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The Truth in IBM and TCS Layoffs and What it Means to Services Industry Customers and Providers | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

February 2, 2015

Over the last few weeks, we saw “bad news” about massive layoffs at IBM (100,000) and TCS (25,000), two of the industry’s largest services companies and market leaders. Those numbers proved to be overstated, but clarification on the real numbers isn’t what’s important. The numbers distract from the real issue. Attention-grabbing news headlines and social media’s frequently salacious, overhyped comments created a “fog” around the true picture of layoffs at both companies. So let’s cut through this fog and look at the truth of what is happening and the real issue for services providers and customers.

The truth

Social media and irresponsible reporting allowed initial numbers that later turned out to be significantly over-stated. The official number for TCS was less than 5,000 and IBM called the 100K number “baseless” and “ridiculous.” But even the subsequent clarifications on numbers distract us from the real issue – the fact that the services industry is witnessing a fundamental discontinuity and is in need of massive reskilling to meet customer demands.

Layoffs at IBM and TCS are not signs of companies in distress, and neither company is leaving the services space. Rather, these are two market leaders proactively dealing with the major disruptive transition now happening in the services space. IBM and TCS have been market leaders, IBM the undisputed leader in infrastructure services and TCS the largest provider in the arbitrage and offshore space.

Both companies recognize that they don’t have enough of the new skills needed for the new digital services markets and both have too much talent in the skills that made them leaders in infrastructure and labor arbitrage – services segments that are now diminishing as customers switch to digital services and new consumption-based models.

From our discussions with both companies and with some of their customers, it’s clear that their customers are demanding they take steps to acquire the necessary new skills so they can serve customers’ new demands. For example, providers’ reskilling efforts may need to include such talent as creative UX experts and data scientists.

As leaders, both companies understand that the services market is changing fundamentally. Services and technology leverage are shifting from being an efficiency/cost play to one generating revenue and growth for customers. Both are simply taking necessary steps to ensure they stay relevant and retain their leadership positions as the market evolves and customers demand new skills to address their needs.

IBM’s recent moves appear to be radical and more significant, but that’s because its acquisitions are larger (such as acquiring SoftLayer so it can compete on AWS’s level for cloud services) and it’s also divesting the kinds of business (such as voice services and chips) that could hold Big Blue back from continuing to be a leader in meeting customer expectations.

Issue for services customers

All organizations using third-party resources these days should ask their existing and/or future service providers what steps they are taking to ensure relevance and necessary talent to deliver services in new business models and new technologies.

Issue for service providers

We at Everest Group believe the reskilling actions of IBM and TCS are a harbinger of things to come for all service providers – ongoing rolling waves of disruption affecting talent needed for the fundamental changes happening in the services space. I’ve been blogging about these changes (growing maturation of services, pricing pressures, lower demand for labor arbitrage and shifts in customer demand) for more than two years. With the proactive steps of IBM and TCS, the industry now has tangible proof that the landscape is indeed changing.

IBM Takes Steps to Ensure It Will Be Relevant for the Future | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

October 30, 2014

IBM is taking some bitter medicine right now in its series of divestments. Big Blue recently exited the chip manufacturing business by spinning off that division to Globalfoundries. The move comes on the heels of having exited its server business and voice and transaction BPO business. There’s a lot of media attention to “IBM’s blues” and a lot of water cooler talk about what IBM is up to. Are they going to be viable, or do they have a foot in the grave? I look at it as they are ensuring that they have both feet on a very solid growth platform.

But the series of divestments raise a lot of eyebrows and create shareholder discomfort. It takes time for shareholders and customers to process what IBM is doing.

Here’s what’s happening:

The divestments were not failed businesses. They just are not the future of IBM. The company is simply pruning back its operations that have been a drag on earnings and siphoning their management attention and resources.
IBM has been acquiring almost one company per month, largely in the areas of cloud software, analytics and Big Data.

Often the assets IBM sells do well in other hands. Lenovo has done very well with IBM’s former PC business and looks to do well in the server business. And I expect Globalfoundries to do well with the chip business.

Simply put, IBM is remaking itself and making very deliberate and assured steps for its future. It is rare for large organizations to have the discipline to exit businesses. Most large organizations are eager to buy new growing businesses but struggle in the divestment of businesses that are no longer strategic or are struggling to perform. But IBM has managed to remake itself a number of times in their long, historic journey.

