Introduction
In the late 1990s, IBM — the legendary “Big Blue” — stood at a strategic crossroads. The computing industry was on the cusp of a paradigm shift from selling standalone hardware and software to delivering technology “as a service” over the internet. Companies like Salesforce.com were just emerging with the radical idea of providing software on a subscription via the web (the model later dubbed Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS)[1]. Around the same time, Amazon was an upstart online retailer investing heavily in IT infrastructure, unknowingly laying the groundwork for what would become the first major cloud computing platform. IBM, by contrast, was an incumbent giant deeply invested in selling enterprise hardware and on-premises solutions. This case study examines how IBM grappled with (and ultimately missed) the opportunity to pivot to an as-a-service model, and compares that scenario with the strategic choice facing Tesla today. We will explore how companies like Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe successfully embraced service-centric business models, and why Tesla’s leadership now faces a similarly defining decision: whether to remain a seller of cars or transform into a provider of “Transportation-as-a-Service.” The analysis focuses not on minute timelines but on the philosophy and strategic importance of embracing a disruptive new business model at the right moment.
IBM in the Late 1990s: A Strategic Crossroads
By the late 1990s, IBM was still a behemoth in the technology industry, dominating enterprise computing with its mainframes, servers, and enterprise software. However, the seeds of disruption were being planted. In 1999, Salesforce.com was founded with a then-novel proposition: deliver enterprise software (customer relationship management) entirely online on a subscription basis[1]. Instead of installing software on local servers and paying hefty one-time license fees, customers could use Salesforce’s CRM via a web browser and pay per user per month. This heralded the software-as-a-service revolution – software delivered “on-demand” from the cloud.
Meanwhile, IBM’s own business at this time was heavily based on selling high-margin hardware (mainframes, AS/400 systems, etc.), software licenses, and associated consulting services. IBM did have a services arm (IBM Global Services) but its proposals to clients still largely revolved around selling IBM hardware and software, with services to implement them. Internally, IBM was structured and incentivized to protect these legacy revenue streams. An internal inquiry later revealed that IBM in the 1990s was too focused on hitting short-term profit targets from existing customers, at the expense of investing in new business models or attracting future clients[2][3]. In other words, IBM was prioritizing sustaining its current business over innovating for the next wave. This mindset contributed to a critical misjudgment: IBM “didn’t consider the cloud until it was too late.” As one retrospective put it, the company failed to act fast enough and underestimated how quickly customers would shift to cloud computing models[4].
The Emergence of “As-a-Service” (1999–2000s)
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the rise of companies that seized the opportunity IBM hesitated to embrace. Salesforce’s success in delivering subscription-based software showed that businesses were willing to forego buying hardware/software and instead consume it as a service online. Soon, other pioneers broadened the concept. In 2002, Amazon — then known primarily as an online bookstore — revealed an innovative use of its in-house computing infrastructure. Amazon found that its data centers were vastly underutilized except during peak retail seasons, a common problem at the time[5]. Solving this became a catalyst for Amazon to offer web-based computing services to external customers. By 2006, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), allowing businesses to rent computing power and storage on Amazon’s servers on a pay-as-you-go basis[6]. This was a radical shift: computing became a utility that could be consumed on demand, very much analogous to a monthly service rather than a capital purchase of machines.
Crucially, these new entrants had business models diametrically opposed to IBM’s traditional sales model. Salesforce didn’t sell software for customers to run on their own machines; it ran the software for them and charged a subscription. AWS didn’t sell physical servers; it rented slices of its own servers by the hour. The economic model was “recurring revenue” – predictable monthly or annual fees – versus IBM’s one-time product sales. This model also created a much tighter vendor-customer relationship (continuous service delivery and support) rather than a one-off transaction. The strategic appeal of this shift became evident in the financial success of these services. For example, AWS’s utility computing model turned out to be enormously profitable – in recent years AWS has generated the majority of Amazon’s operating profits (even though Amazon’s retail division is larger in revenue)[7]. In short, by the mid-2000s it was clear that “as-a-service” was not only technologically feasible but could be more lucrative in the long run than traditional sales.
