IBM To Shed 78% of US Employees By 2015 [ Edited ]

[bbtr]

---

jblocks wrote:

Really, IBM hardware is immensely important to boatloads of giant corps.  Just look at the prevalence of Cobol.

IBM research is top notch too.

IBM software like DB2/Webshere etc is viable and sells well

As for IBM Global Services, they are like Accenture, Infosys all the other  giant outsourcing bodyshops.

That part sucks of course.

 

• 70-75% of the business and transaction systems around the world run on COBOL. This includes credit card systems, ATMs, ticket purchasing, retail/POS systems, banking, payroll systems, telephone/cell calls, grocery stores, hospital systems, government systems, airline systems, insurance systems, automotive systems, traffic signal systems. (See: Krill, TechWorld; Gaffney, Reuters; and Industry Bits, SystemINetwork articles below).

• 90% of global financial transactions are processed in COBOL. (See: Industry Bits, SystemINetwork article)

• The language supports over 30 billion transactions per day. (See Gaffney, Reuters article)

• The average American still interacts with a COBOL program 13 times a day. (See: Handy, SD Times article)

• There are around 200 billion lines of COBOL code in use. (See: Robinson, Federal Computer Week article)

• Around 5 billion lines of new COBOL code are added to live systems every year. (See: System Inetwork article)

• The investment made into COBOL systems over the past 50 years is said to be worth about $2 trillion dollars. (Gartner Group; see Erickson, Dr Dobbs Code Talker article)

---

Wow, It looks like I stepped on the toes of some mainframers here.  I stand corrected.  It's also interesting to see Dice regulars argue on the side of tech firms for a change.

[IAmNumber813]

Apparently, you're not there or doing that anymore.  That isn't surprising, considering the the depth of your analysis boils down to the argument...  "They hire cheap Indians and therefore..."

As a homework assignment, read the Cringley blogs about IBM and a sampling of the comments about IBM and then come back and write "I stand corrected" again.

----------------------------------------------------------

Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals

[0xFFFFFFFF]

The only IBM hardware I've associated with in the last ten years is either Wintel boxes or legacy AS400s.

Even if they make the best Wintel boxes in the world, that's not much of a business, compared to what IBM used to do.

The AS400s are almost always in legacy mode, locked down and obsolete, no matter how critical they are.  Maybe half of these would survive into another generation, barely enough to make it worth IBM's while to address.  And with all their engineering now offshore, they've lost the legacy skills, so probably won't try.

To anyone who remembers what IBM meant in hardware, software, and service terms even fifteen years ago, these are no more than sad jokes.

If Microsoft put a few bucks into operational support and job schedulers, they could probably steal half of IBM's remaining software business, which would completely shut down all the IBM legacy hardware, and within about two years reduce the company to pure outsourcing, nothing else.  It's a miracle Microsoft didn't do this ten years ago.

[bbtr]

---

IAmNumber813 wrote:

Apparently, you're not there or doing that anymore.  That isn't surprising, considering the the depth of your analysis boils down to the argument...  "They hire cheap Indians and therefore..."

As a homework assignment, read the Cringley blogs about IBM and a sampling of the comments about IBM and then come back and write "I stand corrected" again.

----------------------------------------------------------

Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals

---

Actually, since you're on the subject of predictions, I have been reading on about about how IBM is destined to fail and the repurcussions from so-called "unhappy customers" [to quote your own words] on Dice ever since I joined this discussion board in 2009.  Why don't you guys set a specific date range for your predictions with some specific estimates for a steep decline in revenues, steep decline in market cap, etc?

But you and I both know that's not going to happen.

[IAmNumber813]

-----------------------------------------------------

bbtr wrote:

Actually, since you're on the subject of predictions, I have been reading on about about how IBM is destined to fail and the repurcussions from so-called "unhappy customers" [to quote your own words] on Dice ever since I joined this discussion board in 2009.  Why don't you guys set a specific date range for your predictions with some specific estimates for a steep decline in revenues, steep decline in market cap, etc? [Nobody can predict a specific date for any steep decline in IBM's revenue. People can predict reasonable time periods based on information IBM has provided]

But you and I both know that's not going to happen.

-----------------------------------------------------

Once again, read the analysis that Cringley has done this week on the "IBM Roadmap (or Roadkill) 2015" program.

Assuming IBM's current plans are executed, after 2015 IBM would have minimal organic profit growth capability after it becomes essentially a large Indian bodyshop because most American employees' expense savings (from being fired) would have been exhausted. This concept is not difficult to grasp: if you squeeze an orange (IBM employees) for orange juice it will eventually dry up.

After 2015, IBM would become another GE (which is now essentially a brand marketing company with most of its products and services manufactured outside of the U.S.)

"But you and I both know that's not going to happen."

Read my earlier observations on IBM's STG division. Due to national security issues, I believe the U.S. Justice Department would step in to prevent most of STG's assets from being sold (by IBM's management team) to a foreign company. Everything and everyone else at IBM is fair game for outsourcing and divesting (except IBM's senior management team).

Note: The "unhappy customers" I previously identified are some of the ones that actually contracted with IBM Global Services (which has 100,000+ Indian employees in India).

----------------------------------------------------------

Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals

[jblocks]

I'm not a mainframer bbtr, though I was way back. It's just the reality. 90% of all the code running banks and the rest is legacy. Shucks, the core of SAP is Cobol.

