IBM claims that it generated more cloud revenue in 2013 than Amazon Web Services. In its latest financial statement, Amazon reported $3.72 billion in “other” revenue, which includes all AWS sales. By comparison, IBM says it generated $4.4 billion in cloud sales. An IBM spokesman said, “By definition, even if EVERY penny of ‘other’ revenue was in Amazon Web Services — and it obviously isn’t — IBM sold at least $0.5 billion more in cloud than AMZ in 2014, and IBM also grew at a faster rate (69 percent for FY 2013).”
However, IBM gets to that $4.4 billion number by combining cloud-related hardware and software sales with its cloud computing revenue. It arrived at $4.4 billion by adding together $1.7 billion from SaaS and $2.7 billion from cloud-related software, hardware and services.