It’s also a sign the “let 1,000 flowers bloom” phase of this cycle is falling away under the harsh glare of priority-setting and thinning shareholder patience. “That was the history of IBM,” which is retraining customers not to expect it, Cohn explained. (He has some thoughts on the role quarterly reporting played into the miss; read on for that.) — “is occupying a huge majority of [companies’] budgets, and if they don’t get more budget, they’re forced to not buy something else,” Cohn said. We’re in the “educational friction” era, as Cohn puts it, where lessons are being learned on the fly and budgets are reworked accordingly.