How many people here have faith in this leadership? How many believe that this management can get us back on the right path? Anybody?
I don't think that there is a chance in hell IBM will ever be what it once was, but it can still be better than it is now with several competent people on top.
With what we have now, we can only continue to go down.
Most of us lost faith in Ginni and the Sr leadership as has Wall Street and Warren Buffett. IBM is cooking the books on the financials and buying time trying to bolster the stock price. To be specific, they call many services “cloud”and report it as such in the financial records. Their legacy MSS business and Z-Cloud are specific examples. What a shame for such a historically great company to be in this shape and run into the ground. The lack of leadership is amazing.
Hello Isu. I understand what you stated regarding IBM moving to an IP sales model. The key, as you stated, is maintaining a sustainable IP revenue flow. That will be the challenge. With software, I've seen many organizations "work around" patented IP to bring their solutions to market. The key will be is the software "work around" OR any "work around" cheaper or more efficient than the IP royalties one would have to pay. Not knowing all the IP IBM possesses I have no idea of current or future value. It will be interesting to see how this may grow and what percentage of it will contribute to the bottom line.
The thing is that Ginni is already gone... She is past 60 so she will most likely not be here next year. The real question is who will be at the helm next? Another IBMer or an outsider? If an IBMer, then the company is doomed as we have no one that understands Tech and can be a CEO. If an outsider, then we will have to see who that is.
Hello Xuu. I agree with you, that IBM is in real trouble, BUT you have to ask yourself from what perspective. I would say IBM was successful due to the infrastructure that they built around their products. (SW companies, ISV’s, databases, add on products, etc etc). Essentially everyone bet on “if IBM built it, you could count on it being around,so it was safe to invest in it”. Lately IBM has transitioned to an IP type of strategy where they want to be DuPont. Essentially they want the IP licensing revenue, but they don’t want to invest in manufacturing, building infrastructure (ISV investment,database investment, etc etc), marketing, sales, or any of the support issues that go along with introducing new HW, SW, or technology into the market place. The P9 chip technology is quite revolutionary, but IBM has decided to license it vs investing in it. (Eg they built zero infrastructure when they introducted P8, and as such they completely missed the LINUX transition). Intel on the other hand invested in everything LINUX (HW, SW, HPC,databases, etc etc) and they now have captured the market even though they don’t have the best technology. As you said, it will take quite an investment to recapture that market. IBM has zero interest in making that bet, thus they have gone to “NICHE” bets. AI and HPC are the “niche” Linux bets, with legacy OS’s (OS/400 and AIX) filling in the remaining void (Eg farming their previous investments). As I said. IBM wants to become DuPont. Invent a lot of stuff via their labs, and then license it, and let everyone else do the heavy lifting. Is this sustainable. Sure. BUT it certainly is not sustainable as an 80 billion dollar company as the Lab investment doesn’t throw off enough IP to continue at 80 billion. So what does all of this mean. IBM will have to shrink due to the IP strategy, and you are seeing that. Sales and Marketing continue to shrink as IBM only licenses via IP, new thing rather than build new things. It’s not a way to continue as an 80 billion dollar company. THUS again you are correct. IBM will get worse for a while until it reaches a sustainable IP/ as a service/ cloud model. I believe that will happen around the 50 billion mark assuming IBM continues to invest in the labs, and they continue to be innovative. NET NET. IBM is transitioning from selling to licensing
GINNI should have been cut several years ago！
No dismissing her, no survivor!
I have no faith in the leadership team. The Board is useless. Other than the few IBM Customers still buying/upgrading mainframes, there's NO relevant IBM product or service offering that's better than what the competition provides. Period. I'm in sales and I used to work for IBM. I can tell you they are rarely even brought up in the conversation. Eventually this train (wreck) is going to require NEW sales with NEW Customers and that my friend requires knowledgeable sales, sales engineers, developers and service staff. To sell and develop something NEW you need to have an understanding of a Prospect's current IT environment; something most Millennials do not have. Unfortunately these Millennials will not have the opportunity to be mentored the way I was 25 years ago due to IBM's forced exodus of their older employees. I can only conclude that it's going to get worse before it gets better.