Thread regarding IBM layoffs

What customer is going to pay $$$$$$$!!! for Z services anymore- any cfo would either shoot their cio or make the squeeze the service provider.

@hk Respectfully, you have no idea what you are talking about. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google all dominate the ENTERPRISE AI market. WatsonX has less than 1% market share. And no one is running AI workloads on mainframes (IBM muddies the waters by calling 1990s style machine learning for things like fraud detection on Z as "AI").

@hg, you are correct... reason why IBM built his Bob tool using Anthropic!

@Hg. I think you need to expand your horizons slightly. IBM is the only game in town when it comes to “enterprise” computing, and they have purchased most of the innovative SW companies that cater to big iron AI solutions. As such IBM’s enterprise offerings are second to none, and are enhancing IBM’s “enterprise” bottom line. Please note I’m saying “enterprise” offerings. IBM knows their strategy / future depends on the mainframe customers and they will build a wide moat to protect them

WatsonX has been a joke from the start. Today AI is a 3 horse race between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Meta AI and Grok are just vanity projects for a couple of billionaires. No one that matters even considers IBM to be a player in AI.

@a1 The G Man Gerstner (arrogant and pompous) bought PwC Consulting for $3,500,000,000 in 2002. That is a lot of Benjamins! Which means perhaps IBM will spin them off to Kyndryl for $1,500,000,000. AI has and will decimate consulting that always over charged and often had people with weak skills but big titles and salaries.

@Ak. IBM mainframe revenue is really quite stable. Not really growing and not really shrinking. Yes some folks migrate specific applications off, but other folks add applications back (thats why IBM buys SW innovation). The migrations off revenue equate to new applications revenue being added. Revenue for the most part grow by price increase that IBM adds every year. If you are on the mainframe and have not migrated strategic legacy off by now, you most likely will not. I suspect it’s too risky vs the financial gain. Power on the other hand is an IBM case study of how to mismanage an 8 billion plus business. IBM Power in the late 90’s and early 2000’s was growing like a weed and was easily an 8 billion plus revenue source. Since then, IBM refused to invest in Power ISV’s and they migrated off over time. AIX Went to LINUX as the migration was easy, so one code stack made sense and LINUX was much much cheaper. OS/400 went to Microsoft as Microsoft invested in ISV’s and IBM did not. ISV’s followed the money, and approx 75% of the ISV’s migrated as Microsoft was “good enough” PLUS Microsoft coders were 1/3 the price. Today IBM struggles to reach 2 billion in Power HW sales (2025 estimate is 1.6-1.7 billion for all Power HW). Heck of a job IBM management. As Dana Carvey imitating Ross Perot said on SNL said “a monkey could do that”.

Good. It is time for IBM to swim with the fishes. An evil company run by greedy little people. Time to die.

IBM has been blackmailing customers for years, charging huge fees for its proprietary products. Customers have been looking for way to exit IBM trap. Microsoft and others have been helping IBM customers to climb out from IBM trap (especially, Power Systems). The last IBM stronghold (Z system/mainframe) is collapsing. Then, IBM will fade away.

I don’t see IBM ever selling off Consulting completely as it’s part of the strategic Enterprise focus. Instead IBM will most likely pick 8-10 strategic “enterprise” industries focused on “Legacy” enterprise (banking , financial, etc etc) and then partner off what’s left over. That should easily 1/2 consulting while letting IBM get the front end (eg marketing) of the left over pile.

I'll be glad when IBM sells the consulting division.