This Newco spinoff has the potential to create a customer mutiny against doing business with the new IBM and IBM Cloud. It feels like IBM dumped them. It may become a bigger bonanza for the other Cloud providers than if IBM had stayed together.
Sorry for copying your post in a new thread, @ufq+17yQtbcG, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately. How much benefit could other Cloud providers derive from all this?
@5msx I work on one of the top 10
biggest GTS accounts. No, our client was not notified. This move comes completely out of left field for all of us.
You guys are acting like IBM went off and decided to split the company, without talking to major, major customers first. Get real.
I agree with @1mfh
You are crazy if you think AWS, Microsoft, and Google are dying to work with NewCo. I left IBM last year to join Microsoft/specifically Azure in their Services division. Companies come to us if they want to partner as an implementation partner. They must go through a very tough screening process that lasts months or even years until they have proven their capabilities. We aren’t exactly hurting for partners. GTS has a very bad rep in the professional services business. I expect their partner application will be stalled in the system unless someone has a friend in Microsoft, which isn’t likely.
Because the feds have just opened a case against their business practices. When has a business friendly Republican admin gone after a business Google has to change their ways and fast
Google isn't betting EVERYTHING on being a cloud provider. They already have their main source of revenue which is steady and they're leaders in that space.
While they'll do everything to be #2, they'd settle for #3 too if that means extra $100bil+ revenues from different business, why would they close shop?
If Google truly wants to be the number 2 cloud provider by 2023 they are going to have to grow by approx 70-100% per year for 3 years in a row. Does anyone out there think that is possible? Look for Google to buy their way in, if they choose to play in cloud long term
@1ujz are you a typical IBM navel gazer? The story about Google Cloud was huge.
https://m.slashdot.org/story/364782
That’s what “doubling down” really looks like. Arvind and Jim, take note.
Let's face it, GTS has been acting like its own company for years now. They treat other IBM depts worse than they treat Accenture or Deloitte. They should have never been given the power they were given.
Where did you hear "Also hard to tell if Google is taking GCP seriously given their plans to abandon the project if it doesn’t capture enough market share"?
That is very interesting...
You assume AWS, Microsoft, and Google all are dying to work with GTS/NewCo. AWS and Microsoft aren’t hurting for partners- look at their partner portals and you’ll see hundreds of Indian body shops including all of GTS competitors like Infosys, Wipro, TCS. You have to go through a rigorous approval process to be a listed partner and IBM only recently made AWS’s list by the skin of their teeth after a multiple years long process. Maybe Google would be interested in partnering but again, not hurting for partners. Also hard to tell if Google is taking GCP seriously given their plans to abandon the project if it doesn’t capture enough market share and the recent high level hires being from Indian body shops themselves. Wake up, people. The IBM brand is dirt thanks to our poor leadership over the past decade.
Its certainly going to give the sales teams in the other CSPs a good line in their sales pitches to any IBM Cloud customers.
GBS already refusing to work with GTS
The breakup of GTS and IBM into separate companies is going to cause a number of customers to question their long term relationship with both Newco and the new IBM. They may be doing this already anyway before this announcement. Since the Cloud Providers like Amazon, MS Azure and Google are relentlessly calling on the IBM account base, this instability and unwelcome change to these customers' IBM arrangement would seem to create a larger opening for these Cloud Providers to pry away business from both Newco and IBM. IBM customers may feel betrayed or, at least, heavily disappointed by IBM's financial engineering restructure and spinoff. This spinoff doesn't seem to be of benefit to the existing IBM GTS customer at all. IBM customers are mostly loyal to the big IBM machine. Now that machine is being downsized and broken up.