IBM Opens Upgraded European X-Force Command Center In Poland

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) recently announced the opening of its new X-Force Command Center in Wroclaw, Poland. The center has advanced facilities to meet the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements of clients. IBM Watson for cybersecurity and expanded data localization services are also available.

This new center joins the global network of IBM X-Force Command Centers, which help to protect against data breach and other cyber threats. IBM will have its own staff to manage its clients’ security data. Cyber-attack reporting will be accelerated, thus minimizing its impact..

"The new IBM X-Force Command Center in Poland is a critical investment in helping clients seamlessly respond to cybersecurity incidents as well as prepare for GDPR," said Julian Meyrick, Vice President, IBM Security, Europe.

IBM in Cyber and Cloud Security

The company’s artificial intelligence platform (AI) IBM Watson, its emerging Blockchain technology and expanding security products drive the company’s penetration in the market.

We believe these will continue to drive growth going forward. The stock has underperformed the S&P 500 on a year-to-date basis. While the index gained 11.1%, the stock lost 5% over the same time period.

Notably, the recent cyber-attack by the ransomware Wannacry has increased the demand for security products. IBM’s broad product portfolio and expanding international footprint places it well to take advantage of this demand.

Per MarketsandMarkets, IT security spending is expected to witness compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.8% to $170 billion by 2020. The research firm also noted that revenues from the cloud security market will increase from $4.09 billion in 2017 to $12.73 billion by 2022 at a CAGR of 25.5%.

Another market research firm, IDC, stated the promising areas for growth are security analytics (10%), threat intelligence (10%+), mobile security (18%); and cloud security (50%). IBM’s improving presence in mobile and cloud security is encouraging.

The company stated that there was a 10% (14% at constant currency) increase in security segment revenues in first-quarter 2017. IBM’s foothold in the security market is quite strong with a huge client base.

However, increasing competition from other key players like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) , Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC) and FireEye (NASDAQ:FEYE) is a headwind.

Zacks Rank

IBM currently has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell)

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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