IBM

IBM is an enterprise technology company in Armonk, New York, selling software such as Db2, consulting and infrastructure for hybrid cloud and AI.

IBM builds the systems that large organisations run their core operations on, and its platforms put AI inside those systems and workflows rather than beside them. The company began as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and took the IBM name in 1924. It employs more than 297,000 people in more than 170 countries. The business has three parts: software, consulting and infrastructure. Its software is built to run across hybrid cloud environments, so the same products serve a company's own data centre and public clouds. Db2 is IBM's relational database, sold as self-managed editions and as a managed service on IBM Cloud. Around it sit Db2 Warehouse, Db2 Big SQL, Db2 Bridge for data movement and the Db2 Genius Hub console. Other IBM software includes watsonx.data and API Connect. IBM completed its acquisition of Red Hat on 9 July 2019, and Red Hat's products carry on under the Red Hat name. Among them is Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, which automates the configuration of servers, network devices and cloud resources from playbooks. Red Hat OpenShift is a Kubernetes application platform that runs containerised applications on a company's own infrastructure or as a managed service on AWS and other clouds. IBM closed its purchase of HashiCorp on 27 February 2025. HashiCorp's Terraform describes cloud infrastructure in HCL configuration files and provisions it across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, previewing every change as a plan first. IBM Technology Expert Labs helps clients get more from the IBM products they already run, and more than 2,500 businesses work with IBM through its Partner Plus program. IBM deploys its own solutions inside the company before it offers them to clients, which shapes how it sells: proven software paired with the consulting needed to adopt it.