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Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

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Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#11

Post by Retric »

echelon wrote: post #2

I'd really like to see IBMers talk about the past, present, and future of the company. It looks pretty pale to me. Back in the Thinkpad era, IBM had a lot of cool stuff going on. But now it seems like a shadow. Watson and IBM cloud look like flops. The email fiasco is weird and should never have happened. What did buying Red Hat accomplish? As an outsider, it doesn't seem to have infused any new ideas, and the change…

IBM’s core business is boring crap that doesn’t make the news. So, how the company is doing has little to do with the kinds of things you hear about. That said, their market cap peaked in 2012 at 240B vs 130B today and their revenue and profits are similarly down, which suggests things haven’t been going well for a long time.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#12

Post by throwaway57754 »

echelon wrote: post #2

I'd really like to see IBMers talk about the past, present, and future of the company. It looks pretty pale to me. Back in the Thinkpad era, IBM had a lot of cool stuff going on. But now it seems like a shadow. Watson and IBM cloud look like flops. The email fiasco is weird and should never have happened. What did buying Red Hat accomplish? As an outsider, it doesn't seem to have infused any new ideas, and the change…

IBM bought Red Hat for OpenShift. IBM buying Red Hat was supposed to propel OpenShift and Red Hats portfolio into the C-suite connections IBM had. Instead, it seems IBM has force marched Red Hat to focus all their energies on OpenShift at the expense of their larger portfolio. OpenShift probably isn't performing as well as IBM expected, and even with 4 it still carries the "OpenShift is not Kubernetes" vibe. IBM also has a bunch of products in their portfolio that compete with Red Hat.

On the IBM side, weird shit is a foot. The GTS spinoff into Khndryl is very, very bizarre. They're a profitable part of IBM but need to be excised, quickly? It's causing chaos for accounts that had deep GTS coverage as the account teams are basically adversarial. The rest of IBMs portfolio is stagnating as they chase fads and lose to niche players with better overall value. Especially with the Data/AI space, startups are killing them.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#14

Post by kingsuper20 »

echelon wrote: post #2

I'd really like to see IBMers talk about the past, present, and future of the company. It looks pretty pale to me. Back in the Thinkpad era, IBM had a lot of cool stuff going on. But now it seems like a shadow. Watson and IBM cloud look like flops. The email fiasco is weird and should never have happened. What did buying Red Hat accomplish? As an outsider, it doesn't seem to have infused any new ideas, and the change…

>Back in the Thinkpad era, IBM had a lot of cool stuff going on. But now it seems like a shadow.

I remember their stuff from the pre-Thinkpad era. Quite a company. Working for both a large competitor and for a small company that was trying to sell to them they seemed clumsy but still had an amazing portfolio.

My guess is that they just need to merge/break-up/reconfigure into oblivion. Just another AT&T/HP/ITT/Polaroid/Xerox

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#15

Post by strife25 »

echelon wrote: post #2

I'd really like to see IBMers talk about the past, present, and future of the company. It looks pretty pale to me. Back in the Thinkpad era, IBM had a lot of cool stuff going on. But now it seems like a shadow. Watson and IBM cloud look like flops. The email fiasco is weird and should never have happened. What did buying Red Hat accomplish? As an outsider, it doesn't seem to have infused any new ideas, and the change…

This Stratechery article from 2018 nailed it for me: https://stratechery.com/2018/ibms-old-playbook/

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#16

Post by echelon »

NortySpock wrote: post #5
rdl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email migration? I haven’t been following IBM very closely but a quick google search failed me here.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/30/ibm_email_outage/

That this could happen in any organization is surprising. That it happened in IBM is downright shocking.

How do you fail an email migration and not have email for your employees? How do you let this affect billing and invoices?

Why haven't they at least set up something temporary?

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#17

Post by MangoCoffee »

vlovich123 wrote: post #3

An email migration was that important that they decided to shake up quite a bit of the exec team? Or was the email migration stuff just internal politics playing out in the news?

probably not. IBM haven't been that much relevant in tech for years. they pivot to the cut throat consulting services while kind of abandoned what IBM used to be. a tech leader.

Microsoft was like IBM after Bill Gates. Not a tech leader for many years until Microsoft pivot to Cloud computing and software as services.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#18

Post by [deleted] »

rdl wrote: post #4
vlovich123 wrote: post #3

An email migration was that important that they decided to shake up quite a bit of the exec team? Or was the email migration stuff just internal politics playing out in the news?

Email migration? I haven’t been following IBM very closely but a quick google search failed me here.

[deleted]

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#19

Post by htrp »

datahead wrote: post #6

I like Whitehurst and have had the chance to meet him a few times. If you want to understand his ethos check out "The Open Organization". It details his transition from Delta to Red Hat and the transformation of his leadership style being around a lot of smart engineers and team players ready to constructively challenge each other. Good read for anyone interested in building inclusive company culture in tech. Honestl…

In every acquisition the Acquirer imposes on the Acquiree.....

In this case, I'd bet that it's Arvind Krishna pulling people out of IBM Cloud (his old division) to run the rest of "big blue"

And yes, IBM will basically bleed talent from Red Hat for the next 3 years until RHEL is a pale shadow of its former self.

Re: Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President

#20

Post by slater »

vlovich123 wrote: post #3

An email migration was that important that they decided to shake up quite a bit of the exec team? Or was the email migration stuff just internal politics playing out in the news?

He was actually let go months ago, but never received the e-mail /s
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