformation in its 109-year history, doubling down on the hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence.
As part of that overhaul, the company is drawing a new red line. All new products must be built on OpenShift, the company's open-source developer platform it acquired with its $34 billion purchase of Red Hat in 2019.
That mandate is having a broader impact within IBM. The company used to do the majority of its sales directly to customers. Now, it's trying to build out a bigger partner ecosystem.
AI remains a focus for IBM. And if anything, the OpenShift mandate helps there, since AI and machine learning are among the workloads OpenShift is designed for. The company plans to continue to double down on three keys areas: natural language processing, trust in AI and automation.
IBM still has a lot of work to do. For one, it still hasn't come up with a name for the managed infrastructure business it spun off in 2020. (It's still the cringe-worthy NewCo.) But more deeply, the company has to convince customers that IBM, a company that has struggled to remain relevant in the modern cloud era, can provide the flexibility that larger vendors like AWS can't. That could get harder as the hyperscalers also embrace a multicloud model.
— Joe Williams
"We're moving faster now than we've ever moved, and we'll never move this slow again." ICYMI, catch a glimpse of what the future looks like for developers in this Protocol interview with Stacey Shulman, VP and General Manager in Intel's Internet of Things Group for Health, Life Sciences, and Emerging Technologies.
Back to the Tower? Salesforce is gearing up to bring employees back to the office, with an announcement expected as early as this week, according to COO Bret Taylor. Taylor, who is the odds-on favorite to succeed Benioff, has a new direct report: freshly-minted Tableau CEO Mark Nelson.
Neurodiversity in focus. Microsoft software engineer Serena Schaefer overheard parents doubting the ability of neurodiverse high school students like herself to succeed in building a robot. That inspired Schaefer to get into tech. Now, she's a prime example of the changing careers paths for autistic workers.
March 30: Cisco Live kicks off.
"We're moving faster now than we've ever moved, and we'll never move this slow again." ICYMI, catch a glimpse of what the future looks like for developers in this Protocol interview with Stacey Shulman, VP and General Manager in Intel's Internet of Things Group for Health, Life Sciences, and Emerging Technologies.
Thanks for reading — see you Thursday.
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