云计算遭遇会计难题，巨头IBM首当其冲

    据有关媒体上周报道，美国证券交易委员会（SEC）正对IBM的云计算营收进行调查。消息一经披露，大家议论纷纷。总部位于纽约的科技巨头IBM承认，早在今年5月，公司就已经开始配合美国证交会进行相关的调查，但IBM拒绝透露进一步细节。不过，有一点很明确：软件即服务这类产品的会计计算方法历来存在争议，因此，此次调查绝不是最后一次。

    云计算本身没有问题——问题出在其包装和销售方式。与传统内部部署软件不同，基于云计算的工具一般通过长期合同进行支付。客户可以每月支付费用，意味着公司的收益也是长期性的，结果导致会计计算非常麻烦，因为整个收益期会横跨多年（而且有些客户还可能中途终止合同）。对于大公司，情况将变得更加复杂，因为它们通常把云计算和非云计算产品捆绑销售。

    祖睿科技（Zuora）首席执行官左轩霆说：“会计准则是在我们进行传统商品交易时诞生的。当我们从制造业经济向服务业经济转型时，情况变得十分复杂。”祖睿科技是一家计费平台软件开发商，产品被多家云计算公司使用。

    IBM可谓云计算转型的典型。过去几年，这家公司一直在努力从硬件和内部部署软件提供商转型成云计算和服务供应商。为了扩张云计算实力，IBM进行了多项收购，其中包括最近以20亿美元收购“公有云”租赁公司SoftLayer Technologies。

    市场调研公司Cowen & Co分析师皮特•戈德马彻说：“任何时候把两家公司放在一起，自然会发现它们的会计计算方法有些许不同。因为两家公司的经营策略不同，营收模式也不一样。而把不同的分销模式和会计计算方法整合到一起时，情形会更加扑朔迷离。”

    不过，这并不是IBM、甲骨文（Oracle）、SAP等在云计算领域大肆并购的公司所面临的唯一问题。销售佣金的计算也变得非常复杂。传统软件销售人员通过销售一次性软件而获得数量不菲的佣金。随着所谓传统公司向更先进、更有增长潜力的云计算业务演进，究竟如何计算这些产品的销售额目前来看仍是云里雾里。因为云计算产品通常会和非云计算产品捆绑销售。例如，IBM此前宣布，与云计算相关的业务在2013年上半年同比增长了70%。但它并未提供任何销售数据，因为IBM自己也不知道之前和当下的云计算营收到底有多少。

    投资者可能需要一段时间才能了解这些大型科技公司到底从云计算业务中赚到了多少以及它们所进行的云计算并购的整合情况。即便是云计算巨头亚马逊（Amazon）目前也未被要求细化披露云计算产品“亚马逊网络服务”的营收情况。Cowen & Co的戈德马彻称，投资者应冷静看待这些基于订阅的营收，无论其长期收益流看起来多具吸引力。“……我们担心，投资者被这种模式迷惑了。因为无论损益表还是资产负债表，都是反应真实业务状况的滞后指标。”戈德马彻在最近的报告中写道。但他也在随后注明，即便美国证交会有理由展开调查，但云计算不大可能存在非法交易。戈德马彻说：“我的看法是，情况确实相当复杂。而情况越复杂，人们就越容易出错。”

    换句话说，除非云计算业务发展得足够庞大，以至于需要增加透明度，同时各类大小企业对“基于订阅的产品”的会计计算更加标准化，否则，未来有关云计算的这类错误（以及美国证交会的调查）很可能将层出不穷。（财富中文网）

    译者：项航  

    Last week's disclosure that the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an investigation into how IBM reports its cloud computing revenue poses more questions than answers. The New York-based tech giant admitted it has been cooperating with the SEC since last May but said little else about the particulars of the case. One thing is clear: It's likely this won't be the last probe into the often inconsistent methods used to account for software-as-a-service products.

    The cloud itself isn't the problem -- it's the way it happens to be packaged and sold. Unlike traditional, on-premise software, cloud-based tools are usually paid for via multi-year contracts. Customers are charged a monthly subscription fee, which means a recurring revenue stream that can be tricky to account for because it spans the course of several years (and because, sometimes, customers back out of contracts). This gets especially complicated at large companies that lump cloud-computing sales in with non-cloud products.

    "Accounting rules were written when we were all trading goods with each other," says Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, a billing platform used by many cloud computing companies. "As we move away from a manufacturing economy to a service economy it gets pretty complex."

    IBM (IBM) may be a good example of this phenomenon. Over the past few years, the company has been shifting from its roots as a hardware and on-premise software vendor, toward a future as a cloud and services purveyor. To that end, it's made several acquisitions, including a recent $2 billion bid to acquire SoftLayer Technologies, which rents out computing power to customers.

    "Any time you put two companies together, it's reasonable to expect that they will have slightly different accounting practices," says Cowen & Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher. "These are different companies with different policies and different revenue models. You've got an involved situation made complicated by taking different delivery models and accounting practices and putting them together."

    That's not the only problem for companies like IBM -- and Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP) -- that have made acquisitions in the cloud computing space. This clash of cultures also complicates commissions, because salespeople used to selling traditional software are used to collecting a hefty, one-time check for every deal they close. And while embracing these new, high-growth technologies are a necessary evolution for so-called legacy companies, it's not clear just how much money they're actually making from the cloud because these fledgling businesses are often bundled with other, non-cloud products. IBM, for example, has said its cloud computing business was up 70% during the first half of this year. But it hasn't given any frame of reference because it doesn't actually break out what those revenues used to be or are currently.

    It will likely be a while before investors can tell exactly what these large tech companies are making from these new businesses and how well they're folding in their cloud-based acquisitions. Even cloud heavyweight Amazon.com (AMZN) isn't yet required to break out revenue from its growing cloud computing products, Amazon Web Services. According to Cowen & Co.'s Goldmacher, investors should pause before becoming too enamored with subscription-based revenue, however attractive a recurring revenue stream may seem: "... we are concerned that investors are taking false comfort in these models because the income statement and balance sheet can be lagging indicators on the real trajectory of the business," he wrote in a recent report. But Goldmacher is also quick to note that it's unlikely anything nefarious is going on, even if the SEC has reason to launch an investigation. "My belief is that this is just really complicated," says Goldmacher. "The more complicated an undertaking the more likely you are to make a mistake."

    In other words, until these new cloud-computing businesses get large enough to require more transparency -- and until accounting practices for subscription-based products become more standardized at all tech companies, large and small- -- it's likely there are plenty more mistakes (and SEC investigations) ahead.