IBM’s leadership was certainly aware of these developments. In fact, IBM had identified many of the relevant technological trends early on. The company’s researchers and engineers experimented with concepts like grid computing and virtualization in the late 1990s, laying technical groundwork for cloud services[8]. However, recognizing a trend is not the same as reorganizing an entire business to capitalize on it. IBM’s entrenched structure made it difficult to pivot with agility. The company’s enterprise clients were generating substantial revenue through bespoke, customized projects, which meant IBM’s engineering teams were busy tailoring one-off solutions for each big customer[9]. This focus on highly customized (but non-repeatable) projects left IBM poorly positioned to develop a scalable, one-size-fits-many cloud product. In essence, IBM was stuck in the mindset of selling “hardware + custom services” instead of offering standardized services at scale.
IBM’s Decision: Incremental Change vs. Bold Pivot
Confronted with the rise of SaaS and cloud competitors, IBM faced a classic innovator’s dilemma: should it protect its high-profit hardware and software licensing business, or risk disrupting itself by offering cloud services that might cannibalize those very revenues? IBM’s choice, in hindsight, was to take an incremental and cautious approach rather than a bold pivot. Throughout the early 2000s, IBM continued to pitch itself as a solutions provider, bundling hardware, software, and consulting, and emphasized “e-business” and later “on-demand business” in its marketing. But it stopped short of transforming into a true cloud service provider for external customers. IBM did launch some early cloud-like services (for instance, a utility computing service and Linux hosting on IBM mainframes), but these were limited in scope. The company attempted a hybrid strategy – serving its legacy on-premises customers while dabbling in on-demand offerings – which “preserved short-term revenue but diluted focus” just as nimbler competitors were going all-in on cloud[10].
One major consequence of IBM’s half-measures was internal disarray. To avoid upsetting its existing businesses, IBM initially set up separate groups to explore cloud services, leading to internal competition and duplication. At one point, IBM had two competing cloud architectures being developed in parallel, wasting resources and time on internal debates rather than presenting a unified cloud solution to the market[11]. Political capital was spent fighting over internal turf instead of capturing market share. IBM’s leadership, fearing the loss of lucrative hardware sales and consulting engagements, simply did not fully empower the cloud initiatives. As the Startup Stash analysis of IBM’s cloud journey notes, “IBM’s failure to dominate cloud computing remains one of the most instructive cases in tech history – not because they lacked foresight…They failed because organizational inertia [and] misaligned incentives…constrained IBM”[12]. In other words, IBM knew where the market was heading, but could not realign its organization and resources fast enough to meet that future.
Ultimately, IBM’s true commitment to cloud came very late. It was 2013 when IBM made a decisive push by investing heavily in cloud infrastructure (for example, acquiring SoftLayer and launching the IBM Bluemix cloud platform)[13]. By then, AWS had already been in the market for seven years and had established an enormous lead. IBM’s delay – driven by internal resistance to cannibalizing its traditional lines of business[14] – meant that it entered the cloud race as a distant follower. Even IBM’s eventual strategy centered on “hybrid cloud” (integrating cloud with on-premises systems) rather than a pure public cloud offering, reflecting that IBM never fully let go of its old model of catering to on-site enterprise data centers[15][16].
What IBM Lost by Not Pivoting
The cost of IBM’s strategic hesitation became starkly clear over the ensuing two decades. The companies that did embrace the as-a-service model in IBM’s place reaped enormous rewards. Salesforce, starting from nothing in 1999, grew into a \$200+ billion enterprise software leader by offering cloud-based CRM that displaced many on-premise solutions IBM could have supported. Amazon’s AWS became, by a wide margin, the world’s leading cloud infrastructure platform, with tens of billions in annual revenue. By the mid-2020s, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud controlled the lion’s share of a cloud infrastructure market that IBM, with all its technological prowess, could have led – had it moved aggressively at the turn of the century. As one industry commentator wryly observed, “IBM as a platform company has failed to make the transition to cloud computing” and the cloud has “relentlessly devoured IBM’s business”, contributing to IBM’s revenue shrinking by nearly \$28 billion over six years in the 2010s[16][17]. IBM’s market value and influence today are but a fraction of what they were in its 1990s heyday, in large part because it missed the hyper-growth phase of cloud computing.
It’s important to note that IBM remains a significant company – it still generates revenue from mainframes, IT services, and software. But it never again attained the industry dominance or growth trajectory it once enjoyed, as the center of gravity in tech shifted to service-centric players. Insiders cite IBM’s culture of focusing on existing large customers and quarterly targets as a key reason it missed new markets[2]. By ignoring “future clients” and emerging usage models, IBM surrendered leadership to firms that it once might have considered mere upstarts or even its own customers. (Indeed, in the late 1990s IBM likely saw Amazon simply as a buyer of IBM servers, not a future competitor that would upend the IT landscape.) In sum, IBM’s choice to keep selling boxes and bespoke solutions, rather than pivot to delivering computing as a utility, resulted in a slow but undeniable decline in its relevance. The IBM of 2025 is a company still trying to reinvent itself, focusing on niche areas like hybrid cloud and AI, while the big profits in enterprise tech flow to those who made the hard pivot IBM shunned[18][16].
