Yes, they're still large and influential, and even "successful" in a limited sense. But in context I don't think you can look at their recent history as one of ascendance.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/perfor...
If you go back to the early nighties IBM had two or years in a row where it's annual losses where bigger than some countries total income and their share price fell under the $20 mark.
That was around the time with the clone PC where taking off and everyone was predicted the end of IBM and big iron.
Move on 30 years and their share price is now back over $200.
IBM has a hyper focus in optimizing their share price due to the talent they acquired from PwC; I would say, its more like PwC acquired IBM due to the cultural changes that followed (not that IBM was already dysfunctional, they were all too easy to convince of this). But really, how long can this last? Eventually they are expected to do great things to justify their valuation, and all the news suggests that they have no capabilities at all to do such; they just cut and cut!
January 17, 1993 The announcement by International Business Machines, whose corporate world headquarters are in Armonk, that this year it was cutting 25,000 more jobs worldwide and reducing its budget for research, development and engineering by $1 billion may signify that the company will have to initiate the first layoffs in its history. Up to now the company has used voluntary means like job buyouts and early retirement to eliminate jobs.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/17/nyregion/ibm-weighs-possib...
Seem familiar?
IBM culture back then was pretty toxic, and there was a lot of dead weight to lay off. It makes sense that many of those job could easily be moved to India, yeh for them! But now...even the high-end tech people who worked there are moving on to less toxic companies like Google. What's left? A bunch of consultants and a huge insourcing operation in India?
A: start with a large fortune.
However, in the high end markets where they can extract absolutely massive margins -- they used to dominate there historically, and they're still dominant, and raking in money hand over fist.
At this point, I'd say they got past their business problems from the early '90s, and seem to have reversed their decline. They're not the behemoth that they used to be, but they've got a very comfortable niche that is doing a good job of lining their pockets.