We start the day with some movers and shakers news concerning new appointments made by two tech titans, namely IBM and Microsoft. Starting with IBM, its new CEO started work on Monday promising to "win the architectural battle in cloud," in a note sent out to employees. Meanwhile Microsoft has a new scalp. It hired the Ex-Apple exec in charge of wireless to come to Microsoft and work on Mixed Reality projects and AI tech.
IBM
MarketWatch reports that Arvind Krishna started work as the CEO of IBM on Monday. To ease himself into the role and prepare the employees Krishna published a letter to introduce himself and sketch out his hopes and strategic plans. Not that Mr Krishna is new to IBM, as he has been working at Big Blue for over 29 years.
Krishna made clear IBM's two major strategic battles in his note. In brief he is steering IBM toward the goal of becoming the go-to firm for technology in the fields of hybrid cloud and AI. On the former, Krishna was particularly forthright, asserting that IBM needs to "win the architectural battle in cloud." It will do this by establishing "Linux, containers and Kubernetes as the new standard," he explained.
Red Hat, acquired by IBM just last year, if of course Krishna's favoured Linux distro. IBM will turn Red Hat OpenShift into the "default choice for hybrid cloud in the same way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the default choice for the operating system," expects Krishna.
In another IBM exec appointment news morsel, former Bank of America CTO, Howard Boville, has been announced as new head of Cloud business by the new CEO. Boville "is a proven strategist and expert in the realm of cloud and has played a critical role in developing the financial services ready public cloud with IBM," Krishna explained to employees.
Whatever you may think about the above, especially the intended direction of travel for IBM, the markets looked upon the appointment favourably. IBM shares were up nearly 8 per cent to $114.82 in trading on Monday.
Microsoft
Ruben Caballero, who previously worked as a VP of Engineering at Apple (14 years) and was in charge of wireless technologies, has a new job at Microsoft. In his LinkedIn profile, you can see that Caballero's new post at Microsoft is as Corporate Vice President Engineering - Hardware Design & Technology. He will be working in Mixed Reality & Ai, with special focus on the HoloLens, Special Projects and more. One must expect that Caballero's wireless expertise from his time at Apple will be leveraged in his upcoming MR and AI works.