Contrast: Successful Pivots to “As-a-Service”
To underscore the importance of seizing the strategic moment, consider a few companies that, unlike IBM, did pivot (or originate) with service-based models and thrived:
- Amazon: As discussed, Amazon had the vision to turn its IT infrastructure into AWS. This move fundamentally changed Amazon’s financial profile. By 2025, AWS is not only a huge revenue generator but is responsible for the majority of Amazon’s operating profits[7], effectively subsidizing the retail side of the business. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos famously championed a culture of long-term thinking; launching AWS was a bet on a future where companies wouldn’t want to own their own data centers. That bet proved prescient, and Amazon’s market capitalization and profits reflect AWS’s success.
- Microsoft: In the early 2010s, Microsoft was in danger of stagnation. The company’s traditional model of selling Windows and Office licenses was yielding high margins, but growth was slowing and rivals were moving to the cloud. Under CEO Satya Nadella (appointed 2014), Microsoft executed one of the most dramatic pivots in tech history – embracing a “cloud-first” strategy. Microsoft launched the Azure cloud platform (initially in 2010 under CEO Steve Ballmer’s tenure) and pushed its flagship Office suite to become Office 365, a subscription-based cloud service[19]. Nadella reinforced this with a cultural shift, stating that Microsoft would focus on cloud services and recurring customer engagement rather than one-time software sales. The results have been remarkable: a decade later, Microsoft is once again one of the world’s most valuable companies (topping \$3 trillion in market cap) thanks largely to its booming cloud business and subscription revenues[20][21]. This transformation required Microsoft to disrupt its old model (for example, cannibalizing its lucrative Office perpetual license sales in favor of subscriptions), but in return Microsoft achieved renewed growth and relevance. Microsoft’s Azure is now the second-largest cloud platform globally, and the company’s successful pivot is often held up as a textbook case of incumbent reinvention.
- Adobe: Adobe Systems provides another instructive case. Adobe in 2011 faced a smaller-scale version of the IBM dilemma – its flagship product, the Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), was sold for a hefty one-time price, and sales were flattening. Rather than continue that model, Adobe made a bold shift to a cloud subscription model with Adobe Creative Cloud. This meant no longer selling boxed software at all after 2013, and instead charging users monthly or yearly to access continually updated Adobe applications. The transition initially met significant customer backlash and even a short-term revenue dip (Wall Street was skeptical that subscriptions would compensate for lost license sales)[22][23]. But Adobe’s management believed in the long-term logic of recurring revenue and greater customer lifetime value. Their conviction paid off: Adobe’s annual revenue climbed from about \$4 billion in 2013 to over \$15 billion in 2022, with over 90% of revenue now coming from recurring subscriptions[24]. Adobe’s stock price skyrocketed over the decade (up roughly 12× since 2012)[24], reflecting investor approval of the stable, growing cash flows that a SaaS model provided. Today, Adobe’s decision to pivot is lauded as a courageous move that secured its future in the era of cloud software.
- Others: Numerous other tech companies followed similar paths. Microsoft transformed its entire product suite (Windows updates, Xbox Game Pass, etc., all moving toward subscription services). Even companies like Google, which originally made money from advertising, built a significant Google Cloud business seeing the trend. Enterprise software giants like Oracle and SAP, late to the game, are now racing to convert their products to cloud services. Each of these shifts underscores a common theme: the industry at large recognized that the “as-a-service” model – delivering technology as an ongoing service rather than a one-off sale – was the future. Those that moved with this tide gained access to bigger markets and more predictable revenues; those that lagged were left wrestling with declining sales or eroding market share.
In all these cases, the decision to pivot involved short-term pain or risk. Microsoft had to change its sales incentives and overcome internal resistance from divisions accustomed to selling boxed software. Adobe had to weather customer anger and a temporary revenue dip. Amazon had to justify investing in a completely new business (AWS) that was outside its core retail model. What made these pivots successful was leadership’s willingness to prioritize the long-term vision of where the market was heading over the status quo. The philosophical core of these decisions was a recognition that customers ultimately value outcomes and services more than products. For Amazon’s and Microsoft’s customers, the outcome they wanted was reliable computing capability – they didn’t necessarily want to own servers or install software themselves. For Adobe’s customers, they wanted the latest creative tools – they didn’t necessarily need a DVD of Photoshop. By aligning their business models to deliver outcomes as a service, these companies ensured they remained central to their customers’ needs in a fast-changing tech landscape.
