I personally think that the reason why IBM's top mismanagement can NOT get acquisitions to be successes, is flat-out arrogance that starts with Ginni and spreads across the executive echelon!
The execs immediately think that they know more than the experts at the company that they just acquired, and that they can lay off the acquired experts and employees… And replace them with monkeys, squirrels, toads, and worms.
And all the components of all the hardware being sold, will be replaced by the cheapest “stuff” that IBM can find anywhere in the world (preferably India). Tool steel will be replaced by low quality albeit cheap cardboard, and silicon chips will be replaced by wood chips! Phone help will be replaced by random word generators and speech synthesizers.
And, then, they will wonder why IBM's EVERY SINGLE new business segment goes belly-up!