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Comment by fpp | Hacker News Reader

To me this sounds like the final step to the end of Big Blue's organisational culture and corporate identity.

Sold off most of their manufacturing and now becoming one more "service provider" - classic setup: 6 overhead / 1-2 delivery (1 Programme Man, 3 PMs, 1 engagement & liaison man. - 1-2 tech staff doing the implementation). Target task: sell more IBM services to the client.

Or maybe they want to live off their vast patent portfolio - when will we start to call them a non practicing entity?

Sad story.

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When I start a business as a hardware manufacturer, and then the industry margins become lower than the expectations of my shareholders, then I need to exit the business. Selling off Lenovo provided a huge cash injection that funded a major deficit in their pension plan funding and a few years later tablets killed any hope of making decent margin, so the time was at least lucky. I wasn't a big fan of Sam and he certainly was at the helm when they missed the cloud. Ginny wasn't handed the best cards, but I like how she is playing them. For the future, IBM as a leading integrator of Apple technology into enterprises is clever, and the acquisition of Softlayer and building of mobility services is well aligned to the market. I agree with another poster about IBM being a finance company at its core. Ultimately, the value I see in IBM is one MSA (Master Services Agreement) as the contractual framework for a multitude of cloud services. Have you ever seen lawyers on a cloud agreement? It can take a year to negotiate. A schedule in an MSA is signed quickly. It's a great business with recurring margin from a recognized name and financially stable company. Just some thoughts.

IBM is a software and consulting company. It's a very profitable business. Much better than selling hardware.

Not entirely. About a quarter of our revenue comes from mainframes - not just the hardware, but the ecosystem around it. See the bottom of http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/technology/-2015-07-21-tec....

I work for IBM Research, but not in hardware.

So you're equating their decision to let employees chose Macbook's over Thinkpads (which have deteriorated in quality over the years) is somehow an indication of their decline? More large companies should give their employees a choice.

The hyperbole is strong with this one.

Their transformation to being primarily a service provider happened more than a decade ago. Is them helping clients deploy Apples instead of Lenovos really that much less "IBM"?

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