Old hand at NewCo: IBM re-hires former CFO to run soon-to-be-spun-out Global Tech Services division IBM has tapped up its former chief beancounter Martin Schroeter to run the breakaway IT infrastructure services division scheduled to launch at the end of this year. Global Technology Services, minus a few elements, will be spun out to form a separate but as yet unnamed entity – a strategy hatched by CEO Arvind Krishna and …
You're being so pessimistic.
There will be no more Resource Actions - they will move to a rolling lottery where senior staff members are able to execute employees that fit into the "experienced but too expensive" category in order to save money.
There will even be extra draws at Christmas to ensure annual financial targets are met.
There will even be media releases about the measurable increase in staff morale (from a limited poll of senior management employees).
Note: This is sarcasm because in a few short years it may just seem like I could see the future.
Schroeter will sell the entire ship to Wipro or Tata. The Indians will then claim that they lost the PIN to their internet banking app and cannot pay anyone in Europe or the US. As an emergency measure, all work will be moved to India. Then they will wait until all resources move somewhere else.
The old IBM guard are staying in place - nothing will change, we'll see the same bad decisions, and we'll see 2 companies go downhill.
The latest fad (HCI) - its nothing new. Softlayer? MCS? Ring any bells?
The whole reason it doesn't make money is the incessant push to win a contract, often as a loss-lead. Contracts are pushed at below market rates to win the business in the hope it will lead to more sales. When its found that the resources priced to do the job are unable to do so, more 'expensive' resources have to be pulled in to fix the mess - and that hits an already negative profit margin. Customers get pissed because of poor service and are *less* likely to want to spend more money. If anything, IBM piss more money down the drain in the form of service credits because the insane practice of rotating people out of accounts at such a high rate means that account knowledge is lost at an alarming rate.
Working at IBM was the most stressful times of my career (not only because of the constant RAs but also having to deal with pissed off customers whilst trying to work out what the hell the support team had done to create the mess in the first place, and fix it extremely quickly)!
"IBM may be able to grow when unshackled from a unit that has been an anchor"
And there I was thinking the hours I put in to make sure my customers were as happy as they could be *actually* made a difference, when all I was actually seen as was something to be tossed overboard due to piss-poor management decisions.
or to be exact, the "(out of date) full biography" that was not updated or removed from before he left the company, came up on a search...
"Martin Schroeter is Senior Vice President, IBM Global Markets, responsible for IBM's revenue, profit and client satisfaction worldwide as well as IBM's Global Financing business, the world's largest captive IT financier. Additionally, Martin is accountable for IBM’s marketing and communications functions which are responsible for building the company’s brand and reputation globally.
..."
"accountable for IBM’s marketing and communications functions which are responsible for building the company’s brand and reputation globally"
Can't be that accountable then. Does he read the drubbing IBM gets in the press? Not so much building IBM's reputation - rather a case of destroying it.
The cynic in me thinks the biography wasn't removed because he already had an idea he'd be back.... jobs for the boys and all that.
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