I’ve heard a lot of rumors about what’s going to happen to IBM in October. So far I’ve narrowed it down to one of these 3 things:
GBS & GTS merger final, GTS takes the lead and all redundant roles in GBS are laid off
GBS is bought by another company
IBM Cloud takes over, all groups not aligning to IBM Cloud implementation are laid off
Anyone have an insight? What have you heard about October?
1rva. Cloud is where “OTC Legacy” goes to become a stream. Remember back in the late 70’s IBM converted from rental to OTC??? Well we are now living the opposite. IBM wants to exit the OTC (don’t need sales guys if you exit this) for stream. How do you convert to stream. Offer your OTC “as a service”. KA CHING. You have now converted to stream. So where does cloud come in??? It’s where the “as a service” runs. So back to your statement. IBM is pushing cloud more than Watson. That’s absolutely correct. You could easily say IBM is pushing “as a service” more than Watson.
IBM seems to be pushing Cloud more than Watson these days. Maybe Cloud is the future.
The rest of the pack is bad too
The clients are better off without IBM.
@afhf, Yes! Totally agree. It is our luck to be sold.
The clients are better off without IBM.
Any new support methodology will be better than the bloat IBM is force feeding them.
Being spun off from IBM might be the best thing that could happen to many of us
9aag. I hate to say this, but it appears that IBM Has bet the farm on cloud and “as a service”. The cloud offerings are specialized (IBM has centered on 5-10 offerings around cognitive, AI, security, hosting on Mainframe, HPC, blockchain, and a few hybrid offerings) All of the offerings specialize in being able to appeal to the fortune 250 customer set. If you do not fit into this broad outline, IBM will phase you out via a spinoff or joint venture. The current thinking is Bain will take all assets IBM doesn’t want. AGAIN the focus is fortune 250. Everything else must go.
I, for one, hope GBS is sold. I’m sick of having to peddle IBM Cloud to my clients. I’m also sick of loss-leading GTS SO contracts driving client relationships, and the business, straight into the ground.
Let us pray that a real consultancy buys us.
8tof. Just remember IBM classifies anything associated with as a service as cloud. MSP your system z, or erp System, or any middle wear solution. It equals cloud in IBM’s definition. Can they continue to grow that??? Most likely yes BUT remember that cost them OTC Sales for an annunity Stream
Aww, its a shame IBM cannot land any real cloud contracts.
Again, I work closely with 3 large IBM locations and neither one has any accounts on IBM Cloud.
What does that tell you? It's game over for IBM and Cloud, quit hoping for it.
Pay attention. Everyone is embracing cloud. As goes Google so IBM follows
https://finance.yahoo.com/m/57e65284-5477-38f7-9b9f-a0f22911c93e/ss_google-replaces-its-head-of.ht
Where is this info. coming from? Kathleen Wilt
2hnh. You are correct in that proprietary cloud is limited, (think business to business) BUT that is where IBM is headed. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have taken the Intel market (think Business to public) already. Their lead is so far ahead, that IBM has stopped running to chase them. IBM is now trying to exploit System Z (mostly) and some AI/cognitive (Power) to find a niche. That Niche is built around Legacy/proprietary OS’s and HW. As such IBM has adopted a fortune 250 strategy (think Z) with AI/Cognative offerings built around Business to business. That’s their strategy, and marketing pitch to their BIG legacy customers. (Eg we know your business and systems better than anyone, and we have NICHE offerings in the Business to business market place,that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have never even considered). SO how do they exploit it. They go back to a rental model (as a service) and tell their customers “why switch” when we can run it for you in our cloud at a lower cost. Everyone says legacy is shrinking. That depends on how you define legacy. If it’s just System Z and very large Power installs, then Not really. Legacy is moving to as a service and that means an annunity stream vs a OTC sell. Short term that hurts revenue big time, but long term, you lock in you big customers that you can then sell “NICHE” AI/cognative offerings to, and other “new” SW (think LINUX) offerings to. The goal of IBM management is to stop the bleed of the big fortune 250 customers. All of the other customers (Small and medium) AIX and OS/400 customers have been thrown to the channel, and they are in the process of upgrading or migrating. All of the SMB customers (think Intel) were abandoned when IBM sold to Lenovo. As I said IBM has a fortune 250 strategy. Think preserve Z and use that relationship to sell “Niche” AI/Cognative (Power) offerings and to sell “Niche” LINUX offerings on Power and Intel. That’s their way forward. Will it work??? Most likely YES, BUT IBM is going to have to shrink a LOT, and partner with some Niche application (LINUX) partners
“IBM proprietary Cloud focused” is a very, very limited business.
They add value, I disagree with: "Hopefully they close most of those river-rat shanty town lack of innovation centers.
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Hopefully they close most of those river-rat shanty town lack of innovation centers.
Tuy. Can you say “as a service”. IBM is going “IBM proprietary Cloud focused” Everything else will be de-emphasized. Watson Health has turned out to be a poor investment in first world countries. Turns out Helthcare is much harder to change/automate in countries that have good infrastructure/communications/peer review. (Eg doctors having the time to keep up). It has a better track record in 3rd world countries. (Eg doctors who are overwhelmed by volume) IBM over paid for their base SW companies, and refuses to invest in modernizing their current SW. IBM will continue to invest in the research part of Watson. (Eg datamining). It appears that most of the current SW investment and services will be off shored to India. This is Ginni’s swan song. Traditional IBM will be transformed to “cloud” focused. That means a very large restructuring to automation/skeleton crews especially in first world countries.
Something's definitely coming, as in IBM Systems, which is in the midst of a large Transformation, which essentially consisted of moving over a bunch of GTS headcount under Systems, there's a huge push by upper management for associated projects to be completed by end of 2018.
Watson Health?
Rumor mill is right sizing starts as early as tomorrow. Bain takes all high cost low margin business. (sit will be a spin off / ip deal) IBM right sizes to “as a service”, and niche pieces. They remain a major player in research / patents. Split is approx 55 billion IBM in revenue, 25 billion in revenue for Bain. Bain does the heavy lifting of reorg’ing the low margin business. IBM guarantees the Bain portion of the business the GF treatment (Eg Help via the labs with futures and a guarantee of certain amounts of business over 10 years). Again just rumor, but the stars seem to be aligning