International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) has shifted its focus to two areas during its decade-long transformation: hybrid cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The company has built a platform for each. Red Hat's ubiquitous software takes center stage in the hybrid cloud arena, while the recently launched watsonx platform now leads the charge in AI.

IBM has divested plenty of businesses over the past decade as part of its turnaround, but it's kept one of its oldest. The tech titan has been manufacturing mainframes since the 1950s. While the mainframe segment isn't as critical to IBM as it once was, the hulking systems are still widely used in certain industries, and each mainframe system sold generates additional revenue from software, services, and financing.

At the end of 2022, 45 of the world's top 50 banks used IBM's mainframe systems. Once every two and half years or so, IBM launches a new lineup of mainframes. The latest iteration, the z16, was announced in April 2022 and became available the following month.

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Source Fool.com