IBM - dinosaur or future growth

[CoolRich59]

This thread is bringing back all kinds of memories for me. I just realized that it was the IBM deal I worked that started me on the path to FIRE last year!

So, on a personal level, I am very grateful for IBM.

[MichaelB]

Bloomberg reports https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...t?srnd=premium

Quote:

International Business Machines Corp. is close to a deal to acquire software maker Red Hat Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

[24601NoMore]

Worked for a IBM for some time. IMHO, they're a dinosaur in every way imaginable. Working for the company was literally like being in a government job somewhere around 1952. Bureaucracy on steroids, bad management, products that in my experience were not even remotely competitive. Yet, management seemed to consistently get rewarded for inept results and shrinking marketshare. Go figure.

I personally wouldn't buy IBM stock even if I could get it at a discount.

[NYEXPAT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelB Bloomberg reports https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...t?srnd=premium

They are paying $190.00/share for RH which is a 60% premium over Fridays close!

[NW-Bound]

I have never worked at IBM, but can imagine what it is like. Most (all?) megacorps are like that.

When a company gets big with many employees, it's harder to keep track of the star performers, and you need them at all levels and disciplines, not just in the R&D division where the number of employees is of course small and tractable. And when they run into trouble and don't know the cause, the solution is usually "More managers". And they have more clueless managers, then they have to bring in consultants who know even less about their problems.

There's a life cycle to everything, including companies.

[ransil]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CoolRich59 Dinosaur. I can’t get specific because it happened just a year ago, but I was representing a client working a fairly large deal with IBM. Clueless is the only way to describe how IBM managed to lose a sale where they had no real competition. After several fruitless weeks of discussions, my client got so frustrated with IBM’s incompetence that they put the project on hold (which caused business deadlines to be missed) in order to find another technical solution and awarded the business to another firm. And, talk about tone deaf, afterwards IBM send my client’s EVP a letter complaining that they were treated unfairly.

Sounds like Westinghouse

[braumeister]

On the good side, one of my friends retired from IBM after spending his entire (long) career there. And boy, did he have some great stories to tell!

[Spock]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYEXPAT They are paying $190.00/share for RH which is a 60% premium over Fridays close!

They paid $34B for a company that earned $259 million on revenue of $2.92 billion last year...

[neihn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelB Bloomberg reports https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...t?srnd=premium

That's interesting. They kept saying that they don't want to get into linux distros business while I was there, and I just left few months ago :-)

I let go all IBM stocks when it was around 180 couple years ago, just a few months before that it was > $220.

[Totoro]

I feel bad for the redhat employees.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spock They paid $34B for a company that earned $259 million on revenue of $2.92 billion last year...

Wow! That much for a company that works with Linux and open-source software. For that much money, they could have invested in their own employees and have them learned all that stuff in house.

Heck, I would bet that there are plenty of IBM employees who already learn a lot of this on their own to broaden their skill in case they need to change job.

It shows IBM executive managers are clueless and desperate. Bleak!

[samclem]

I'm more optimistic than most folks here, I guess. I'm hoping IBM paid a lot for Red Hat because they want to buy instant credibility with Linux users, which will become worthless if you hey crush RH's culture. It is a longshot, but I'm hoping they want to make Linux (already a fast, slim alternative to bloated Windows and closed, insular, $$Apple) into an accessable OS for folks who aren't computer hobbyists. I'm sure I'm not the only one disappointed with the two present commercial OS choices.

Or, maybe they'll just ruin RH. . .

[Spock]

This has all the debt graphs.
The article suggests IBM debt will be downgraded to BBB.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...er-acquisition

[neihn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound ... For that much money, they could have invested in their own employees and have them learned all that stuff in house. ..

IBM got involve with Linux community way back in 1999, they were a major contribution to the Linux kernel that helps Linux becomes enterprise OS in a very sort time

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...wscolumn8.html

They have enough people with the know how to spin another Linux distros, but never really want to be in Linux distros business. I too, very skeptical with this acquisition, but I wish them success any way.

[target2019]

Just a WAG, but IBM probably has agreements to use/distribute RedHat, and needs a Linux distro to maintain some lumbering part of their business eco-system.

[NW-Bound]

I dunno.

One of my former megacorp employers made a dubious purchase of a small startup with a promising prototype. When the project was integrated into the company and efforts were made to turn it into a salable product, it was discovered that it was a half-baked idea, and it was not surprising that the original entrepreneurs bailed out and took the money to the bank. All the wonderful attributes of this project were just promises on paper. The real thing was nothing like that.

The project ultimately failed, and had no salvageable value left. Zero. The acquired company was a private venture, so the acquisition terms were not disclosed. It was nowhere near $34B though.

Megacorp could have developed something like that in-house, but I guess they thought they got a good deal buying something cheap, and "proven". Hah!

[jollystomper]

The interesting part of this is that Canonical (the makes of the Ubuntu Linux distribution) seemed to be cozying up much more to IBM than Red Hat. Perhaps because they are the relatively "newer kids" on the block (as compared to Red Hat or SuSE). Canonical made Ubuntu versions available for all IBM hardware (including mainframes) for free, and (I had to do an analysis for a project) provided much more consistently for the software packages within their distribution across of the hardware than either Red Hat or SuSE.

However, Red Hat has much greater current market penetration, so perhaps IBM is also looking at both "legacy" and "new' income streams for this acquisition...