IBM May Finally Stop Shrinking. But Is It a Turnaround?<br />Most of this business software uses cloud technology<br />that runs inside AT&T data centers — in a so-called private cloud, in contrast to a public cloud in which computing services are delivered from remote data centers owned by another company.<br />In artificial intelligence, the company scored a research and public relations triumph in 2011, when its Watson system defeated human champions in the question-and-answer game, “Jeopardy!”<br />But IBM first applied the Watson technology to the daunting realm of cancer research, a lengthy struggle with little short-term financial reward.<br />Big companies, said David Kenny, senior vice president for IBM’s Watson and cloud businesses, are adapting cloud and A. I.<br />technology to make their businesses faster and smarter.<br />The new businesses — “strategic imperatives,” IBM calls them — now account for 45 percent of the company’s revenue.