IBM now clearly has both feet in the future, whether it’s a growth platform for cloud, analytics, or high-value IT and BPO services.

I think this should be a comfort to IBM customers. Big Blue is taking necessary steps now to not become a Kodak and not consign itself to irrelevance for customers’ future needs.

HRO Market Shift | Market Insights™

September 5, 2014

As growth slows in the MPHRO market, providers shift strategies to speciality services – all of which are growing faster than the 3% MPHRO growth rate

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IBM Positioning for Dominance in Future of Infrastructure Services | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

August 12, 2014

I recently had the privilege to sit through a two-day session with IBM’s senior executive team in services. I’m someone who tries not to drink the Kool-Aid. Even so, I came away truly impressed by the work that IBM has done to position itself to be relevant and a major player in the future of IT infrastructure.

I’ve written frequently in this blog about the impending crisis that all asset-heavy players face as first RIM and then cloud attack their revenue base. This unrelenting onslaught is already moving share from the incumbents such as IBM to challengers such as HCL and TCS and will only be exacerbated as cloud takes stronger hold.

I came away with from the two days with IBM realizing Big Blue’s profound understanding of this phenomenon and its positioning of offers that allows them to leapfrog the RIM model and play a decisive and significant role in cloud.

Taken as a whole, IBM’s public cloud software and private cloud and automation strategies gives it the capability to move clients smoothly into the future. And it assures capturing the run-off from IBM’s traditional business while at the same time expanding market share. This is truly a formidable set of capabilities that, if executed well, will ensure IBM is a major — if not dominant — player in the future of IT infrastructure.

Everything will come down to execution, and history has seldom been kind to incumbents in the face of major technology and business model disruption. But based on the two days I spent with IBM, I believe that IBM has more than a fighting chance to successfully make this transition.

Photo credit: Irish Typepad

Accenture and IBM Playing from the Same Playbook in Shaping Their Future | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

August 4, 2014

Accenture appears to be picking up its pace of acquisitions and making a series of big moves. This is not a new tactic for Accenture; historically nearly every time you turned around there was another Accenture acquisition. But clearly the pace has quickened and the size of the acquisitions has increased. It’s important to understand how this acquisition strategy helps to shape the provider’s future, for it sends a signal to the entire industry.

Like IBM, I think Accenture recognizes that the services market is changing, so it seeks to move into new territories. The April 2014 acquisition of i4C Analytics vaults Accenture securely into the digital world, and acquiring Procurian in 2013 launched the firm’s procurement group services. Both of these acquisitions are examples of creating access to new markets in which Accenture will be able to navigate the changing services marketplace and ensure they are in the leadership position for next-generation services.

Any service provider tries to grow its practice organically, particularly when it creates offers that are significantly different from their existing offers. However, this strategy is difficult, slow and expensive, and it often confines a provider to a lower market share. Both IBM and Accenture are using the same playbook — moving to deal with this dilemma by buying fully formed companies with established value propositions and working business models that have already been developed and perfected.

Accenture historically developed practices from scratch and successfully scaled them, so spending more time and resources acquiring companies is a bit of departure for Accenture. But we at Everest Group think Accenture’s strategy is to marry acquisition into its impressive record of organic development rather than a complete sea shift in developing new offers.

I think we can look forward to an ongoing acquisitive posture from Accenture as it seeks to extend its businesses. The provider is paralleling IBM’s well-demonstrated move into new service areas through acquisitions, and seeking to drive explosive or significant growth off the new platforms.

Frenemies IBM and Apple Team Up to Shake Up the Enterprise Mobility Space | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

July 21, 2014

On 15 July, 2014, IBM and Apple announced a sweeping enterprise mobility-focused partnership to create business apps and sell iPhones and iPads to Big Blue’s corporate customers, thereby bringing IBM’s big data and analytics capabilities to the iOS ecosystem. The venture includes more than 100 industry-specific enterprise solutions, including native apps developed for the iPhone and iPad, targeted at the retail, healthcare, banking, travel, telecommunications, and insurance verticals. IBM will leverage its 3,000 mobile experts and industry/domain consultants, to provide cloud services and onsite support for enterprises. The two companies will collaborate on IBM’s MobileFirst for iOS solutions, combining their distinctive strengths – IBM’s big data and analytics capabilities and Apple’s consumer experience and developer platform.

