Ginni Rometty, the CEO who made IBM grow again

Ginni Rometty, who entered IBM at 24, has climbed all the ladders. 2019 looks good for leaders changing IT giants. The company is likely to report its first increase in revenue in seven years on Tuesday.

It’s been a long crossroads for IBM. On Tuesday, January 22, the US computer group reported its first annual increase in turnover in seven years. Granted, the increase was modest — less than 1 percent — but it was also a real achievement for Ginni Rometty, the boss of the American computer giant nicknamed Big Blue. If not for a sigh of relief: She hadn’t experienced this since taking office on January 1, 2012.
Rometty: “We will create 1,800 jobs in France”
Founded in 1911 in Endicott, New York, International Business Machines Corporation is the flagship of the American technology industry. From 1967 to the 1980s, the company was even the world’s most valuable company. Its history has been punctuated with major innovations: punch cards, hard drives, barcodes, personal computers… and transformation. “IBM has always known how to reinvent itself,” likes to remind Ms. Rometty.

But the shifts that have taken place in recent years are certainly more brutal than all previous shifts. “We are in a time of rapid change and it’s not going to stop,” the leader admitted at a conference organized in October 2018. Like other big names in the industry, IBM had to adapt to the new reality. IDC analyst Frank Gens emphasized that he must “move from the world of clients and computer servers to the world of cloud computing [dematerialized computing], mobile, artificial intelligence”.

Ms. Rometty was born in Chicago in 1957. A graduate of computer science and electrical engineering, she started her career at General Motors in 1979. Two years later, she joined IBM as a systems engineer. She will climb all the ladders. “I had to learn to get out of my comfort zone,” she told Bloomberg in 2017. The manager is particularly involved in the commercial services offensive, which will become IBM’s number one source in a few years’ time. profit.

“Inspire other women”
In 2002, Ms Rometty campaigned to buy the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK. An adventure between two societies with completely opposite cultures. “She allowed the acquisition to work,” her former IBM chief, Sam Palmisano, later said. Since 2009, Ms. Rometty has overseen the sales and marketing teams. It operates in new markets such as China, Brazil or India. It also pushes the group into new areas such as cloud, artificial intelligence and data analytics

Ginni Rometty, who entered IBM at 24, has climbed all the ladders. 2019 looks good for leaders changing IT giants. The company is likely to report its first increase in revenue in seven years on Tuesday.