Thread regarding IBM layoffs

It will take another 30+ years for IBM to become totally irrelevant and probably bankrupt... In the meantime, as long as I am getting a paycheck, I really don't care!

@bw If you want to fail with a project, engage IBM. They will fail big and fail often, and the management will learn no lessons from their failure.

They keep repeating their mistakes expecting a different outcome each time. LOL.

@OP :

"Harvesting legacy cash, buying another company and protecting the dividend is not a growth strategy. It is managed decline."

Very well said - Not only that, buying another company that has managed its growth pretty well would take that company off its growth trajectory and then IBM would also have to manage the decline of this new acquisition.

IBM has truly emerged as a managed provider of decline !

Toyota used Amazon Q Developer to reverse-engineer legacy COBOL and generate documentation rapidly as part of an effort to accelerate migration of mainframe workloads supporting much of its North American supply-chain operation.
AWS now markets tools that convert COBOL and PL/I to Java, JCL to Groovy and legacy screens to modern web technologies. AI does not need to replace the mainframe overnight; it only needs to reduce the cost, time and risk of understanding and leaving it.
IBM has also too often avoided direct comparison with AWS, Microsoft and Google by relying on dated distinctions: Google is dismissed as a search company, AWS as insufficiently enterprise-oriented, and distributed cloud infrastructure as incapable of handling serious transaction volumes. Such arguments specious. Amazon’s retail, ordering, payment, inventory, fulfillment and digital-service systems operate on AWS at extraordinary scale. Public cloud does not reproduce every mainframe feature in precisely the same way, but the claim that AWS cannot support transaction-intensive enterprise operations is no longer credible.

@bd we appear to have reach a tipping point where ibm has used up all its good graces with the average joe investor. IBM will no longer get the benefit of the doubt. There are no more ibm “haters” and doubters then ever before. It’s a dramatic shift that finally boiled over in the last year or so

@bc I was just about to say similar thing. IBM has been on decline since 1990s but this year truly feels like new lows. Is it the end? Probably not. But this new lower plateau is the new norm. They can never go back to the prestige or the illusion of prestige they once had. And really the leaders and managers currently in power should be held responsible and be remembered for driving this down fall. The facade is gone.

ÌBM has been declining as far as legacy is concerned for decades. When is the last time you heard IBM announce new customer growth in the mainframe? It’s been at least 10 years ago and at that time it was like 15 new customers added in China. Farming the legacy has always been a managing the decline strategy since Akers. So IBM recently announced 37% growth in distributed, BUT that has to be judged against Power shrinking from an 8 billion dollar a year business 15 years ago to less than a 2 billion dollar a year business today. With that said, all is not lost as current management has altered IBM’s going forward strategy. YES they are still milking the very slowly shrinking legacy (especially mainframe), but they have departed on a SW strategy that compliments the mainframe install base. At least they are trying something new. Will it succeed? Most likely yes as long as they can find fast growing companies that need a distribution arm. There is one interesting tangent to this, and it’s in looking back at past CEO’s. Only one other CEO changed the path of IBM. Yep I hate to admit it as our Gerstner worshiper troll will love it, BUT Gerstner did change the path of IBM via milking the legacy, but also growing the services side of the house. Now that services has run its course, and stalled, it was time for AK to try something new. SW is the path forward. What does it all foretell for the path going forward? IBM will continue to shrink given its current size. Stalled legacy growth coupled with no new go to market innovation says shrinking is the only viable path forward. Infrastructure and Consulting will have to be restructured around “big iron” and that restructuring means IBM will have to exit certain businesses. Which ones? Well that’s easy. The ones IBM isn’t competitive in. That means a lot of spinoff/partner off announcements are in the future of a smaller IBM

The questions now is - Which company they are going to buy to continue with the growth story and how are they going to borrow the money ? Every ponzi scheme fails one day.

OP: Absolutely agree especially the part 'mainframe’s strongest defense: the difficulty of understanding decades of undocumented COBOL and business logic.'. I think Arvind and Board saw this fear starting to become reality in Q2 result. One of the contributing factors to panicked release.

@OP you are absolutely right. But cut the dividend now and watch the resulting crash that follows. It will be as entertaining as watching an action movie in 3D; perhaps even better as it takes down people, institutions and everything in between .

IBM is on the road to he-l with Arvind in the driver's seat. There is no going back. And it couldn't happen to a more arrogant CEO.