Thread regarding IBM layoffs

IBM is following in the footsteps of corporate predecessors like Westinghouse and Bell and Howell...formerly great and famous names that eventually fell into obscurity as their product lines became smaller and more specialized. It appears that IBM's fate will be to market IBM-built offerings (mainframes) to high-dollar customers, and to remarket IBM-branded and "brought to you by IBM" products to everyone else.

For the masses, IBM will just be a forgettable brand name on various items. The corporate structure will split, perhaps between mainframes ("IBM Enterprise"), the remaining business stuff ("IBM Global"), services ("IBM Consulting"), and everything for the masses ("IBM Consumer Products").

It’s all about costs and lowering them. IBM has been pursuing this cost lowering strategy since the Ginni era due to stagnate enterprise customer growth. India has been the big winner, because of their lower labor rates. Americas and Northern Europe have been the big loser due to their higher labor rates. Some off shoots of this strategy are

1. IBM has invested quite strongly in innovative HW designs (mostly chip) to keep enterprise boxes on the floor and stop enterprise shrinkage.
2. IBM has adopted buying innovative SW vs developing it. This saves money since you can layoff the legacy developers and support infrastructure. IBM monetizes this strategy by acting as a distributor for the new SW.
3. IBM has offshored almost all manufacturing to Mexico and Foxconn thus lowering costs
4. IBM has partnered out almost everything that is non-mainframe centric (ISV’s, cloud, TSS, scale-out products, etc etc) sacrificing direct sales for IP infrastructure revenue and distribution sales instead. This lowers costs because IBM doesn’t have to staff, develop, sell, or support approx 70% of its offerings.
5. Finally IBM is investing heavily into offshore Enterprise AI (think mainframe solutions) as it replaces commodity labor and legacy SW. IBM sells and distributes the AI labor savings and SW offerings via consulting engagements. This has been slow going, BUT last quarter IBM finally looks to have turned the corner (look at redhat growth)

eventually this will end poorly
you cannot keep playing financial games to make your share price look good
sadly, i think the folks at the top will get off scot-free with their financial pillaging

nothing new for IBM.