IBM Sheds Failing Chip Business
-
IBM's famous, but losing, chip business which has long been a staple of the giant, a legacy of their heritage from the very dawn of the computer era, has been "sold" to an UAE foundry. Sold, being an interesting term, as IBM had to pay $1.5bn to get them to take it.
-
That is very sad, but not surprising. It is hard to make it in the chip foundry business. But this really cuts into what IBM is. They are essentially not a hardware maker anymore. Their place in the world is getting harder and harder to find. When would anyone use them now?
-
IBM does, of course, still make servers, but not servers based on their own chips anymore and they no longer have the total top to bottom single vendor integration. Oracle is now the only server vendor in that market!
-
@scottalanmiller Didn't they recently sell their x86 server base to Lenovo?
-
@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller Didn't they recently sell their x86 server base to Lenovo?
Yes, but not their core Power servers. Their AMD64 servers were a losing venture. IBM doesn't consider the commodity market important. Their Power servers are where all of the hardware profit is.
-
@scottalanmiller Ah go it.
-
So the remaining likes are the AIX boxes (p series, former RS/6000), the i series (former AS/400) and the z series mainframes. That is all that they have now.
-
@scottalanmiller Are they still acting as a service and consulting company? I seem to remember that being their big deal a couple of years ago.
-
@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller Are they still acting as a service and consulting company? I seem to remember that being their big deal a couple of years ago.
That was their primary business before 2000 and has been their sole focus since that time.
-
@scottalanmiller Ah thanks. I remember them being at a job fair in Rochester two years ago and had a nice conversation with one of their recruiters. They were looking more for programmers then Sys Admins though.
-
@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller Ah thanks. I remember them being at a job fair in Rochester two years ago and had a nice conversation with one of their recruiters. They were looking more for programmers then Sys Admins though.
Yes, primarily they make software. Any system administration that they do is mostly AIX, i and z these days as well. I used to work there, good company, but less and less interesting as they move to less and less interesting problems to solve.
-
InfoWorld has a new article on this now....
