<p>The eight-striper wordmark of IBM, the letters "IBM" in City Medium typeface. Introduced in 1967. Trademarked by International Business Machines Corporation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)</p><p>Last week IBM's new CEO Ginni Rometty made a powerful statement at Almaden Labs about IBM's leadership in R&D but her real message was how IBM is vastly different than every other company in their class. IBM was uniquely designed to be immortal and to achieve this it focuses more on agility and building for the future than it does to achieve quarterly results. That's why unlike executives like Mark Hurd while he was HP who cut R&D massively to keep financial analysts happy they increased investment and the result is that IBM is actually doing very well financially and they are at virtually no risk of becoming obsolete or irrelevant.</p><p>Today IBM is showcasing both how much they have transitioned over the last couple of decades and their current strategy which is in sharp contrast the old IBM that companies like Oracle are emulating. This isn't a subtle contrast but once you understand the foundation of the model IBM is creating you'll likely agree that IBM has found a unique way to assure their immortality by insuring their customers succeed.</p><p>Let's discuss this in the context of the IBM Smart Cloud Orchestrator announcement today.</p><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/robenderle/2013/03/04/ibms-powerful-open-strategy-to-assure-immortality/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2013/03/04/finally-ibm-drops-the-other-openstack-shoe/">Finally: IBM drops the other OpenStack shoe</a> (GigaOM)</p><p><a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/1244701-ibm-leads-open-source-cloud-flotilla-against-amazon?source=google_news">IBM Leads Open Source Cloud Flotilla Against Amazon</a> (Seeking Alpha)</p><p><a href="http://www.technewsworld.com/story/77425.html">IBM: Giving Open a Smarter Strategic Advantage</a> (TechNewsWorld)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dTEjDCE84_i4-1Mb1-u95ThRPYRPM&ned=us">8 additional articles.</a></p>
