IBM To sell Watson Marketing, and commerce solution to Centerbridge

IBM has signed an agreement to sell its marketing and commerce portfolios including Watson Marketing, to Centerbridge Partners, L.P. for an undisclosed amount. for an undisclosed amount later this year, in a move away from martech and toward the cloud.

Centerbridge is a private equity firm based in New York and the transaction should close in mid-2019. The firm has plan in place to use these solutions to build a new standalone company.

IBM’s Watson platform remains one of the most complete off-the-shelf platforms available on the marketplace. However, many new engagements require significant consulting work to gather and curate data. Now IBM will shift focus to cloud, AI, supply chain, which is 1 Trillion-dollar growth market and 80% of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud - i.e., lots of value to still be unlocked.

Today, IBM is focused on the emerging, high-value segments of the IT industry and accelerating our leadership in artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid cloud, SaaS, blockchain and supply chain, among other strategic technologies. IBM owned Red Hat and IBM could stand a chance to position themselves against those three, particularly by offering a hybrid cloud alternative.

By selling their marketing and commerce portfolios, IBM will be able to double down on their commitment to staying competitive in the cloud.