In 2013 the world was generati... free essay sample

In 2013 the world was generating more than 2.5 billion gigabytes of data every day, and 80% of it was unstructured (IBM, 2013). This is interesting that there would be such a gap in how much data is used and how much of it is unstructured. One would think that by 2013 many entrepreneurs would have been better able to take this market niche and capitalize on it. It is interesting that even IBM who is said to be one of the leading technology-based companies in the world with the deepest analytics portfolio in the industry hasnt closed this gap and been able to provide consumers with more of an ability to produce structured data platforms. Another interesting aspect of IBM had been that they are not just a computer manufacturing company. Most people in the consumer market believe that IBM is just a computer software/ hardware company that produces computers for retailers (and of course Watson), when they actually have operations and investments in places like decision management, content analytics, planning and forecasting, discovery and exploration, business intelligence, predictive analytics, data and content management, stream computing, data warehousing, information integration, and governance (IBM, 2013). We will write a custom essay sample on In 2013 the world was generati or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Even more interesting to this would be the amount of money IBM has invested into this growth, for instance, IBM has more than $24 billion dollars invested to acquire more than 30 of these investments and to bring on more employees to manage them (specifically 15,000 consultants and 400 mathematicians) and make them more efficient (IBM, 2013). It was particularly interesting had been the amount of interest IBM is showing to cloud computing. The company is planning on investing seven billion dollars into this industry (IBM,2013) as they predict it to be a growing marketplace. IBM continually has predicted that by 2016 about a quarter of the worlds electronic applications will have cloud computing capabilities to them. This is further reasoning for them to keep investing money to research and development and acquiring more smaller companies for this market (as they have already acquired fifteen) (IBM, 2013) to further expand their cloud operating capabilities.IBM Data ReportsCommon I ncome Statement Common Balance Sheet Balance Sheet Ratios What the Numbers Say The numbers from the balance sheet and common size income statement show that there are areas in which IBM should be concerned about. These areas would be their service, financing, and even sales. According to the charts, there had been a significant drop in each of these three areas at IBM. Sales dropped about $4 billion, services about $3 billion, and financing about 85 million in the year 2013 in contrast to 2011. However, it would appear from the charts that IBM is getting better about sales costs overall. In the year 2013, the company (IBM) was able to reduce these expenses by about $2.5 billion in comparison to 2011. It seems that IBM did stay maintain a stable growth overall in the rest of the categories (minus the ones just pointed out as concerning). It did appear however that a major strength in the companys investment portfolio would be their most recent (as of 2013) venture in cloud computing, computer and security markets. Seemingly these areas saw a slight increase in these categories on the balance sheet. With regard to the balance sheet ratios it appears that IBMs Improved all across the board in areas like short-term liquidity, operation, and gross margins from what it had been in the year prior, however inventory turnover has also increased significantly It also looks as if pretax and net income ratios have fallen in from the previous year along with pre and post-tax ratios and return on equity.Thoughts on IBM financial Performance from others In the year 2013 IBM lost much of their revenues becoming less profitable and shacking investors causing an increase in the sale of their stocks and subsequent drop in stock value IBM had a higher debt ratio in 2013 and have caused them to finance many of their assets with debts. In 2013 IBM shares had dropped 2.1% (Fay ; Bukovinsky, 2013) in comparison to the 26% gain of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DOW) (Denina, Mang, ; Jawaher, 2016). Couple this with the fact the revenues for IBM had also fallen for six straight quarters (Denina, et al, 2016) in this time frame IBM is seemingly not a company that investors had wanted to invest in. IBM had been constantly losing revenues since 2011 on service, sales, and financing across the board further causing a drop-in investor confidence in the companys performance causing for trading to be lower than expected early in 2013. In contrast to other competitors in the marketplace, it was found that overall IBMs stock share performance remained flat throughout the year. However, IBMs working capital had increased considerably to $11,196 million from $8,805 million in 2011 not to mention they were able to generate more revenue per dollar in this same time frame. This is somewhat like similar what had been indicated in the charts above about IBMs financial performance. In some instances, items were increasing in cost causing for greater financial loses while there were also items in which were increasing IBMs revenues. The charts did indicate that there had been a reduction in sales and to financing which then leads to lesser amounts of revenues, however, one difference had been that there had been an increase net income at the end of 2013 in contrast to the years 2011 and 2012. Not only this, but the charts indicated that sales were a steadily on the uprising for the company and not just moving about in spurts or remaining flat as some may have reported. Seemingly, IBM was able to reduce costs, and increase their revenues while also acquiring multiple businesses to further spread their investment portfolio in the effort to diversify and build a market niche cloud computing.