

The Downfall of IBM - seanmcdirmid
http://betanews.com/2012/04/27/the-downfall-of-ibm/

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crm
If you want to read the rest, Bob's already published all 6 articles in this
series on his blog: <http://www.cringely.com/>

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seanmcdirmid
Normally, betanews quality is just so so, but occasionally they have some nice
columns, this one begins with...

> The direct impetus for this column is IBM’s internal plan to grow earnings-
> per-share (EPS) to $20 by 2015. The primary method for accomplishing this
> feat, according to the plan, will be by reducing US employee head count by
> 78 percent in that time frame.

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chime
If they continue to improve AI like no other company, in the long term, it
won't matter if they shutter their business consulting services. IBM might be
better off betting on research and innovation than cut-throat competition.

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seanmcdirmid
Basically, you mean, they preserve their research organization that keeps
doing cool things. There has been a recent wave-2 Exodus of IBM researchers to
Google NYC; its not clear that they will be able to preserve their ability to
make cool advances.

