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IBM's hardware division had a 35% profit on sales in the last quarter. In most businesses that would be considered tremendous. Unfortunately for IBM employees i
by forgotAgain 13y ago
IBM's hardware division had a 35% profit on sales in the last quarter. In most businesses that would be considered tremendous. Unfortunately for IBM employees its not enough to drive up the stock price. That's the only decider. That's what's driving the stock repurchases and the layoffs. Meet the EPS goals set by management so they get their bonuses. Short term planning rules.
Mainframes are a growing business. They're failing with their Unix boxes, same as Oracle. They can't compete with Linux. The other area where they are failing is in sales of retail systems. E-commerce and iPads are killing their intelligent cash register.
- mrkodiak 13y agoIBM sold its retail systems business last year. I left IBM STG middle of last year. In the span of about 6 months, half of my former department either left IBM or transferred elsewhere in the company. In the latest rounds of layoffs, I was surprised at how many good people (but middle aged) in the larger organization were dumped, and how some bare some areas have gotten (100,000's of code falls on 1 or 2 people).
- forgotAgain 13y agoYou're correct on the Retail Sales Systems. I misread their Q2 earnings report at http://www.ibm.com/investor/?lnk=fif-inve-usen http://www.ibm.com/investor/?lnk=fif-inve-usen . The report, page 3, talks of decline in sales excluding Retail Sales. I didn't take that to mean they sold off RSS.