I tend to agree that 09 is going to be tough.
The only 'balancer' for IBM is that our competition is in the same
boat when trying to gain customers.
Many customers are heading straight for price. Cheapest they can
find, others are saying, we need to know the company we buy from will
be around.
With software group discounting deals 75-90% it is going to be even
harder to make the quota numbers.


--- In ibmpension@yahoogroups.com, "blairr40" <blairr40@...> wrote:
>
> In my view, 09 looks pretty grim for Big Blue here in the States.
> Global Services, the revenue flagship, is in deep doo doo here in
> Texas. After Global Services bid approx $850M for a job that should
> have been bid at about twice that figure, IBM is now getting bad
> press all over Texas and every State agency in 49 other states knows
> all the details. Recently the State sent a warning letter to IBM
> that could lead to cancellation of the contract and fined IBM $2M for
> non-performance. I would guess that HP/EDS are chomping at the bit
> to take advantage of IBM's blunders. In addition to the drastic bid
> error, IBM is fighting State employees that do not want the contract
> to succeed and we are using band 4/5 employees for much of the work.
> It doesn't look good for IBM. This is the biggest mess with a
> customer I have seen in my 45 years of IBM experience.
>
> On the margin side, as you know IBM Software/Middleware contributes
> about 1/3 of IBMs' total gross margin dollars. Mills has been buying
> other software companies at an agressive rate to make it appear that
> IBM's software is growing at a steady clip. Lotus has very little
> upside left, but Tivoli is adding some real growth to IBM software
> with smart new products. WebSphere is doing well but with declining
> host sales, operating system revenue doesn't appear to have much to
> grow on. I fail to see how "smoke and mirrors" numbers can make
> software targets for too much longer.
>
> All in all it looks like tough sledding to me for 09 for Big Blue
> here in the States. As a stockholder and pensioner it doesn't look
> good to me. I can only hope my outlook is wrong.
>