IBM's CEO, Ginni Rometty, has begun what some experts have been calling, the biggest global reorganisation in the (long) history of Big Blue; at stake, the very future of the corporation.
According to The Register, IBM will swap its current software/hardware/services structure into more granular units (Research, Sales & Delivery, Systems, Global Technology Services, Cloud, Watson, Security, Commerce, Analytics).
The change, the online outlet reckons, is needed to make sure that the company remains relevant in the 21st century and avoids the fate of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
The latter was acquired by Compaq in the late 1990's after having been a major competitor to IBM for more than four decades. As a hardware vendor, it rapidly saw its cash cow, the VAX family, disappear in the late 1980's as compute power became cheaper.
It was acquired by Compaq in 1998 and the latter was subsequently absorbed by HP in one of the biggest and most important tech-related transactions to date.
IBM has already shed most of its low-end hardware portfolio, having given up on printers (Lexmark), subsequently followed by its business computer (ThinkPad) and entry-level x86 server range.
Its transformation has accelerated over the past few months with a wrath of strategic partnerships announced with Microsoft, Tencent, SAP and Apple.
Source: The Register
