IBM SWOT Analysis

1. Background of IBM

1.1. General Overview of IBM

1.2. Introduction to IBM

IBM, a multinational computer technology company whose nickname is "Big Blue." The root of this company is from the 1880s. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in more than 170 countries. The company was founded in 1911 in Endicott, New York, formerly known as the Computer Tabulation and Recording Company (CTR), and was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924.

1.3. Development Timeline of IBM

2. SWOT Analysis of IBM

To succeed in its business, every organization needs to know its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. As for the IBM SWOT analysis, in the current situation of the market, competitions are an increasing factor daily. SWOT analysis mainly helps to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the company. Thus, it becomes necessary to use SWOT analysis to make some good plans to sustain itself at the market's triumph. With this analysis's help, the company can determine its strengths and weaknesses and quickly undermine some internal strategies to overcome the situation. It helps to improve their position in the global market.

2.1. SWOT Analysis of IBM in Detail

Strength:

In SWOT analysis, 'S' actually stands for strength. It is always essential to determine the strength of IBM. It helps in boosting up the company's motivation towards success:

• IBM has a brand value. According to the Brand Finance report of 2016, the company ranks in 22nd position. The brand value becomes $ 31.786 Billion;
• In the sector of technology, IBM stands in the sixth position throughout the entire globe;
• In terms of the long-term growth strategy, the company focuses on two dimensions. One is to attract their clients with their innovative, competitive, and efficient business applications. And secondly, the providence of long-term value towards the shareholder. It helps them to instigate their capabilities in terms of service, systems, and software;
• To meet up the high demands of the changing technology, IBM needs to install them accordingly. Thus they need to sell their microelectronic business. They can invest more than $ 17 billion to devise their capabilities in analytics and big data. Hence, this proves them to be updated;
• Since they have $17 Billion of profit from data analytics. Therefore, they established the group of Watson to install the cognitive computations.

Weakness:

For any company, it is pretty common to have some weaknesses. The companies need to find strategies that can remove those weaknesses. When a company is in a competitive market, any weakness can impact its growth against its competitors. The company can plan some long-term plans to change those weaknesses into their strengths. IBM also has some weaknesses. For example:

• Between 2015-2016, the company has suffered a drastic decline. The brand value becomes $3.642 Billion;
• The company commits an involvement in litigations repeatedly. Due to a defective system, Bridgestone America has filed a $600 million lawsuit against the company in 2013;
• It has harmed the company's brand value and hence is a weakness of the company.

Opportunities:

A company must consider the opportunities that they can get to survive the high market competition. They must set their policies as per those opportunities to ensure their growth in the future. They should also consider the condition of the market while working on their opportunities. Here are some opportunities for IBM:

• Based on the evaluation, the market reach which is required is $125 billion. Here, in this case, $1 billion is invested for Watson, and $100 million is for starting new cognitive apps. Moreover, it also has a lay fetter with Twitter for its massive data stream to IBM's cloud-based analytics;
• The public demand for the service of Cloud-based is growing every day. There is a presumption that the growth rate may reach 33%;
• The business is expanding as it focuses on engagement solutions. The company comprises 23 companies relating to mobile, security, and social sectors. Moreover, IBM is now the partner of Apple to make easy use of personal applications.

Threats:

All the companies that survive in a competitive market must have some threats that can stop their growth. Other competent opponents' market conditions change of taste of the customers can be prevalent threats. Similarly, a famous brand like IBM also has some threats:

• The company faces enormous competition from Amazon, Accenture, CSC, Hewlett-Packard, and Fujitsu;
• Even the business of software has high competition with Microsoft, CA, Oracle, and SAP;
• Cisco, Dell, HP, and Oracle's systems lead to a high clash with this company's technological segment;
• Since the global market is in turbulence, the company needs to keep itself aware of the prices and quality of the raw materials, labor, services, and more. It helps to follow up the competition level in the market. Even the fluctuations of the currency affect the revenue of the company.

3. Key Takeaways

The IBM SWOT analysis helps the company to determine the various scopes to enlarge themselves. Thus the following points are recommended based on the SWOT analysis:

1. There can be exploitation of technological integration opportunities through the alliances within the firm and supplementary industries;
2. The product's advantages need to improve, other than the reformation in the innovative process for bringing up the product uniqueness;
3. There is less risk exposer in the market of information technology if diversification takes place in the business. It helps to spread the risk.

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