Tesla’s Current Crossroad: Car Manufacturer or Service Provider?
Fast-forward to today, and we see a parallel situation unfolding in the automotive industry, with Tesla at its center. Tesla has disrupted the auto sector over the past decade with its electric vehicles and innovations in battery technology, manufacturing, and autonomous driving software. Until now, Tesla’s business model has been fundamentally similar to traditional car companies: design and manufacture cars, then sell those cars to customers for an upfront price (or lease them for a fixed term). This is analogous to how IBM sold hardware or Microsoft sold software in the old model – a one-time (or finite) transaction that transfers ownership of the product to the customer. Tesla does augment its cars with software updates and even sells a software add-on (the Full Self-Driving package) for additional revenue, but the bulk of its revenue is still derived from vehicle sales.
However, technology and consumer behavior are converging to create a new opportunity: Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS). This concept entails a shift from private vehicle ownership to users paying for mobility or rides as needed. In practical terms, TaaS could mean robo-taxi networks, subscription-based access to vehicles, or other on-demand ride services. For Tesla, the TaaS vision is often associated with its anticipated robo-taxi network – a fleet of autonomous Teslas that can transport passengers without a human driver, for a fee per ride. Elon Musk himself has hinted at this future for years, envisioning that Tesla vehicles could one day operate as autonomous taxis, earning money for their owners (or for Tesla) when not in personal use. As of 2025, this vision is on the cusp of becoming reality. In June 2025, Tesla piloted its first driverless taxi service in Austin, Texas, using a fleet of company-owned Model 3 and Model Y vehicles equipped with full self-driving software to carry paying passengers with no human driver in the car[25]. This pilot marked Tesla’s official entry into the ride-hailing market, directly operated by the company rather than through individual customer ownership.
The robo-taxi is just one facet of a broader potential TaaS model. Tesla could also consider other services such as short-term rentals or “subscription cars” where a customer pays, say, a monthly fee to have access to a Tesla vehicle without owning it outright. In a sense, some of this is already happening via third parties (for example, car rental companies like Hertz have added Teslas to their fleets for customers who prefer not to own a car). But Tesla itself could vertically integrate these services. The key strategic consideration is this: does Tesla continue to focus on moving units (selling cars), or does it pivot to providing transportation solutions (moving people and goods, by leveraging its cars as assets)?
This is highly analogous to IBM’s choice in 1999: continue selling boxes (mainframes or, for Tesla, cars) versus offer a service (IT as a service or transportation as a service). The financial implications of a TaaS model are profound. Providing transportation on-demand would turn Tesla into a company with significant recurring revenue streams: ride fees, subscriptions, etc., potentially generating income from each vehicle long after it’s produced. It could dramatically increase the lifetime value of each car Tesla manufactures, akin to how AWS squeezes far more lifetime value out of a server than a one-time sale of that server would. In fact, analysts predict that a mature autonomous ride-hailing network could become Tesla’s most important business. A recent analysis by ARK Invest suggests that Tesla’s future robo-taxi service “could represent ~90% of [Tesla’s] enterprise value by 2029,” dwarfing the value of its traditional car manufacturing business[26]. The reason is the enormous addressable market: ARK projects a global robotaxi market on the order of \$10 trillion per year in the next decade[26]. This figure comes from envisioning a world where autonomous vehicles provide a large share of the billions of miles traveled globally each year, and companies charge users for each trip.
Figure: Projected Global Robotaxi Market Size. According to ARK’s research, the addressable market for autonomous ride-hailing (“robotaxi”) services could reach roughly \$10 trillion annually in the coming years[26]. This staggering number reflects the potential of shifting transportation from one-off car sales to a service model where many people pay for rides instead of owning vehicles. For Tesla, capturing even a fraction of this market via a TaaS strategy could generate revenue streams far greater than its current business of selling ~2 million cars per year. Moreover, services tend to carry higher profit margins than manufacturing. A fleet of autonomous Teslas in constant operation could yield software-like margins on ride fees, because once the car is built and the AI is developed, each additional ride costs relatively little to provide. This is analogous to the cloud computing economics – after building a data center and cloud platform, serving each additional customer or computation has high margin, which is why AWS and Azure became profit engines. Likewise, a robo-taxi network, once the cars and software are in place, can keep earning with relatively low incremental costs (maintenance, electricity, etc. are low compared to the revenue per mile).
