so hearing that managers, exec's, etc have been made to sign NDA's and that some big changes are afoot for IBM Jan and Feb, Apart from the obvious k–ling of the staff what has anybody heard? Ive heard software services will merge into GBS (what's left of them). Plus some form of another major restructure .... ho humm
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NewCo split is happening in Q2, much sooner than announced.
Did tour reliable source have an idea of what’s coming down? Selloff, RA, split, PIP
From a reliable inside source "Jan and Feb at IBM is going to be a Blood Bath"
Sounds like my time at Nortel... big meeting right after the holiday break to let go half of the team in the lab!
We were told GOM would be un-frozen this week but it’s remained frozen. That means no employee transfers going in to January. North America having a town hall in the middle of the day on Jan 4. Yep, I’d say something big is coming. Going to spend this Christmas break desperately looking for new jobs. Good luck to all.
January 4 town hall by the Head of Global Markets NA. This is going down fast.
January is going to be a whirlwind. The shakeup that is going to happen should've happened right after AK took over but COVID delayed this out (bad PR, etc, etc). For those who are about to be cut (I'm likely in this group), good luck with life post-IBM. Many former IBM-ers have said it only gets better. At the very least, the new upcoming stimulus deal will have a $300/week UI enhancement. Godspeed!
Don't you think IBM hybrid cloud/Redhat is just another "sh–ty product"?
- and where is the revenue growth going to come from?
Mainframes.... NO!
Hybrid-Cloud... very unlikely since IBM is already last!
Good luck!! If you were smart you would update your resume and start looking, then jump ship before the IBM one sinks!!
"yeah... the new IBM is going to be far leaner... that seems to have been the direction for the past 10 years... how lean IBM needs to be when we all know the current strategy/products will never increase revenues"
Because AK is totally changing the company. Less sh–ty products, more Hybrid Cloud services and integrations. Imagine... IBM becomes ONLY hybrid cloud/Redhat + Mainframes. That's the lean they're headed towards.
yeah... the new IBM is going to be far leaner... that seems to have been the direction for the past 10 years... how lean IBM needs to be when we all know the current strategy/products will never increase revenues?
You are viewing GBS thru the legacy lens. GBS under AK will be restructured around Hybrid Cloud/Redhat/AI/cognitive, and Enterprise. Everything else goes Some portions of GBS will be moved to GTS and end up in Newco. The new IBM will be far leaner than folks expect
IBM is an SI. We do consulting delivery work for customers and compete with the WITCH companies, Deloitte, and Accenture. If the plan is to ditch consulting delivery, then that means cutting all of the 140,000 GBS staff including dismantling and removal of all India CICs. The realistic implication is that GBS will be parceled out and sold to competitors by the service line.
Working with BIG SI’s is definitely in the game plan. You have seen IBM tip their hand toward the big SI’s over the course of 2020 Here is a list of the top SI’s from 2019 NOTE they are all the names that continue to come up with IBM public announcements. AK has BIG go to market changes on his mind. Partnerships are the operative word. Running lean and mean is part of the play with far fewer direct IBM’ers
https://em360tech.com/business_agility/tech-news/top-10-system-integrator-companies
All in all storage is viewed as a commodity. Commodities don’t fit into the go forward strategy. Is the DSXXX family profitable, and strategic? Yep, as is certain pieces of the SW stack. BUT IBM is more interested in leveraging their lab capabilities for a strategic relationship with whoever buys the storage division. A GF deal will be struck (guaranteed cloud sales for IBM lab investment and sharing of ideas) It’s a win/win and IBM gets out of the day today commodity business. There are several commodity storage players who see strategic advantage for that deal.
@4vvc I agree, storage won't get cut - at least not entirely. I see three separate paths:
- Storage hardware that attaches to mainframe is an obvious keeper. As long as IBM sells mainframes, it is a comfortably profitable revenue stream. In fact, if IBM never sold another mainframe, the storage upgrade business would be valuable for a decade.
- Other storage hardware (along with Power) is barely profitable (at best) and expensive to invest in, and faces intense competition. Flashsystem may still have a couple of good years before it is made irrelevant by SCM (and TSM becomes another acquisition squandered through under-investment). Probably will be sold off, although they may have to pay somebody to take it (like the chip business).
