Interesting. I haven't seen the IBM commercial you are talking about but I can confirm that IBM's blockchain efforts are almost complete bullshit right now. I am a former IBMer and Microsoftie (non-blockchain teams) and both companies are engaging in a lot of flimsy corporate jargon bs over blockchain. I currently have access to the IBM Cloud on the IBM bluemix console which is free for me for the first 6 months and at the end of the 6 month period it will conveniently become a 1200 USD service - a very IBMy thing to do if I may say so lol.. Also, no matter how many times the IBM Cloud mentions the word "decentralized" IBM does not offer a decentralized blockchain solution. It's almost as if they think no one really understands what words mean anymore and being the iconic brand that they are they can make tall claims without anyone noticing lol.
To be fair they do have a quality blockchain team at their disposal just like Microsoft does but these brilliant teams will not produce any world-changing breakthroughs because permissions to innovate flow from top to bottom at snail's pace in these hierarchies and that's the very antithesis of how the crypto space is supposed to work - permissionless innovation.
You're so right. They need to decentralize their whole business model and that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen :D Which means IBM will die. Who wants to pay $1,200 for cloud storage??? LOL
Haha true.. I was actually referring to their entire IBM Cloud service not just cloud storage which includes Containers, VMware, CloudFoundry, DevOps, IoT, Blockchain among other things but I still don't know anyone who will be willing to pay 1200 USD for using these services as a developer. This price tag is the cost of being able to say "we are using the IBM brand". Strange but true.
Yeah for real... They are going to have to change something really soon or it's off to the chopping block!