IBM's CEO: A Stealth Obama Supporter?

I am disappointed..........

I certainly hope (Sam) you didn't vote for Obama. Change is right, change from private profits to government profits. An intelligent man like you falling for the empty change mantra. Nationalizing corporations is bad for business. Over-taxing is bad for business. You missed the boat, if you voted for Obama.

Michael Griffin of NY @ Nov 14, 2008 13:53:26 PM

Sam is spot on...

say what you will - the numbers tell the story - IBM is a smart (if not stogy) company...there's a reason they are weathering this storm - no simple answers to be sure but you cannot deny their judgment...

KelBel of OR @ Nov 13, 2008 01:53:12 AM

RE: Outsourcing

"Funny that people comment how IBM has outsourced all of these jobs and everyone is out of work when AMERICANS make decisions to outsource to Indian firms"

The so called Americans making these decisions ARE NOT affected by their decisions. Is Sam going to outsource the CEO job? C'mon be real. Stop spinning to justify greed.

jan of NY @ Nov 12, 2008 11:29:19 AM

Offshoring/Outsourcing is a bogus band-aid

Outsourcing is nothing more than deciding you don't know how to run a big business, so you'd rather run a small one. It puts a band-aid on the cancer of business ignorance. If you don't know how to run a big business, hire someone who does. But then, that would take humility and honesty and integrity.... Not something easily learned in business school!

Companies with great products don't need to outsource to make a healthy profit. If they decide to outsource anyway, they're merely eating their seed corn. Laying off the smart people who got you to a level of success is a short-sighted boost to the bottom line and a kow-tow to Wall Street know-it-alls. But it kills the long-term success of a company by destroying its culture and giving the company a collective Alzheimer's attack.

FutureUser of TN @ Nov 11, 2008 18:30:21 PM

Enabling outsourcing

"For sure, they don't want trade restricts being that they were pioneers in starting outsourcing jobs in America to contractors and over seas and stand to lose profits if they need to keep jobs in America"

Get a clue.. IBM doesn't want trade restricts because IBM's customers don't want trade to be restricted.

The reason outsourcing occurs is just business. If I own a retail store, and I sell two similar products, we'll say shoes. One pair is $20, and the other is pennies on the dollar, $2.50 - there's not a lot of people who are going to buy the 20 dollar shoes at first glance. It's the consumers driving the trend.

Applied to IBM's outsourcing. Let's use a part of it's business we've all interacted with - a Helpdesk. Let's use a real-world example. Your job as the head of IT in this time of economic uncertainty is to keep your IT budget down. It's your job or theirs, you have bills to pay, family to feed and stockholders to report to.. So, you decide that you're going to cut the internal helpdesk at a savings of $40M a year and go out courting service providers, such as IBM.. You get to IBM, and they explain that you can buy 2 different helpdesk packages that would give you everything your old desk did: the $20M dollar American premium desk, or the $2M dollar outsourced desk.

Now at this point, if you went and got the American premium desk, you'd save your company $20M dollars - a figure that would be no small feat. Ticket tape parades, adulation, etc. And you'd even consider it. Until you think about it. What about improvements? What happens if you merge with B Company and you need to expand the helpdesk. Hmm.

A lightbulb goes off, and you realize that you can spend $6M on an outsourced desk - it will be three times the size, you'll save your company 34 MILLION DOLLARS while you were able to expand IT operations!

As a consumer, as a head of IT, it's a no-brainer. We all purchase products (or services) from abroad to save a buck and now is the time, more than ever to save a dollar. Outsourcing is not just IBM's game. It's America's game.

RB @ Nov 11, 2008 11:53:15 AM

In queue...in suburban New York

I thought Mr. Palmisano lived in CT (lower taxes, you know), so I would be surprised that he was lining up to vote in New York.

JT of NY @ Nov 11, 2008 10:42:25 AM

IBM Before Sam's Time

In the 80's IBM's Executive Committee decided that their mainframe products were so much in demand and so indespensible that it did not need its field marketing force (a consultive group which used application solutions to sell hardware) anymore but only tech sales/support and a multifold expansion at the Group Staff level.

Everything that has made INM sucessful in the last 15 years was known before by IBM and avaiable and rejected as "not-our-job" but the customer's job -- we (IBM) only sell hardware and operating systems and reluctantly some packaged application software for the customer to modify.

The IBM founder Tom Watson, Sr. and his son Tom Watson, Jr. were big contirbuting Democrats and IBM had a lot of government contracts. Then came the Justice Department Lawsuit.

Jim of IL @ Nov 11, 2008 09:35:51 AM

Outsourcing...

Funny that people comment how IBM has outsourced all of these jobs and everyone is out of work when AMERICANS make decisions to outsource to Indian firms, not even based in the U.S., all of the time. So if the trend is outsourcing outside of the U.S. (and that is the norm nowadays) why do so many AMERICANS outsource to TCS, Infosys, & Wipro and have all of the money LEAVE America period? To take it a step farther, those same companies probably would then Outsource to Accenture, which has their HQ in Bermuda so they pay less U.S. taxes...

So ask yourself this, "IF you were running your own company, and you outsourced work to India, would you rather outsource to an IBM where at least the revenues and taxes give back to America? Or outsource to Indian companies to save a dime and have all of the money go overseas?"

If companies go bankrupt and close shop because they do not change and adapt in a global economy you lose a heck of a lot more jobs then some of the offshoring that happens today.

DCPlayer of HI @ Nov 10, 2008 18:41:59 PM