It's an old company and struggles with a heavy legacy. They would need more than just a CEO to move things around.. It's a mindset and from the outside, IBM seems to me like an old government building that provides services in areas where it had 10yo+ contracts and clients are too lazy to switch to a better provider.. it's sad, but they will definitely have the ending NOKIA had.. maybe a bit more painful ending.. we can never know :)
strategically speaking, YES! they are not just promoting a tool among developers/researchers . it's a whole business approach they are taking. But personally I think they are late to the party. Google, Micro$oft, Amazon.. and all the other open source tools ( Python, R...) are offering a better , more flexible and versatile solutions to the public.
I think they were a bit greedy and selfish, because they could have put this challenge on Kaggle for example, and gotten a much higher momentum (where a high concentration of Data Scientists and enthusiasts are doing interesting stuff)..
I agree with you. IBM is late to the show and far behind in terms of Data Scientists using their tools and technologies. I myself ( statistician and data scientist) used IBM products for a short period of time in the context of a PoC. my experience is that, using python/R is much better in the long run than using proprietary software that costs 100k $/year in licencee fees, without forgetting the training /setup cost that comes with any migration to IBM suite.