- The software is a real mixed bag. There is some stuff that has a steady maintenance stream, no viable cloud play, and a long glide-path to ground, like Protect. Makes sense to sell that to e.g. HCL. There is stuff you can make a case for as part of a "hybrid cloud" narrative, e.g. Scale. That stuff should move to Cloud. And there is stuff that just makes me scratch my head if we are serious about "hybrid cloud" - like Virtualize. That probably needs to be "managed down", but whether inside or outside IBM I don't know
Why do you think storage is going to be cut? It’s part of the mainframe solution and also a component of hybrid cloud. Surely there is still a storage play for IBM.
so hearing now IBM is going to announce strategic partnerships with the big SI's (system integrators)
so all the work is done by them not internal IBM. Heads will roll
Now you are starting to get it. It’s all about hybrid cloud. The focus is on Enterprise customers (approx 1200 of them worldwide). Everything else goes. IBM is finally asking the questions the correct way. It’s not about why should I dump this division, but rather about why should I keep this division. The restructuring is happening far faster than they are publicly announcing, and it will be far more transformative then they are publicly announcing . They have pushed all of their chips to the middle and said “all in” If this doesn’t work, IBM will be parted out
Confirming the NDA requirement. I'm in GBS, and my uplines are all part of some committee that does not exist, which required signatures of an NDA to join. The reason the NDAs were required is because all options are on the table at this point. They don't want word getting out about whatever option might be discussed that day - because it might just be some random idea. In short, AK is all in on hybrid cloud, and if your service line or platform doesn't have a plan on how to align with hybrid cloud or AI - get your resume ready. From what I can tell, these committees are the "last stand" at showing to Armonk that there's alignment with AK's vision.
"Gqk Can you elaborate?"
Beginning of Jan seems to be the time for the Marketing (& sales) shakeup.
Yes something is up This article says 1/3 of the restructuring charge (approx 800 million) is to make Newco more competitive. We know that approx 10k of services heads have been cut in Europe, so that most likely takes care of the 1/3. So what is IBM doing with the remaining 1.5 billion? We already know IBM has said sales/marketing will get re-org’ed in early Jan. What would a re-org’ed sales/marketing look like? Digital engagement certainly comes to mind. Does that mean IBM exits the channel/power/storage (scaleout) marketplace. It sure looks like it. Does this mean RA’s? Not really IF IBM is going to spin that piece of the business off. IBM continues to digest the Redhat absorption and there are still excessive overlap from the Redhat employees and the legacy IBM cloud employees. Could we see some of the 1.5 billion spent to streamline cognitive. Again it sure looks like it. IBM certainly wants to exit markets that don’t feed the hybrid enterprise cloud model. If your job doesn’t have cloud, or enterprise (think mainframe) in its job description, you most likely will get impacted.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4394237-will-ibm-finally-turn-green-are-tired-of-red-and-blue
Sales and Marketing will get shaken up in beginning of Jan, as posted in other thread in here, and as mentioned on Sales town hall
Of course something big is coming in Q1 2021, so is in Q2 and at least in Q3... If you listened to AK last CEO stupid office hours, he said he anticipates no growth until Q1 of 2022. What do you think is plan is for 2021? Re-orgs, layoffs and spin-offs...
This has been known for a while. The sales organization is going to be completely shaken up. The head of GM NA has already confirmed this on a town hall call. Good luck to you all and see you on the other end.
Umm... Nope. It's NOT SpinCo.
Umm... yeah... I think it's called "NewCo"???
NDA’s have been required in the past for both major RA’s as well as reorgs. It would not be surprising to see something major.
I haven't heard anything, but moving Lab Services (or whatever they call themselves these days) to GBS would make sense. Having two services groups that compete with each other was ridiculous.
Gqk Can you elaborate?
Annct on Jan 4
I got invited to that training in February...I've seen some groups change there names to be more fitting for cloud....that's about it.
US Service gone? Which Services teams?
Hard to believe IBM would be rid of Lab Services... But what do I know!!
Non-Disclosure Agreement
What’s NDA?
NDA means something more than just RA’s
A comment from another post – @1fkg+18jKnuMZ
Rumor that U.S. Service will be gone.