Big Blue's former CIO tried to join AWS, ends up at energy company

Of course...

...there's nothing to stop him having "off the record" chats with Amazon, either. I mean, he's not employed by them (although I suspect he signed some form of NDA's for IBM but proving he was the source would be difficult).

Huh?

How could Smith possibly know IBM's plans for Cloud domination when IBM doesn't seem to know its own plans (that troublesome Step 2 that is always ???, right before "Step 3. Profit"). Given IBM's Cloud successes to date, their BEST strategy is to dump their entire executive team on any competitors foolish enough to hire them.

IBM doesn't have any "Strategy" beyond meetings to discuss meetings to discuss what to do about scheduling the next meeting. The "IBM Cloud" is a joke that isn't funny. "Watson" is the AI Joke that will never be funny. And the fact that they are paying a $32 million annual bonus that isn't performance based, to a CEO who isn't DOING anything but giving fancy speeches about week performing products, is the biggest joke at IBM.

Don't forget the stock options

Even today, IBM stock options are valuable if priced low enough. When a senior person leaves IBM with unvested options, or even with stock acquired under specified conditions before leaving, IBM can claw them back - a major financial impact of breaking the non-compete clause. My guess is that that's the area where the settlement lies, since otherwise non-compete is pretty much unenforcable.