ex-IBMer here, product side: GTS sometimes had better private pricing and incentives for products from competitors that other business units couldn't match due

ex-IBMer here, product side: GTS sometimes had better private pricing and incentives for products from competitors that other business units couldn't match due to internal pricing policies. Now try explaining to the customer why IBM is recommending an IBM's competitor while IBM is also offering the same product with a better price directly to the customer. It doesn't make sense at all. Consider two service-focused business units (GTS and GBS) that sometimes are complementary but mostly adversarial and it is chaos for the customer. Spinning-off GTS (and I dare say, GBS too) is better for the customer and for the product business units.