A handful of L2 enterprise storage support and Premium support, including management, have to find a new job within IBM.
Of course, the support workload of existing clients isn't going away anytime soon, which means the people who are left have more work to do and there will be more escalations.
The offshoring to 2nd world countries to people with no experience and just a modicum of skill sets isn't going to help either.
Every division is getting hit. It has been like this for a long time, this is only what IBM has left to make the numbers. No growth at all, so cut your way to prosperity.
Let's see how long that can continue.
Yes a huge portion of Systems L2 and Dev is re-deployed to (largely) Hybrid-Cloud and a smattering of other GOM jobs (for which decent matches are scant).
I know folks in Scale and they were hit equally hard (about half)
Even Z - the backbone of "Hybrid Cloud" strategy was hit hard.
Go figure. or not! Not trolling!
I heard that a bunch of development people also got "reassigned". For the more complex storage products (like Scale) they also provided L3. This all seems like a recipe for a downward spiral.
This is what is going to happen everywhere within IBM going forward. To Improve GP, people in HCC will get laid off and replaced by people in LCC. There are no skills in LCC, yet they will be doing the work going forward. This is happening in Expert Labs as we speak.