The Rationales Behind the Partnership

The intention of the deal for Apple is to enable its products to become go-to-offers for large enterprises. It also principally underlines the company’s immediate need to expand its presence in the enterprise world, as consumer sales peak and competitive intensity in its core market heightens. Meanwhile, IBM hopes Apple’s mojo can help revitalize its fortunes after nine consecutive quarters of year-on-year revenue decline, as it places its bets on mobility in the workplace. It will also help IBM solve its big data and analytics growth issues (i.e., providing Watson with much needed impetus through enhanced mobile users’ data), forming a pivotal part of a new growth story. (To this point…think back three decades to Apple’s iconic television commercial titled “1984,” when it attacked IBM as an evil Big Brother figure. Talk about a 180-degree turnaround!) iPhones and iPads are already owned by employees in large enterprises but are hard to manage and govern. IBM can leverage its enterprise-wide system management expertise to make a compelling value proposition, complementing its Fiberlink acquisition (a provider of cloud-based enterprise mobile management solutions). Additionally, it will help IBM cement its reputation as a leader in the “mobile first” movement in enterprise solutions.

Implications for Rivals

Microsoft will feel most uneasy about this alliance, as while its products are ubiquitous in corporate PCs, it has been a laggard in serving the mobile workforce. This is a critical whitespace its new chief, Satya Nadella, is determined to fix. Google, Samsung, and the Android bandwagon will also feel threatened, given their recent push in the enterprise market. To allay fears about Android’s security for enterprise use, Samsung has built a system called Knox into its devices. Last month at its developer conference, Google announced that it would embed software elements of Knox in the next version of Android. They will also have to look at alliances with other enterprise-focused vendors to shore up their business case. Also, if IBM becomes the de facto champion for iOS, it will have potential ramifications for other service providers such as Dell, HP, and CompuCom.

Multi-faceted Challenges

Apple has not targeted enterprises with any zeal in the past. Steve Jobs was infamous for his contempt for selling to enterprises, even referring to CIOs as chief information “orifices.” While the Tim Cook era has seen Apple making small but significant progress in courting corporate stakeholders, IBM’s significant experience in the space makes Apple/IBM a very unlikely pairing. Apple and IBM have drastically different people cultures. Any effective partnership will need to account for these differences. They also have very different go-to-market and channel strategies, which will result in friction over the direction the alliance takes. Their sales motions tend to be at odds, with IBM solutioning for a client, while Apple caters to essentially product categories. IBM has defocused severely from the end-user computing space. Does this alliance signal a revival in this regard? The companies’ divergent investment attitudes will make joint investments problematic. To complicate matters further, both have stark but strongly held philosophies about design, customer support, and sales, making collaboration painful.

The Road Ahead

Partnerships and alliances such as this are notoriously difficult to manage. Both organizations will find it challenging to bring two entirely different culture sets to work cohesively as one. The alliance will need sustained resources, time, and senior leadership investments, along with a steadfast commitment to change management. Given the complicated dynamics sweeping the enterprise market, IBM and Apple have certainly stolen a march over rivals. We will need to keep an eye on the investments both are making into the alliance, the steps they are taking to mitigate the challenges, and the success stories that emerge as a result.

One thing is certain. The enterprise IT market is in for some interesting times. For further insight into the enterprise mobility space, check out our recently published viewpoint.

Sizing Up PwC’s Acquisition of Booz | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

April 8, 2014

PwC announced last Friday that it completed its acquisition of Booz & Company — now named “Strategy&.” Why did Booz agree to be acquired and why did PwC want Booz? And what does this mean for the services industry? My opinion: It’s a bold move that has the signs of being a game-changer in the global services world.

Booz had a trouble spot. I’ve blogged before about this phenomenon — the growing power of large consultancy groups and service providers’ ability to utilize access to their existing customer base to increase their revenue. It enables the rich to get richer. The champions of this strategy are the Big Four (Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG and PwC in the consultancy arena) and Accenture, Cognizant and TCS, to mention a few in the provider landscape.

Even though Booz had one of the most venerable, respected brands in strategic consulting for the past 100 years, it became increasingly difficult to drive consistent customer access. Booz believes it will be easier to succeed in this strategy of radiating to advantage by meeting client needs within the PwC family rather than having to blaze its own trail.

