There has been a lot going on in the IBM world the past few months that we’ve been down.  I wanted to summarize broader things if only becasue they’ve hit my radar. As a quick overview of some things that caught my eye:

  • Earnings are up, share price is down
  • IBM handling CVS HR is a great step for the company’s services division. Of particular interest is the inroads it helps IBM make into the retail sector which could prove a good longer term source of growth as business transformation outsourcing takes hold in that sector.
  • The IBM sponsored World Community Grid has added a third major project — analyzing cancer tissue microarrays. This is a great space for IBM, life-saving benefits aside, if only for the expertise that the company gains in real world grid computing.
  • IBM still owns the supercomputer space, but this market has always been
    limited and with new, cheaper alternatives it will remain so.
  • Popular support still seems to be firmly in IBMs court with respect to its lawsuit vs. SCO. As Daniel Lyons of Forbes Mag put it, “The SCO Group versus IBM lawsuit is growing ever more desperate–and ever more weird.”.  It’s fun to be one of the good guys. That is, unless IBM pulled and Arthur Anderson and hastily started destroying evidence. An interesting correction to this story from groklaw.net (a fantastic and thorough site devoted to the SCO lawsuit)
  • I see the as-yet-unconfirmed AMD agreement as a non-event. I don’t think companies are choosing HP or IBM because of their brand of processor. To the extent that AMD will lower costs for big blue and her customers, that’s fine but it’ll take more than a new processor to take back marketshare from HP [UPDATE 8/8/2006 - Gartner disagrees with my assertion that processor is marginally important, but still doesn’t see the release as major]
  • IBM is tripling investment in India. That’s so 2004. Everybody’s tripling their investment in china these days… CHINA!

 

 

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