5 ms·

Also couldn't they basically sit on their rear and collect on mainframe contracts from now until the end of time?

by tenebrisalietum 7y ago

bluedevil2k 7y ago
On Wall Street, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  They’re stock price is the same as it was in 2010, so the market is clearly not expecting great things.
thrower123 7y ago
Their consulting business should also basically print money. They aren't great, objectively, but they are far ahead of the average in that sector.
kjs3 7y ago
No. There's immense pressure on the mainframe market; there's a constant drumbeat of mainframe-killer tech that's definitely better/faster/stronger (and, on rare occasions, is...at least for some narrowly defined workload). IBM has to work very hard keep mainframes competitive technology, and even harder at sales/marketing to fend off the alternatives.
- passer_byer 7y ago
  What competitive technology are you thinking here? IBM z-series mainframe carry enormous amounts of transaction workloads today. They are deeply embedded in most of the Fortune 1000 companies. Hitachi was the only real competitor left standing and they dumped their mainframe business in 2017 since they were unable to get traction outside of Japan. In the early 90's, there were efforts by customers to get rid of their mainframes which put IBM on the ropes then, until Lou Gerstner took over as CEO and stabilized the business. It's not like these transaction workloads can be easily ported elsewhere since some of them go back as far as the early 1970's. Those customers able to ditch their mainframes did so a while back. The rest of these systems will remain due to risks and costs of migrating to a suitable alternative. It's not a huge revenue stream for IBM, but a very profitable one.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    But mainframe customers are still dumping them, and they're not picking IBM: https://cloud.google.com/press-releases/2020/0121/sabre-and-google-cloud-partnership/ https://cloud.google.com/press-releases/2020/0121/sabre-and-... Note that SABRE is the OG enterprise app, by most measures it was the first non-military/govt/research computer system, going live in 1960 (!) and the core still runs System/360 (which they had to migrate to, not from!).
  - kjs3 7y ago
    What exactly did you say that you think I didn't?

Also couldn't they basically sit on their rear and collect on mainframe contracts from now until the end of time?

bluedevil2k 7y ago

On Wall Street, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
They’re stock price is the same as it was in 2010, so the market is clearly not expecting great things.

thrower123 7y ago

Their consulting business should also basically print money. They aren't great, objectively, but they are far ahead of the average in that sector.

kjs3 7y ago

No. There's immense pressure on the mainframe market; there's a constant drumbeat of mainframe-killer tech that's definitely better/faster/stronger (and, on rare occasions, is...at least for some narrowly defined workload). IBM has to work very hard keep mainframes competitive technology, and even harder at sales/marketing to fend off the alternatives.

passer_byer 7y ago
What competitive technology are you thinking here? IBM z-series mainframe carry enormous amounts of transaction workloads today. They are deeply embedded in most of the Fortune 1000 companies. Hitachi was the only real competitor left standing and they dumped their mainframe business in 2017 since they were unable to get traction outside of Japan. In the early 90's, there were efforts by customers to get rid of their mainframes which put IBM on the ropes then, until Lou Gerstner took over as CEO and stabilized the business. It's not like these transaction workloads can be easily ported elsewhere since some of them go back as far as the early 1970's. Those customers able to ditch their mainframes did so a while back. The rest of these systems will remain due to risks and costs of migrating to a suitable alternative. It's not a huge revenue stream for IBM, but a very profitable one.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  But mainframe customers are still dumping them, and they're not picking IBM: https://cloud.google.com/press-releases/2020/0121/sabre-and-google-cloud-partnership/ https://cloud.google.com/press-releases/2020/0121/sabre-and-... Note that SABRE is the OG enterprise app, by most measures it was the first non-military/govt/research computer system, going live in 1960 (!) and the core still runs System/360 (which they had to migrate to, not from!).
- kjs3 7y ago
  What exactly did you say that you think I didn't?