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Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

Research, chip capacity, other divestments. What is IBM these days? At a certain point, the name should just be retired and committed to the annals of history. At least Sun and SGI are (mostly) not brought up in any fashion related to their prior glory days.

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I think you're greatly underestimating how large and successful IBM is. IBM is enormous in enterprise IT software and services. You just don't hear about it on places like HN where the focus is on consumer/startup stuff.

* Thinkpad and personal computer division sold to Lenovo * HDD division sold to Hitachi (now Western Digital) * Server division to be sold to Lenovo * Cell Processor production halted

In the meantime the IBM strategy seems to focus more and more on online services as the latest batch of acquisition seems to be mostly software and online services, for a complete disinvestment in hardware:

* Kenexa - software solution for HR * SoftLayer Technologies - hosting/cloud * Lighthouse Security Group - security around cloud hosting solution

The only significant hardware purchase seems to be of Texas Memory Systems, a SSD manufacturer. Which makes sense for server oriented business.

And yet they still do ~$100 billion in business per year. About 12.5 times the amount Facebook does, a company that can claim something like 1 out of every 6 people on the planet as a user.

They also employ 431,000 people, or about 61 times the number of people Facebook keeps alive in the global economy.

Several of the sold divisions were in fact money makers. They were sold because Big Blue could make more on services.

Maybe a third or less of the server division was sold. IBM retained Power servers, z mainframes (which aren't the same as Power), and storage.

I think they're betting on software and mostly on "cognitive computing" and watson. And they're focusing on that, leaving aside businesses that won't really give them a competitive advantage, like their fab.

If they can achieve what they promise, they'll regain their place in the history books.

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