Another factor that is going to pinch IBM here: they're getting hit from the other side with professional services firms (McKinsey, Big Four, Booz Allen, etc.) now jumping into cloud implementation work. Also smaller but legitimate technical firms like Pivotal who capitalized on IBM dragging their feet in this marketplace.

So, if IBM's strength was "we can do services from anywhere," that gets busted by the rest of these players who can now compete at the same logistical level. And if they aren't hiring the best engineers, they're going to get slammed by Microsoft who will pay top dollar for them.