As most IBMers know, ATT is on the out and new service providers are being looked at to provide network management services to the enterprise. Has anyone heard any rumors, or have confirmation about most of the NetEng teams (PM’s, Deploy, NRae, etc.) being replaced by 3rd parties?
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5G initiative will take over.
With all the reductions that are taking place, IBM's network is becoming much smaller and simpler than it ever was. I can only imagine the changes in telecom staff that are taking place.
Back in the day, IBM had a corporate "intranet" before intranets were even a thing. Really old timers might remember the IBM Information Network (IIN), which later combined with Sears Technology Services (STS) to form Advantis. It transmitted voice, TCP/IP and SNA for all IBM and Sears sites along with customer suppliers...office locations, stores, factories, development labs, what have you. Thousands of mainframes, hundreds of physical data centers, hundreds of thousands of wired (not wireless) PCs, wireless handheld terminals by the customer engineers (CEs). It was said that back in the day, Advantis used more of AT&T's line capacity for IBM and Sears than for all of AT&T's other customers COMBINED.
The Advantis network reportedly converted entirely to TCP/IP, and management was completely taken over by AT&T. Now AT&T is leaving? That's news to me, but I haven't been involved in some time.
Nowadays, IBM is a different company and Sears is mostly kaput. Those hundreds of IBM data centers have been reduced over the years to just a handful, and those hundreds of thousands of wired PCs have mostly gone wireless. Setting RTO aside for a moment, many of those PCs rarely visit IBM space, so their endpoint connectivity is largely managed by the major telecom carriers. IBM's role is basically to maintain connectivity within their own offices and keep their servers running...just like any other company in the world. They are no longer in the network or telecom business, so they no longer make any of their own gear. What brand of desktop phones does IBM use nowadays in their offices? It was still Rolm when I was there (showing my age), but like everything else IBM sold Rolm (the voice business) off for cash to Siemens. Data networking was sold to Cisco.
Just rambling tonight folks. IBM's network operations have always been rather nebulous, so major staff replacements aren't all that surprising. Best of luck to them.
true statement
How much of the pre-Kyndryl network remains with IBM after the split? The outsourcing business is gone but IBM Cloud remains. After that, there's voice and data between IBM locations and ibm.com...don't know what else.