While IBM Docs will have to compete directly with more popular and competitively priced products like Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365 and a number of other online office suites, IBM is betting on ”enterprise-grade security” and its “collective” offering to draw customers. The same is true for most of IBM’s cloud offerings, i.e. they all individually have a number of competitors, but there is no other company that offers all of the them collectively. This could turn out to be huge strategic advantage for IBM.

In this intensely competitive market where every player is mindlessly adding services and solutions to its cloud portfolio, a more strategic approach is what will determine who makes the most out of this mammoth opportunity. From the looks of it, IBM might just be doing that.