2015 and IBM: But it wasn't supposed to be like this...

IBM said it reckoned on earnings per share of $15.75-16.50 for this year, when it announced its fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday. 2015 was supposed to be a golden year for IBM, where it would hit the $20 EPS goal under the five-year plan of former chief executive Sam Palmisano. Software was to be the engine of that 2015 …

[Disgruntled of TW]

Never mind the quality ...

... feel the width! With the race to market for the "next app", developers drop quality like a stinky poo. Speed to market is all that matters. The complexity of modern applications, with the number of API layers bewildering, understanding security and performance is very, very difficult. Google and Microsoft are having a simply wonderful time right now arguing about it.

It's no surprise that so many organisations jump on the "cloud" bandwagon, as all evil is apparently removed from your plate of responsibility, handed to the folk that live in that "cloudy place" over there. Do the problems move? Do they go away? Do the cloudy folk do a better job than you were doing before you moved your primary data assets into their "cloudy place"? How would you know?

This obsession by IBM with the cloud thing is very dangerous, as they haven't defined the thing. There was a time when IBM might have been the company to call it for what it is ... a move back to conceptually centralised data processing using shared compute and storage resources. I'm not going to say it out loud :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Never mind the quality ...

They also seem very keen to call anything they can a "cloud". They took over part of an IT department and renamed the datacenters a "cloud" because there are two of them!

In some respects I like it from an IT point of view because it is one way of telling the business to stop asking awkward questions... it's a cloud, you don't need to know what goes on here :-)

[Mark Cathcart]

Re: Never mind the quality ...

We/They did, it was called Grid computing and the commercial implementation was called On Demand. It was both off and on-prem'. The problem was they were not prepared to sacrifice any lambs and in the interim "debating" period, Google and Amazon happened...

[Nifty]

"Do the cloudy folk do a better job than you were doing before you moved your primary data assets into their "cloudy place"?"

At IBM, quite possibly, yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should never have given up on OS/2

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anybody still using IBM software?

Everytime I get close to one I start to feel sick....

[tom dial]

Re: Is anybody still using IBM software?

Most likely your bank is, and as well the mainframe on which it runs.

[Haro]

Started a couple of years ago

One son had a job all lined up at IBM, and then it all crashed. The other son was at Accenture, and they were sucking up all the big jobs. For years IBM ruled Canada, and all the ridiculous huge government computer jobs. None of them ended up working. As somebody said, the Cloud has no barriers to entry, and the winnings go to the swift. A big bureaucracy has no chance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Started a couple of years ago

Is it my imagination or is IBM really trying extremely hard to emulate Cisco's bureaucracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no surprise, as IBM cannot decide what it is.

Is is a services vendor or is it an equipment seller.

It seems as an outsource company it thinks it's better than everyone and blameless. It can do this because of the complicated multi tiered management structure that doesn't actually communicate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Complex and expensive

They expect to increase support costs year-on-year by 10% an definitely for sure without a 10% increase in ease of access and quality!

We waved goodby to our IBM SW estate, putting it on ice and looked into other vendors for tooling.Cheaper, better, easier.

I'm just waiting for IBM to buy the vendors we now use, and to send these tools out to Siberia, while forcing us to move to their latest "big Idea".

[Paul Crawford]

Fixed it for you...

"As-a-service is more valuable in the world of cloud because it means repeatable subscription revenue as the onus is on the customer to cancel their account keep paying or all their business data and established work-flow vanishes."

[Victor 2]

So...

"IBM wants to break down Chinese walls between hardware and software to create units for research, sales and delivery, systems, global technology services, cloud, Watson, security, commerce and analytics."

I guess IBM wants to be Oracle now.

[NeilMc]

Looks like it is gonna be a Blue Year for Big Blue.........

No growth

Cost cutting

Navel gazing trying to decide what they want to be when they grow up

Stone lifting to try and find the next big thing

I predict IBM will end up re-packaging the same old shit under a shiny new banner and hope they can sell it like Wall Street Bankers selling CDO's (no idea what it is or what it does but its cool, shiny and new) and get back to profitability.

Outsourcery

Off-shoring

24/7 chase the sun shared data centres

now cloudy stuff

Same poor solution different name and day................

[PeterM42]

The Dinosaur is Dead...Long live,,,,,

In the old days, you never got sacked for buying IBM. Now that is all different.

It seems to me anyone BUYING IBM should get sacked. Just ask npower who they got to implement their CRAPSAP billing system.

[Uncle Ron]

Not a Lost Year for Everyone...

2015 will not be a "lost year" for the foot-soldier employees of IBM. They will be flogged, inspected, tailed, pressured and bullied by management more than ever. Their quotas will be increased (and, being on "relative" performance plans, their incomes will be cut) and many, many of them will be kicked to their curb or voluntarily race to the exit for their efforts.

Senior management at IBM has carved resources to the bone (and beyond) to make EPS targets for decades, "Cost containment" has been the only identifiable IBM strategy over that time frame. No one who knows anything should wonder why the company has fallen behind -everyone- else in the industry in innovation, new products, price-performance, and service.

IBM has lost it's way. And with mostly a-hole kissing people left in the house, it is questionable that it will ever find it's way back.

[David Gale]

TADAG

IBM missed an opportunity to engage with TADAG.com in 2009. Not because they didn't think it was a good idea but because some mindless middle management got all high and mighty about not wanting to make a public record of the date of the meeting. As an ex-IBM employee, I appreciated (some of) the training I received but when the discussion moves inexorably to which swimming pool filter to buy at the third cocktail party of the week, life becomes a little dull.

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM sells great Butt Scratchers!

If you are wondering what IBM has become, they now monopolize the Butt Scratchers international market! Butt Scratchers!! Butt Scratchers!!!

[Cast]

Only the least skilled workers are left at IBM

IBM management are not even qualified to work for Fry's Electronics.