And if they break that record, as they’re expected to, IBM will be taking the layoffs crown from…
IBM
In an age where companies are rushing away from the kinds of server and data solutions IBM has traditionally offered to focus on “cloud” things, International Business Machines is looking to cut a quarter of its 400,000 employee workforce. They’re scrambling to catch up with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in a hyper competitive services market, and one has to wonder how they’ll do that paying for an incredible number of severance packages, and with customer confidence likely taking a hit.
While the company sells mainframes, something you would think would be necessary for a cloud economy, that hardware only makes up about 10% of IBM’s business.
Trying to play catch up is often a losing battle, trying to replicate the services and success offered by rivals. It just makes IBM’s descent here even more puzzling, as they have a fairly unique portfolio of technologies to leverage.
Take for instance their Watson supercomputer. While IBM has been focused on positioning Watson for healthcare and business solutions, IBM could be using it to rebuild their relationship with consumers and end users directly with a service that could handily compete against Cortana, Siri, and Google Now in terms of organic search. An area even Amazon is trying to offer solutions now.
We could see layoffs begin as soon as this week, with plans to finish in February.