IBM Blockchain Is a Shell of Its Former Self After Revenue Misses, Job Cuts: Sources
“There is not really going to be a blockchain team any longer,” said a source.
https://www.coindesk.com/ibm-blockchain-revenue-misses-job-cuts-sources
17 replies (most recent on top)
IBM Blockchain Unit Reportedly Carrying out Reorganization Amid Challenges –
https://btcmanager.com/ibm-blockchain-reorganization/
If IBM is truly moving Blockchain over to GBS, then the scuttlebutt of Blockchain going away is kinda, sorta true. GBS is pursuing a strategy of partnerships vs IBM going it alone. Does this mean IBM is de-emphasizing Blockchain? Of course not, but it does mean they are engaging ina different go to market strategy (eg partnerships)
IBM denies claim it greatly scaled back its blockchain unit - https://siliconangle.com/2021/02/01/ibm-denies-claim-greatly-scaled-back-blockchain-unit/
So who is telling the truth here?
Enterprise Blockchain adoption has moved very slowly in the industry. I say this both as a former customer working with blockchain technologies and as a vendor. Did COVID-19 slow things down last year? Probably.
This is yet another clear sign that the company no longer has any technical leadership to execute the ideas to fruition. Customized HW is a big business at Apple, AWS, even Microsoft, but the company is about to dump Power business. AI is becoming a big business in medicine, but Watson Health is struggling. Perhaps there is indeed a $1Trillion business on hybrid cloud. Based the past track record, how much confidence do you have ibm will make any money out of it? The company has ceased to exist as a technology company.
Blockchain, psh
The latest strategy is Automation with a twist of AI... IBM is THE Automation/AI company going forward... well at least for the next year, until it fails and then they will find something else for 2022.
IBM's strategy has been more like desperately tossing crxp against the wall and hoping something sticks...blockchain, cloud, red hat, newco, Watson, strategic imperatives, roadmap 2020 on and on....
@1kqj See also: Internet of Things.
The Rometty regime at IBM can probably be characterized as a series of company-saving moonshots, none of which ever got off the launchpad.
great at hyping a technology - poor at finding it a profitable landing zone - to add to the examples already noted prior.. RFID
"IBM has been doing distributed synchronized databases for decades - were the people who deeply understood that sort of thing consulted for the blockchain consensus algorithms? Nope. Was anyone who understood real-world (e.g. defending against hackers) consulted for security? Nope. The list goes on, for just about every aspect."
Couldn't agree more!! Now most of the experts are working for Consensys, Microsoft, or some blockchain startup by now. Public permissioned blockchains is what enterprises can truly find useful not private permissioned (just use an append only database like Amazon's quantum ledger should do the trick). The substrate project will eat Hyperledger Fabric for lunch in a few years
“...The thing is: no one ever really gets punished for a major screw up at IBM......no one ever gets punished for pushing a really badly failed project. They just move on to create misery and mayhem somewhere else....”
Mate 100%. You just described IBM marketplace, and now redhat marketplace. It was truely balls-up. A clueless tosser and pals royally botched it up. And instead of getting punished......they get moved to generate redhat marketplace and spread the misery. Complete codswallop. Twits, the whole lot of them.
Jerry Cuomo is a good and caring person who got this boat anchor project foisted on him, and he managed it as best he could. The problem from day 1 was that the project was not actually designed by anyone who knew how the components should be done. For example, IBM has been doing distributed synchronized databases for decades - were the people who deeply understood that sort of thing consulted for the blockchain consensus algorithms? Nope. Was anyone who understood real-world (e.g. defending against hackers) consulted for security? Nope. The list goes on, for just about every aspect. The whole thing was driven by FOMO at the highest levels - chasing the blockchain buzzword. More and more people were drawn into this, and it became a mess, and a race against the clock to opensource it before anyone else, in a futile attempt to establish it as a standard.
@gqx One thing??? I can give you a mountain of things... There was OS/2 Warp. PS/2. Microchannel... Something that eventually became HCL Notes but was very successful before as an IBM thing. SmartSuite and Symphony. Tivoli. Softlayer. The Cell Processor. Watson Health. Oh Oh Oh... we kicked a– on RoadKill 2015. 20$ earnings per share and we've never looked back. The zEnterprise system. BlueMix. About 100,000 cloud products (Cloud Private, anyone?) The agile revolution.
The thing is: no one ever really gets punished for a major screw up at IBM. Lots of people get fired because that was the fate in their stars. But no one ever gets punished for pushing a really badly failed project. They just move on to create misery and mayhem somewhere else.
IBM is moving blockchain to GBS? That’s a death sentence.
IBM is moving Blockchain to GBS (very successful already) and R&D (ie. Watson Health Pass).
Blockchain is 80% consulting, 20% tech so it is not surprising that IBMs managed offerings are not selling per the companies revenue targets.
IBM blockchain will succeed in a very niche fashion and wildly succeed on the services front where they don't have to focus primarily on hyeprledger fabric but can expand into other best of breed solutions like Accenture. IBM Services is #1 in the world and will remain that way.
Is that a surprise? Give me one thing that IBM has been successful at in the past 10+ years?
A boatload of MQ and Broker developers went to the BlockChain team... Wonder really how many are getting canned?