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Business Management Assignment International Business across Borders

   

Added on  2020-04-01

15 Pages4465 Words44 Views
Business Management 1International Business across BordersStudent’s NameInstitutional AffiliationCourseInstructorDate of Submission

Business Management 2IBM CORPORATIONCompany OverviewThe International Business Machines Corporation, also known as IBM is a multinationalcompany of technology having its headquarters in New York. However, IBM operates in morethan 170 nations. The company mainly deals in the manufacturing and marketing of middleware,computers hardware, and software. It also offers consulting and hosting services in mainframecomputing to areas of nanotechnology. IBM also happens to be a research organization (IBM2017). Some of the inventions that have resulted from the creations of IBM are: i)The automated teller machines ii)PCs iii)Floppy disks iv)Hard disk drives v)Magnetic stripe cards vi)Relational databases vii)SQL language viii)UPC barcode ix)Dynamic random-access memory. In the recent years, IBM has gradually changed its business mix through marketscommoditization. In this case, the focus is put on markets with higher-value and also profitable.Such can be associated with certain operations like selling off of ThinkPad machines and alsoserver businesses (IBM 2017). However, the same strategy involved the acquiring of othercompanies. IBM is also one of the thirty companies regarded as the highest employing in theworld. Currently, more than 380,000 workers are employed in the system. The wide variety ofproducts offered by IBM fall in the following categories: i)Cloud computing ii)Cognitive computing iii)Commerce iv)Analytics and data v)Internet of Things

Business Management 3vi)Infrastructure, security and mobile.The cloud sector happens to be the largest and entails the infrastructure-as-a-service also knownas the IaaS, the software-as-a-service, and the platform-as-a-service. The three services areprovided in three different models, namely; the private, public, and hybrid models of clouddelivery. Another important service offered by IBM is ICDES (Cloud Data Encryption Services).This is performed through the use of cryptographic splitting for the purpose of securing customerdata (IBM 2017). The company offers an encryption hardware known as the Secure Blue which is built asmicroprocessors. Regarding the same, IBM developed (In 2016) all-flash arrays for midsized andsmall companies. The arrays also included data compression software, system snapshots andprovisioning software. Another major service provided IBM is IT outsourcing. This service aloneis offered in more than fifty data centers worldwide. Talking of the inventions created, theKenexa suite is purposed to offer retention solutions and employment opportunities. Its retentionsolutions include Brass Ring. Brass Ring happens to be a tracking system that thousands ofcompanies use for hiring and firing workers (Rouse 2017). However, all the achievements thathave been realized by IBM don’t come for granted. The company has developed many initiativesto ensure that its growth is steady. One of these initiatives is the Smarter Planet. This initiative isassociated with ensuring that IBM achieves economic growth, sustainable development, near-term efficiency, and progress in the society. The initiative involves the targeting of certainopportunities like systems of water management, smart grids, development of greener buildingsand traffic congestion solutions. The second initiative is the development of the Watsontechnology. This is a platform that employs machine learning and processing of natural languageto decrypt large amount of data that is unstructured data. The same technology has been widelydeployed in call centers and customer assistant service centers. International Competitive StrategySeveral years down the line, IBM has operated in the global IT industry due to its genericstrategies for intensive growth and competitive advantage. The same strategies have been used toexploit opportunities for growth in several global markets. At the core of these competitivestrategies is a steady technological innovation growth rate (IBM Responsibility Report 2016).

Business Management 4The company also happens to be employing the intensive strategies to ensure business growth.These intensive strategies are purposed to address opportunities and business potentials withinthe industry. The achieved success is a common indicator of how effective these strategies havebeen for IBM. They have helped in the definition of strategic objectives and also contributed tothe company’s growth aims as well as stability (IBM Responsibility Report 2016). It is as aresult of the identified strategies that the company’s management team has been able todetermine the best decisions towards development as well as the best course towards themaintenance of a competitive advantage that is strong. Also, the IBMers (referring to the workersbody) ensure that they perform their responsibilities for the purpose of facilitating theimplementation of the identified strategies and overall success of the business (IBMResponsibility Report 2016). i)The Generic Strategy To ensure that it achieves a competitive advantage, IBM’s main initiative in this strategy is costleadership. It is all about the maintenance of low costs within business processes. The mainreason for such is to have competitive pricing established; or otherwise profit marginsmaximization. The low costs are achieved via ensuring that economies of scale are kept high.IBM has also implemented competitive pricing for its services and products in each and everymarket. From the strategy of cost leadership, IBM has been able to expand its business processesscale to enhance the economies of scale. In return, the economies of scale strengthen thecompany’s IT business. Apart from the cost leadership initiative, IBM also has another initiativewhich is all about investing more in R&D (research and development) for the purpose ofboosting its level of competitiveness. This initiative is based on product value. It contributes tothe basics of IBM’s strategies supporting competitive advantage.ii)Intensive Growth StrategyIn this case, the main initiative is product development. Here, the objective is to expand thebusiness via continuous innovation so as to have new products introduced in the targeted market.However, the initiative of cost leadership also supports the development of products, in this case,via efficiencies enabling IBM to offer new products and services at prices that are competitive.

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