IBM has acquired Red Hat, UStream, Alchemy, Cloudant, SoftLayer, Vivisimo, Blekko, and a lot of other companies. They have, in fact, almost everything needed to build anything the FAANG companies are building.
The missing pieces (in my subjective opinion) are: (1) happy AND talented employees and (2) a rapid execution culture.
You mean they acquired a bunch of infrastructure stuff, but no consumer products (unless you count failed blekko). That's not a fair match for anything that FAANG companies are building.
They do have consumer products too, but by and large, yes. And a lot of consulting-oriented stuff too.
I was making the point that they have a solid platform available to build almost anything the FAANG companies have. Of course, they will have to build them. For that, they need to hire great engineers and they need to retain and keep them happy.
(Quick note: Traction is a whole different ballgame, but there are companies who gained initial traction through the customers of their business clients. In IBM's case, that is almost every major government agency and Fortune 500 businesses.)
The missing pieces (in my subjective opinion) are: (1) happy AND talented employees and (2) a rapid execution culture.