IBM revenue beat estimates as shift to cloud pays off

(Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp's quarterly revenue beat analysts' expectations as the company's shift to high-growth areas such as cloud-based services begins to yield results. Revenue from "strategic imperatives", which includes cloud and mobile computing, data analytics, social and security software, rose 12 percent in the second quarter. Cloud revenue jumped 30 percent, compared with 34 percent in the preceding quarter. Total revenue dropped 2.8 percent to $20.24 billion for