Beyond the raw financials, there is a strategic consideration of positioning and control. If the future of transportation shifts toward on-demand autonomous mobility, the industry could see new intermediaries (just as AWS became an intermediary between computing users and physical servers). For Tesla, the risk of not pivoting is that other companies become the “AWS of transportation.” We already see aggressive moves by competitors: Waymo (a Google/Alphabet subsidiary) and Cruise (backed by GM and Honda) have been deploying autonomous ride-hailing services in select cities. By 2025, Waymo was reportedly completing around 250,000 driverless rides per week in its operational areas[27], and expanding to more cities. If Tesla were to stick solely to selling cars to individual owners, it might find itself in the position IBM was in – still selling the “product” while others provide the “service” that customers actually desire. In a scenario where autonomous vehicles become mainstream, many consumers might opt not to purchase a car at all, instead relying on ubiquitous robo-taxis for cheaper and more convenient mobility. In such a world, Tesla’s current advantage in manufacturing EVs could be undercut if it doesn’t also compete in services. Owning the customer relationship through transportation services could be as crucial to future auto industry profits as owning the computing service was in tech.
Lessons from IBM for Tesla’s Leadership
IBM’s experience offers a cautionary tale and a playbook of sorts for Tesla. The core lesson is that technological capability alone is not enough – business model innovation is equally important. IBM actually had many of the technologies needed to offer cloud services (deep computing expertise, virtualization tech, data centers) and it even foresaw the cloud trend, but it lacked the willingness to break from its traditional model. Tesla today has cutting-edge technology: industry-leading electric vehicles, a massive charging infrastructure, and arguably the most ambitious self-driving AI effort in the world. These could form the backbone of a Transportation-as-a-Service empire. But will Tesla fully embrace that model?
To do so, Tesla would need to pivot philosophically from being purely a manufacturer to being a service operator. This would entail significant changes. For one, Tesla might retain ownership of a larger portion of its vehicles (deploying them in its own fleet) rather than selling every car it makes. This is already starting, as seen in the Austin pilot where Tesla used Tesla-owned vehicles for the robo-taxi fleet[28][29]. It would also mean developing new competencies in fleet management, customer service (for ride-hailing users), and local operations in cities – areas traditional automakers haven’t had to master. Additionally, Tesla would have to carefully navigate the financial transition: moving to a service model could impact short-term revenues (just as Adobe saw a temporary dip, and Microsoft had to defer revenue recognition for subscriptions). Investor expectations would need to be managed, focusing on the lifetime value of customers rather than immediate vehicle delivery numbers. Yet, as difficult as these shifts may be, the alternative could be stagnation in a disrupted market.
IBM’s reluctance was driven by fear of cannibalization – they didn’t want to erode their existing lucrative business. Tesla might face a similar fear: could offering rides directly at a moderate cost undermine Tesla’s car sales? For instance, if robo-taxis become widely available, some people might choose not to buy a personal car at all. But Tesla must recognize that if autonomous mobility is the future, that shift will happen with or without them. It is far better for Tesla to disrupt its own sales than to let competitors do it. This principle is something the leaders at Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe intuitively understood in their pivots. They were willing to cannibalize their legacy products to seize the new opportunity. As part of this strategic leap, timing is everything. IBM’s failure illustrates that delaying a pivot can be fatal in fast-moving markets. By the time IBM fully tried to compete in cloud, AWS and others had already locked in customers and grown ecosystems that were hard to unseat. For Tesla, the window to establish a dominant TaaS platform is now, while the technology is maturing and standards, customer loyalties, and market leaders are not yet firmly established.
