Thread regarding IBM layoffs

IBM is all in on “enterprise” (fortune 1000) Everything else must go

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/anthropic-ibm-announce-strategic-partnership-162251267.html

@ch depends how to define active development. Like most of IBM, Power, IBM i, AIX etc has been gutted and moved to India. There is virtually NO NEW ISV development being done for Power that people care about. Red Hat literally does not know or care what Power is and think Power are IBM power supplies. And I am not kidding. When we tried to train them and work with them they said "...we do nor care about Power; we dance with whoever brought us to the prom; if you bring us a customer asking to run RHEL and OpenShift on Power we can figure out how we might support you but until then no thanks...". Red Hat also did ZERO development for watsonx on Power.

@ch You could very well be right regarding Power, BUT the tea leaves are pointing towards a spinoff. Why do we say that?

1. Sales of power continue to shrink. Especially scale out AIX and OS/400 Yep Linux on intel continues to dominate. Enterprise Power installs are stable due to Powers big memory and multiple threads. The issue with Enterprise is it’s not growing, thus it’s an appliance go to market model (eg you only replace it when it breaks)
2. P12 may have a road map, but so did the Ford Edsel. Right now sales of P11 are not growing, but rather sinking, which begs to ask why would IBM invest in P12.
3. The P11 announcement centered on RAS improvements vs performance improvements. This is IBM conceding the market to Intel performance
4. Openshift running on top of power means nothing if your ISV partner base doesn’t adopt it.
5. Finally IBM farming the existing shrinking install base via an IP strategy is the answer to monetizing an active but shrinking install base. It’s not that Power doesn’t make money, but it is Power doesn’t make enough to justify the P12 investment. IBM wants to exit manufacturing, and an IP strategy seems to be the ticket especially if IBM throws in some sweeteners (eg 10 year GF type purchase deal for the enterprise side, and a sharing of patents and cooperation on future IBM lab developments).

I have seen alot of talk on the demise of Power on this forum for a long time. However IBM has just launched Power11, there is active development of AIX and IBMi happening. There is a roadmap for Power12. Moreover Openshift also runs on top of Power to support containerized workloads.

I highly doubt the end of Power is near and that IBM would let go of Power as large customer install base is still actively using it.

@bk Oracle stopped SPARC development in 2017. They could buy the Power brand and install base and over time migrate them to the OCI Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that has executed 100000000000000000% better than IBM Cloud (SoftLayer). Thousands of small and large Power customers run very expensive Oracle software on Power so logically it makes sense for IBM and Oracle...ie Compaq bought DEC and then HPE bought Compaq. The bigger fish keep eating the smaller or weaker ones...

@at this seems in line with my thinking. A shame; IBM could have used it's scale it once had and let it drip thru it's hands.

@ag she did not work at IBM as CEO. She was Gerstner's TA technical assistant for about a year...

There's no reason for Oracle to buy Power when it already has SPARC. In fact, if you look at Oracle's current offerings, you'll notice two things: They don't mention hardware details very much, and when they do mention them they use a lot of AMD EPYC processors in their products.

Right now, IBM is still trying to figure out what business it's in. All the executive management knows is that they need cash flow, but they're having trouble focusing on larger goals. Yeah sure, they are an infrastructure company, a software company and a consulting company. But they don't seem to want to put much effort into any of those things. They certainly don't have a problem shrinking or selling off those businesses though.

Infrastructure will be absorbed by consulting and broken up for a variety of reasons.

1. Infrastructure will boost consultings declining revenue and profits
2. IBM wants to exit the manufacturing business as they don’t have economies of scale anymore on the purchase of components.
3. The distributed product lines are declining and IBM can make more by just spinning them off and farming the IP
4. IBM has partnered with AMD conceding Intel is the most favored platform and syncing its future to Quantum
5. P12 isn’t viable given current run rates and will be replaced or absorbed by Telum
6. TSS continues to shrink 4-6% per year Year in and year out
7. By absorbing infrastructure consulting can reduce existing infrastructure head count by 65%

Lisa Su is happy right where she is. Besides, she already worked at IBM and knows how toxic it is.

It is obvious to me IF IBM could lure AMD CEO Lisa Su to IBM to replace Arvind (WHO IS NOT A CEO) and God Forbid block smarmy Robbie Thomas from then taking over and hitting that large ice cube coming up fast on the front of the bow, IBM might actually be saved (for awhile). She is brilliant (3 MIT degrees all EE electrical engineering undergrad, Masters, PhD). Do I think it will happen with IBM's WEAK BOD board of directors? NO!!!!! IF it were to happen I think the stock would go up 10-15 points and I would be a big buyer.

IBM HAS TO BE shopping POWER around to possible buyers. Red Hat does not know what POWER is. IBM no longer cares about AIX and IBM i. POWER COULD have been a good AI training and inference system but the story goes NVIDIA wanted big $$$$ to enable GPUs and Infiniband on Power10 so P10 flounders with no GPU and Infiniband support and a weak story about AI INFERENCING some day with the Spyre card that will run in z and Power. IMHO Oracle would be the most likely and logical firm to buy Power and then run it for awhile while migrating to Oracle cloud....