[jblocks]

AS400s (whatever BG likes to remember) were not the hard core and still aren't. The z/OS boxes are the big iron.The ones that run IMS, CICS, DB2 and the rest.

[bbtr]

---

IAmNumber813 wrote:

-----------------------------------------------------

bbtr wrote:

Actually, since you're on the subject of predictions, I have been reading on about about how IBM is destined to fail and the repurcussions from so-called "unhappy customers" [to quote your own words] on Dice ever since I joined this discussion board in 2009.  Why don't you guys set a specific date range for your predictions with some specific estimates for a steep decline in revenues, steep decline in market cap, etc? [Nobody can predict a specific date for any steep decline in IBM's revenue. People can predict reasonable time periods based on information IBM has provided]

But you and I both know that's not going to happen.

-----------------------------------------------------

Once again, read the analysis that Cringley has done this week on the "IBM Roadmap (or Roadkill) 2015" program.

Assuming IBM's current plans are executed, after 2015 IBM would have minimal organic profit growth capability after it becomes essentially a large Indian bodyshop because most American employees' expense savings (from being fired) would have been exhausted. This concept is not difficult to grasp: if you squeeze an orange (IBM employees) for orange juice it will eventually dry up.

After 2015, IBM would become another GE (which is now essentially a brand marketing company with most of its products and services manufactured outside of the U.S.)

"But you and I both know that's not going to happen."

Read my earlier observations on IBM's STG division. Due to national security issues, I believe the U.S. Justice Department would step in to prevent most of STG's assets from being sold (by IBM's management team) to a foreign company. Everything and everyone else at IBM is fair game for outsourcing and divesting (except IBM's senior management team).

Note: The "unhappy customers" I previously identified are some of the ones that actually contracted with IBM Global Services (which has 100,000+ Indian employees in India).

----------------------------------------------------------

Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals

---

So I take it your implied time period is "after 2015".  "After" 2015 isn't exactly specific, not that it matters.

I've been following on Cringely's blog entries throughout this week.  His analysis struck me as being oversimplistic with an obvious agenda of saving US jobs.  He actually lost all credibility with the latest one today.

http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/how-to-fix-IBM-in-a-week/

These reporting requirements that he demanded in his blog are often agreed upon as part of a managed services contract.  It's not hard to implement, once the processes are in place.

Anyway, here's the deal.  Based on current financials, IBM is quite successful.  There's nothing concrete to indicate in the future that IBM's financial performance will decline.  As for the whole squeezing out of the orange until it's dry, sure, that's a possibility and "can" happen to [any and all] firms.  That in itself doesn't constitute a  valid argument.

Who are IBM's competitors in IT services (Accenture, India-based bodyshops, and a few others)?  They sure as hell aren't any different from IBM.  In fact, IBM has a lead on these firms, because IBM has historically been a product-based IT vendor.

Lastly, for your own sake, stop oversimplifying everything.  I've never worked for IBM, but there's a lot of knowledge, effort, and experience involved in IT.   People [and by extension, firms] just don't wake up one day and develop,implement, maintain large scale IT systems.  If that is the case, then we're all complaining about something a 5-year old can do.

[jblocks]

I read the first few paragraphs and he is right on. If you outsource to someone you should be able to get inventory, hardware, software, virtualizations, software, backup schedule and the rest.  A company the size of IBM sells provisioning software. Why doesn't it use it? The only problem is what are you going to do if you fire IBM? Bring it back in house?

Well you sold your IT department to IBM already and they already laid off most of them. Go to Accenture or any of the others? Out of the frying pan.

As he says

A good IT provider will have the tools to automatically collect this data and will have reports like these readily available.  It should be very easy and quick for a good IT provider to produce this information.

But then how do you verify it..

[L1IsTheEnemy]

---

jblocks wrote:

I read the first few paragraphs and he is right on. If you outsource to someone you should be able to get inventory, hardware, software, virtualizations, software, backup schedule and the rest.  A company the size of IBM sells provisioning software. Why doesn't it use it? The only problem is what are you going to do if you fire IBM? Bring it back in house?

Well you sold your IT department to IBM already and they already laid off most of them. Go to Accenture or any of the others? Out of the frying pan.

As he says

A good IT provider will have the tools to automatically collect this data and will have reports like these readily available.  It should be very easy and quick for a good IT provider to produce this information.

But then how do you verify it..

---

For all the technology waves that are evolving, we are seeing a devolution of the knowledge base of how to apply them to business process. 

It goes back in a way to a similar quote which i've used as an anaology to business knowledge destruction  ' How can you expect to replace a person with 21 years knowledge of how to apply the technology to business with a 21 year old from Bangalore'.

The tried and tested way of having someone be mentored by the guy with 20 years experience has gone out the window!!!! To be replaced by the insidious 'Knowledge Transfer' A.K.A.  K.T.  - Kill Technology

IBM deserves to die!!! The really sad part is the dead men walking in the company, who did their utmost to provide true value and service to customers and IBM, only to be betrayed by the beancounters and High level management.

For anyone who thinks IBM can't be an empty shell, look at Enron . A highly successful company based on share price until it was discovered they were also a house of cards. IBM WILL suffer the same fate I feel.

Basing a company's future on current share price!!!  I just love the logic of these Idiots.