Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Let's add Alibaba / Alipay and the amazing transaction rate they achieve during Singles' Day. In the US, most mainframes are locked down from Thanksgiving till after New Years. There are just too many potential single points of (major) failure to allow anything but standard operation. The hyperscalers (including in China) are much more resilient and fault tolerant.

IBM is in the very fortunate position of NOT really having to prove that the platform improves all those metrics. They would have to prove it if they were in the business of getting new mainframe customers but they don't really get a lot of those. Their existing customer base isn't loyal because they believe they are convinced by such arguments. They are loyal because they are stuck. Almost all customers are moving low hanging fruit off the platform and onto a distributed platform. Some are driving to fully replace the platform but this is usually a very expensive proposition. No customer is delighted with the prices they pay IBM. But as long as that price is a bit less than the cost of getting off the platform, they accept it.

The case where IBM does have to prove that the metrics improve enough to justify the cost is when a new machine (e.g., z17) comes out. That is probably going to get tougher down the road. IBM does rely on customers having aggressive refresh cycles. If a few extra customers skip a generation, it hurts. Fortunately, there is a fix for that too: IBM regularly announces End of Service on software products and generations of hardware. For many customers, especially in regulated industries, that forces their hands.

The other problem IBM has trying to prove things like those metrics justifying the price is credibility. Even internally, the stats and "facts" they spew are nonsense. (WCA4Z/WatsonX challenge anyone?) What they tell customers (e.g., LinuxONE is the cheapest way to run Linux) has been so suspicious for so many decades that every customer takes their "proof" with a grain of salt.