⁍ IBM is shifting to a new strategy focused on building an ecosystem of developers, partners, and startups.

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⁍ The tech giant can no longer just rely on its vast army of business and tech consultants, which helped it dominate the enterprise market.

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⁍ That pivot entails making IBM a more welcoming platform by offering resources to create new applications and tools to more of the world’s 24 million developers.

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– In the 1990s and 2000s, IBM was a tech powerhouse, dominating the enterprise tech market with its IT services arm, which helped big corporations run their private data centers and provided guidance on business strategy. But in the cloud era, which saw the use of web-based platforms such as cloud computing to allow businesses to scale down or even abandon private data centers, that approach wasn’t always effective, Business Insider reports. Now, IBM is looking to build an ecosystem of developers, partners, and startups in order to expand its reach in the cloud. “Our services organization can’t get to all clients,” senior VP Bob Lord says. “The only way to get to those clients is to activate an ecosystem.” In order to do that, IBM is looking to keep Red Hat, the open-source software company it bought last year, as an independent company. “Red Hat can go partner with whoever they want to drive their business,” Lord says. “Red Hat has fundamentally changed the fabric of who we are as IBM and the importance of what the ecosystem is.” IBM’s services business units, which make up more than half of the company’s total revenue, each saw revenue declines last quarter.