While becoming cross-platform compatible isn’t exactly a radical notion in general, it most certainly is for a company like IBM, which if it had its druthers and a bit more market share, would probably have been content to maintain the status quo. But if the majority of your customers are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy, it might be a good idea for you to jump on the bandwagon — and that’s precisely what IBM has done by opening up access to Watson across clouds in this fashion.

"When he conducts a seminar, he often does a test where he drops some USB drives marked “confidential” in the parking lot where he’s speaking, and inevitably several people pick them up and stick them into their company laptops. They get a message that says, “This was a test and you failed.” He says he doesn’t do this to embarrass people, but to point out that one move like that could have cost the company billions of dollars."