back to article IBM: Why yes, Red Hat is doing great. Thanks for asking. The rest of Big Blue? Sure, wait – someone's at the door...

IBM is talking up the success of its Red Hat as Big Blue continues its efforts to ax losing businesses. The enterprise IT giant made its newest big acquisition a central focus of its third-quarter financial numbers [PDF], published Wednesday. For the three months to September 30: Revenues of $18bn were down 3.9 per cent from …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ginni's cunning plan...

    A nice healthy price increase for all those nice new shiny IBM^H^H^H Red Hat products?

    1. EricM

      Re: Ginni's cunning plan...

      Improbable, as RedHat, just like any other Linux Distro, is pretty replaceable.

      Re-training support staff from RHEL to another distro should be completed quickly if need be.

      There's just not enough lock-in potential for IBM to get away with big price hikes or changes in the licensing fine print the way Oracle does it.

      That said, I like RHEL, the way RedHat behaved as a company and how they were easy to work with.

      I hope that will not change under IBM.

      But, if it does, we are ready to move...

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: Ginni's cunning plan...

        RedHat, just like any other Linux Distro, is pretty replaceable

        I wouldn't go quite that far with DedRat - it seems to be the base of a lot of other distributions.

        However, I wouldn't cry many tears if it did disappear because then the abomination that is systemd might disappear as well.

        1. Ima Ballsy
          Coat

          Re: Ginni's cunning plan...

          You mean the parasite of an OS inside another OS ?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ginni's cunning plan...

      They already have indirectly, they changed the definition of academic licenses to exclude research institutions same as Microsoft. The new price was “exciting” enough that we’re dumping them. We are not going to spend that much per year of charity money on OS support.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What ever happened to CEO's pay being aligned to company health? Gini should have been receiving less and less pay every quarter, instead it just keeps getting bigger!

    1. Ken 16 Silver badge
      Unhappy

      It's aligned to share price (which IBM have been buying back) and percentage revenue from cloud (which Red Hat is considered to be) so don't worry about her, she's fine.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Where's the accompanying IBM layoff/rightsizing/workforce action article?

    It seems like it has been weeks since I saw one of those on El Reg. Has this kind of news finally sunk to the "dog bites man" level of journalistic inevitability?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Where's the accompanying IBM layoff/rightsizing/workforce action article?

      Should be coming soon. I've already got word of a few people in IBM Services whose last day is 31st December (giving enough notice so that IBM only has to pay bare minimum in redundancy payouts per local legislation.)

      I've noticed a ton of jobs pulled from the internal jobs site as they can try to find another job internally before the RA kicks in. At the same time, we are getting emails telling us how we can earn $ recommending staff with the right skill sets to join.

      1. Tom 38

        Re: Where's the accompanying IBM layoff/rightsizing/workforce action article?

        Is the right skill set "aged 21-29, willing to work for 80 hours a week in return for peanuts"?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Where's the accompanying IBM layoff/rightsizing/workforce action article?

          ...and located in India.

          1. herman

            Re: Where's the accompanying IBM layoff/rightsizing/workforce action article?

            'located in India' - Well, it is not called Indian Business Machines for nothing.

      2. Robert Helpmann??
        Childcatcher

        Re: Where's the accompanying IBM layoff/rightsizing/workforce action article?

        I was a sub on one of their contracts until the beginning of this year. It seemed pretty clear that the bean counters were running things upstream. The techs I worked with were pretty good but the contract was in constant trouble.

  4. Mayday
    Devil

    "someone's at the door"

    I read that as "Ginni is RAing you out the door"

  5. Flyon69

    It's Been a Mistake

    Once again IBM messes up big time. They introduced their new AC922 and all of the development on the Power 8 Minskey goes down the toilet. Because some moron decided without telling anyone including their own tech support that they no longer supported OpenGL.

    Totally a moronic decision as they introduced the new (at the time) V100 NWLInk solution.

  6. marky_boi
    Thumb Down

    We are planning a quick migration strategy

    When IBM took over we saw nothing good in this, except for IBM and eventual price rises. We are currently scoping CentOS, SuSE and Ubuntu server.

    I personally hate IBM with a passion, for hardware, they take our money and just send parts + support is close to non-existent. they are just circling the bathplug hole.

    1. dave 81

      Re: We are planning a quick migration strategy

      Tried Oracle?

      1. Tim99 Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: We are planning a quick migration strategy

        I think you forgot the joke icon >>======>

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Killing thhe goose and wild ducks

    Itsy Bitsy Morons head honcho has been implementing her policy of open duck and goose hunting season for a long time now. If you are a valuable tech your rewards will be to work harder or get out. Any chance of getting proper recognition of talent or good work is tied to the ability of spreadsheets and presentation slides... And the idiots in Delivery trained to parrot and squawk technical vomit are lead by brainless political vindictive PHBs.

    How do you get shrinking revenues on 5-year and 10-year contracts I say! Promise loads of nonsense to keep high cost idiots and fire hardworking nose-grinders while rehiring former toxic trash who left for "reasons"

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now just an IP milking company

    IBM is still at a point where eating your own, is considered the most profitable.

    Depending on the quarter (which is most), more and more leaf workers are deemed too expensive to retain even if they are exemplary.

    At some point, Ginni and Watson will be the last two running the company.

    1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

      Re: Now just an IP milking company

      At some point, Ginni and Watson will be the last two running the company.

      Unlikely, that way they will get the blame. They will slip out pretty soon now and will leave a sacrificial scape goat in place.

  9. fredesmite
    Mushroom

    paid $34b for redhat

    whose income was just $300m

    Do they have any math experts at IBM ?I

    1. AdamWill

      Re: paid $34b for redhat

      That figure is artificially low because of merger related adjustments to how deferred revenue is booked. RH's quarterly revenue before the buyout was I think around $800m; accounted the same way this quarters revenue would've been higher.

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