It’s also worth noting that Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, has often framed Tesla not just as a car maker but as a technology and AI company. In many ways, providing transportation services powered by self-driving AI is a natural extension of Tesla’s mission (“to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” which could be interpreted to include efficient transportation systems). The company’s recent moves — such as unveiling the dedicated “Cybercab” autonomous taxi vehicle in late 2024, and planning a Tesla Network for car owners to rent out their vehicles Airbnb-style[28][30] — indicate Tesla is aware of the opportunity. The challenge will be executing this pivot with the same focus and boldness that characterized Tesla’s entry into electric vehicles. It may require rethinking some metrics of success (for example, analysts and Tesla’s board might need to emphasize customer miles serviced or subscription revenue over pure vehicle delivery counts). Tesla will also need to reassure stakeholders that it can manage the operational complexities of a service business, including safety and regulatory compliance – a topic IBM didn’t have to contend with in the same way, but one very salient to autonomous vehicles. Musk’s own words capture the approach: a cautious rollout (“toe in the water, then… a foot, then a leg”) to ensure safety and reliability before scaling up[31]. This indicates Tesla is aware that a misstep in service (e.g. accidents in robotaxis) could set back public trust. Nonetheless, competitors are moving quickly, so Tesla’s strategic calculus must weigh the urgency of being a market leader against the methodical testing of its technology.
Conclusion
Strategic inflection points — those moments when an industry shifts beneath its incumbents — are rare, and the decisions made in those moments can define a company’s fate for decades. IBM’s story around 1999–2000 is a vivid example: the company had the technical foresight and market position to lead the transition to a service-based computing model, yet it clung to an old paradigm of product sales. In doing so, IBM ceded one of the biggest wealth-creation opportunities in tech history to new entrants. The likes of Salesforce, Amazon (AWS), Microsoft, and Adobe demonstrated that embracing a recurring-revenue service model, though challenging at first, unlocked greater growth and resilience in the long run. Their successes underscore a key philosophy: focus on delivering value as an ongoing service, even if it means disrupting your legacy business, because that is where the market – and the profits – will be in the future.
Today, Tesla faces a similar make-or-break strategic choice. The automotive sector is on the verge of an “as-a-service” upheaval with autonomous driving and changing attitudes toward car ownership. Tesla can choose to remain primarily a manufacturer of cars (an approach that, while successful so far, is fundamentally the same model automakers have used for a century), or it can reinvent itself as a platform for transportation services, capturing value from each mile driven rather than each car sold. The IBM vs. Salesforce/AWS analogy is apt: IBM stayed a hardware seller and stagnated; Salesforce and AWS became service providers and soared. Tesla’s leadership, particularly Elon Musk, has the opportunity to position Tesla more like the latter – as a company that sells mobility and transportation solutions rather than just vehicles. This will require bold vision and flawless execution, but the reward could be industry dominance and value creation on a historic scale. On the other hand, failing to pivot could leave Tesla as the “IBM” of its industry — a still significant but diminished player, overshadowed by new “mobility-as-a-service” giants in the coming decade.
In summary, the lesson from IBM’s missed moment is clear: when transformative technology and new business models emerge, embrace them wholeheartedly and early. Tesla’s moment to make that strategic leap is right now. By learning from IBM’s reluctance and Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe’s bold transformations, Tesla can aim to not only build the best electric cars, but to build the future system by which people move. The companies that master the service model in their domains are the ones that define their era – and the next era of transportation belongs to those who turn cars from products into services. Tesla’s choice in this moment will likely determine whether it leads that era or gets left behind by it.
Sources: Connected and cited throughout the text above. For instance, internal IBM analyses of its late-90s struggles are summarized in[2][4]; Salesforce’s 1999 pioneering of SaaS is noted in[1]; Amazon’s AWS launch and its profitability are evidenced by[5][7]; IBM’s organizational inertia in cloud is discussed in[10][14]; Microsoft and Adobe’s pivots and outcomes are documented in[19][24]; and Tesla’s recent steps toward a TaaS model and the industry’s robotaxi potential are detailed in[25][26], among other references. Each citation corresponds to an external source that supports the factual assertions made, reinforcing the analysis with documented evidence.
[1] [5] [6] A Brief History of Cloud Computing – Dataversity
[2] [3] [4] How IBM Missed Their Chance to Become One of the Biggest Names in Enterprise Software | by Failfection Katie | Failfection
[7] How Amazon Makes Money
[8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [18] SaaS Founders’ Playbook: Lessons from IBM Cloud Fail | by Sonu Goswami (SaaS content writer B2B) | Oct, 2025 | Startup Stash
[15] [16] [17] Platformonomics – A Very Cold Take on IBM, Red Hat and Their Hybrid Cloud Hyperbole
[19] [20] [21] Satya Nadella: The Architect of Microsoft’s Resurgence
[22] [23] [24] Lessons from Adobe’s Shift to Subscriptions: A Pricing Transformation Story
[25] [28] [29] [30] [31] What Is the Tesla Robotaxi Service? | Built In
[26] [27] Tesla Has Launched Its Robotaxi…Now What?