Poor results, he's kind of quiet, 360 complaints, etc. Is he on a PIP yet?
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You should ask him next office hours on slack #ask-arvind :)
Yeah great strategy. What a joke
It really boils down to what does IBM want to be when it grows up. In the 80’s IBM’s go to market strategy was to be all things to all customers. It didn’t matter if it made money or not. IBM wanted to be viewed as the one stop shop for all customers regardless of size. The introduction of the PC changed everything. IBM couldn’t make nor market to PC customers as their very high overhead costs were prohibitive. Since 1993, IBM has been withdrawing from markets as they can’t be all things to all customers. The very high internal overhead costs continue and as such IBM has to continue to withdrawal from markets. IBM’s upper management problem is they are addicted to revenue, and withdrawal from markets quite reluctantly due to not wanting to give up the non-productive revenue. As such the death by 1000 cuts continue. AK has changed the course of IBM’s strategy (he only wants enterprise customers now, and would like to partner off the non-enterprise customers), and the question is will he give up the non-productive revenue to get there. Time will tell
@ksi - IBM ran out of fat to trim decades ago, and has been cutting muscle, bone, and even entire limbs off ever since. IBM as we knew it is dying, and it's entirely due to blind arrogance, willful incompetence, and shameless greed on the part of IBM Management. 😞
AK is quiet quitting.
The bleeding has certainly stopped. Revenue has gone up slightly over the last two quarters. The question to be answered is has legacy stopped shrinking (most likely yes only due to mainframe refresh) and the second question is has SW (modernization) and services (hybrid cloud) started growing (again most likely yes as enterprise customers are reluctant to rip and replace). As I said above, the bleeding has stopped for now (thank you mainframe), BUT now you have to show increased growth in strategic operations. AK is certainly taking a longer term view of IBM (just look at the pension decision), BUT if he can’t get IBM moving with a sense of urgency, Wall Street will demand his head.
Anyone can trim fat. He hasn't grown anything. IBM is dead.
Compared to Ginni, the board thinks AK is quite successful. Dumped GTS, got out of the pension business, executed a mainframe Redhat strategy, stopped the major bleeding If AK can find a partner for the remaining legacy (excluding mainframe), the board will be quite pleased