International Business Machines Corp. announced its 2015 earnings yesterday. The financial figures around IBM's next generation technologies suggest that Ginni Rometty's bet on cloud computing, mobility, analytics, and security is working.
"We continue to make significant progress in our transformation to higher value. In 2015, our strategic imperatives of cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security grew 26% to $29 billion and now represent 35% of our total revenue," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.
IBM Security, the business unit centered on defending enterprises against cyber threats may be last (in terms of revenues amongst the next generation business units) but it is certainly not least. In fact, IBM's security business may be the best illustration of the new Big Blue and things to come from them.
IBM Security grew 12% in 2015, and became a $2 billion business. This is the second straight year that IBM Security posted double-digit growth.
The worldwide cybersecurity industry is defined by market sizing estimates that range from $75 billion in 2015 to $170 billion by 2020. IBM Security is playing in a market that has $100 billion in spending up for grabs over the next five years. The cyber security market is estimated to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.8% from 2015 to 2020, according to a report from Markets and Markets. IBM Security is exceeding overall security market growth.
The cybersecurity revenue opportunity is enormous, and IBM Security is making all the right moves - starting with their new General Manager. Marc van Zadelhoff was recently promoted to GM at IBM Security. For the past 9 years, van Zadelhoff has worked in various strategic roles for IBM security brands. Since taking over the security unit, he has been spearheading a new plan to help the industry battle organized cybercrime.
For 2015, IBM's total cloud revenues increased 43% to $10.2 billion. The cloud security market alone is expected to be worth $8.7 billion by 2019, according to Markets and Markets. As IBM continues growing their cloud business, IBM security should follow.
