What do you think about AK's strategic direction? It has been officially 12 months (4/6/20, when AK took over); has he made any bold Management changes or is he still keeping the old IBM guard? Since Dec2020, he is also IBM Chairman (Ginni is officially retired/gone). One can't fix something unless its acknowledged that something was broken first. The IBM Culture of the last 10-20 yrs needs to be replaced, Investments need to be made in R&D & stop wasting billions every year in buying back IBM stock! Are the Ginni sycophants & corporate creatures still there in Armonk? Is it new wine in old bottle or (the worst) still old wine in old bottle? Is he doing anything significant yet?
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I think the strategy of only running software on openshift will add another nail in the coffin. how many nails left???????
Red Hat acquisition = oops
“....Wasting billions every year in buying back IBM stock! “
Buying big red put and end to that. No more mad money left. NoMoMadMo
His focus on hybrid - which is being heavily promoted internally and externally by heavy advertising campaigns - is basically a modern day “your mess for less” which has never been sustainably profitable. He is overlooking the real opportunities in cloud which his competitors continue to capitalize on.
Meet the new boss...same as the old boss...
Is he bringing back defined pensions?
Didn't think so.
Down in the trenches, we're getting more layers of middle managers. Plus Process Transformation Initiatives, which mainly consist of somebody demanding we make charts showing numbers we have no control over and which do not correlate with anything meaningful, and then "improve" them.
So we've got that going for us.
Really don't get why he hasn't axed the GR holdovers. Maybe as an IBM lifer he just doesn't know anyone outside to replace them?
I am not sure anything meaningful or fundamental actually changed. Much of the old guards still remain. Spinning NewCo and selling Watson Health are big-ish move but doesn’t change remaining IBM. GBS transformation was announced but not clear of changes other than name (and managing partner+ role alignments). Maybe changes are still to be coming along.
You have answered your own question What has changed from April 2020 to April 2021? IBM has lost approx 9k of heads (Jan 2020 = 354k With Jan 2021 = 346k). Any new visions, strategic initiatives, leadership, innovations Anything Anything at all? It’s all just more of the same If the board had assigned a monkey to be CEO, not much would be different. IBM is suffering from exactly what Gerstner had to deal with. The new CEO has to focus on execution, decisiveness, simplifying the organization for speed, and breaking the gridlock. In his first year Gerstner nuked 100k heads streamlining IBM’s processes, focused IBM on services rather than HW/SW, got all parts of the organization catalyzing the opportunity process for all of the other divisions, and set a direction and stuck to it. AK has done none of that, and is just Ginni by any other name. Until he gets serious about execution of a plan, IBM will be the same ole same ole
The execs drank all the good wine and never refilled any bottles.
No bold changes. Old guard remains. Just playing musical chairs. No hope of anything different.