TECHNOLOGY giants are a bit like dinosaurs. Most do not adapt successfully to a new age-a "platform shift" in the lingo. A few make it through two and even three. But only a single company spans them all: ibm, which is more than a century old, having started as a maker of tabulating machines that were fed with punch cards. Yet after 21 quarters with falling year-on-year revenues (see chart), doubts had been growing about whether ibm would manage the latest big shifts: the move into the cloud, meaning computing delivered as an online service; and the rise of artificial intelligence (ai), which is a label for all kinds of digital offerings based on insights extracted from reams of data. In May Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company, announced that his firm had sold a third of its total stake in ibm, then valued at $13.5bn, saying that "I don't value ibm the same way I did six years ago when I started buying." Analysts were starting to wonder how long Ginni Rometty, the firm's boss (pictured), would remain at the helm.
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