Thread regarding IBM layoffs

@1klf+1d4DT8XZ so it can be said that ibm execs didn't know (in detail) what they were acquiring. They just heard the word "cloud" and threw a bunch of cash at softlayer.

Similar thing with RH acquisition, just let the kyndryl split complete this year and see the truth come out about "hybrid cloud" starting next year.

Ibm's biggest problem is none of the management layers are technically sound, NONE! And they make all the decisions along with hr and cfo.

In a few years the same article will be written about how IBM lost the hybrid cloud / containerization market to the hyperscalers and VMWare. A few years later it will be rewritten about how IBM missed the shift from Kubernetes to whatever the next big thing in virtualization that replaces it is.

Back in those "early" days (when the real customer/user Journey to Cloud was going on). the IBM sales force was giving/given lessons in flavors of xSP (the "x" being the mystery ingredient, that could either obfuscate, or result in colored marketing building blocks = architechture)... it was to explain why Softlayer was outside of whatever they were supposed to focus on, and separate, limited, compensation usually, if any

Over time, that marketechture discussion evolved to "journey to cloud" to "hybrid cloud"
Renaming that last one as "anything for our biggest and favorite spender" is a very accurate summary in the referenced article, resulting in custom one-ofs that dont replicate well.

@vwi If anything, it's too generous. Not mentioned in the story are, IMO, three other key factors that doomed IBM Cloud:

• The quixotic insistence by Softlayer execs that bare metal servers was a winning distinction
• IBM execs being years too slow to replace (or even challenge) those Softlayer execs
• Failing to invest the huge amounts of capital that were required to get to the scale that AWS, GC, and MSFT were achieving because of the insistence on maintaining the dividend and propping up the short term share price.

BTW, one could make a good argument that the failure to invest was the underlying cause of many of the other problems; for example it's difficult to offer failover between availability zones when you just don't have enough data centers.

That was a trip down memory lane. It drove every cloud architect crazy. They were continually trying to architect solutions for enterprises while the underlying technology kept changing.

IBM devisions have conceded they lost the cloud battle and GBS / GTS (Kyndryl) sell competitors clouds while Red Hat / STG / SWG sell into or partner with other cloud providers.

Now that even IBMers won’t touch their own cloud they have spawned a massive “ecosystem” initiative that has this delusional idea that if IBMs won’t sell or use their own Cloud they can convince their partners to do it.

That was a trip down memory lane. It drove every cloud architect crazy. They were continually trying to architect solutions for enterprises while the underlying technology kept changing.

IBM devisions have conceded they lost the cloud battle and GBS / GTS (Kyndryl) sell competitors clouds while Red Hat / STG / SWG sell into or partner with other cloud providers.

Now that even IBMers won’t touch their own cloud they have spawned a massive “ecosystem” initiative that has this delusional idea that if IBMs won’t sell or use their own Cloud they can convince their partners to do it.

That was a trip down memory lane. It drove every cloud architect crazy. They were continually trying to architect solutions for enterprises while the underlying technology kept changing.

IBM devisions have conceded they lost the cloud battle and GBS / GTS (Kyndryl) sell competitors clouds while Red Hat / STG / SWG sell into or partner with other cloud providers.

Now that even IBMers won’t touch their own cloud they have spawned a massive “ecosystem” initiative that has this delusional idea that if IBMs won’t sell or use their own Cloud they can convince their partners to do it.

"Over and over again during the last decade, IBM engineers were asked to build special one-off projects for key clients at the expense of their road maps for building the types of cross-customer cloud services offered by the major clouds."

As a product manager, I can confirm that 100%. So much of my time was spent fending off unique demands from "IBM's biggest banking customer" or "a key Power customer". In the worst cases, the customer didn't even care that much - the whole thing was driven by a seller who thought that they were earning brownie points/customer loyalty by bringing them a special gift.

if you worked in power there is nothing new in the article that we did not already know and lived thru. Part of the reason why the top talent in IBM power in Austin has left for Nvidia, AMD, Apple, AWS and Google. The only ones left are either ready to retire, don't have the talent to get a job outside ibm, clueless or in the process of finding their next job outside ibm. Power at softlayer was a major disaster from the start. As the article stated, softlayer was architected for small and medium businesses and then ibm tried to make them something they were not designed for and bluewashed them to death.

Seems a fair description of the facts