Using existing customers to grow a services business is a proven model that Deloitte certainly demonstrates in today’s marketplace, and PwC enjoyed the advantages of this model before the SEC asked it to divest services years ago.

PwC perspective

Bringing Booz into the PwC network is a bold commitment signaling that PwC intends to join Accenture and Deloitte as a major transformational player. PwC has been studiously building back its consulting and advisory services since its divestiture, and the Booz acquisition adds the high-end strategy capability that will enable PwC to be a strong value player in advising and driving major transformation deals.

What it means for the services industry

The arrival of PwC Strategy& in the marketplace changes the provider landscape significantly. It adds another true power with a broad set of capabilities stretching from the boardroom and strategy to implementation. And it will contest the market for large-scale transformational work.

In that contest, it will prove interesting to see which providers lose some market share to PwC Strategy&. Will this new power inhibit Deloitte’s growth? Will it affect Accenture and IBM? Will it affect the aspirations of Cognizant, TCS and Wipro as they look to join the transformational party?

One thing is for sure: The transformational dance floor is getting crowded.

Accenture and IBM Continue to Dominate the PO Market | Market Insights™

April 3, 2014

Accenture and IBM continue to dominate the PO market, particularly following Accenture’s acquisition of Procurian

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Is Xerox Changing Direction or Is It More of the Same? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

March 27, 2014

I’m watching with great interest the current change in leadership at Xerox. They just announced that Lynn Blodgett will retire at the end of 2014 and Robert Zapfel will join the firm on April 1 as president of Xerox Services and EVP of the corporation, reporting to the chairman and CEO. Bob has had a distinguished career for 35 years at IBM and helped transform Big Blue’s services business to profitability. Will Xerox now use the IBM playbook?

Here’s a short version of the IBM playbook:

Be relentless in adjusting the cost base and disciplined in exiting businesses that can’t meet the return total.
Be patient and consistent in acquiring new properties that enable positioning in attractive, high-growth market segments.
Be very effective at utilizing the company’s broad capabilities including products and R&D to craft a differentiated position in services.

In many respects Xerox and IBM enjoy a similar position. They both have strong balance sheets with which to finance acquisitions, they both have golden brands that engender trust, and they both have R&D that is the envy of the industry. Arguably Xerox has already been walking down the IBM path to some extent. It will be interesting to see how Bob shapes the future of this proud and venerable industry leader. What do you think?

Photo credit: Derek Bruff

Are We Hearing the Swan Song for RIM Services? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

March 21, 2014

Remote infrastructure management (RIM) services were the disrupter for asset-heavy infrastructure services over the past several years and, in all likelihood, will continue to be for the next few years. However, as we look down the road it appears that RIM will hit the speed bump of automation and cloud, which will impact RIM in much the same way that RIM currently disrupts the asset-heavy infrastructure market. At Everest we believe that about 50 percent of all current RIM workloads are viable and cheaper in the cloud and likely will migrate to the cloud over the next three years. So what’s the prognosis for the RIM model?

As shown in the charts below, RIM grew at an average of 27 percent per year while the asset-heavy space lost share at 1.6 percent a year.

But the cost of operating in a pay-for-usage cloud world is about 50 percent lower than the take-or-pay world of the existing data center. Although the cloud is currently a small part of the global services marketplace, the cloud providers are operating a lot more profitably and thus disrupting the RIM providers. Automation and cloud are the areas of action and investment for growth. We need look no further than the recent acquisitions of IBM and Dell to understand how this market is evolving.

IBM’s Strategic Moves. IBM’s latest acquisitions include Cloudant, for delivering NoSQL on-demand database-as-a-service (DBaas), and SoftLayer Technologies, a global cloud infrastructure provider. And Big Blue plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next two years to bolster SoftLayer’s platform. IBM also scooped up several other strategic cloud companies over the past couple of years including UrbanCode, for software delivery automation; Green Hat, delivering software quality testing for the cloud environment; and Big Fix, providing management and automation for security and compliance software updates.

Dell’s Strategic Moves. Acquisitions adding to Dell’s capabilities include Enstratius, enabling consolidated management across multiple cloud platforms; Credant Software, providing data protection; Gale Technologies, enabling infrastructure automation; Quest Software, for value-added software solutions and virtualization; and Boomi, for SaaS integration.

RIM’s Pulse

To date the power of the cloud disruption has not yet felled the infrastructure services space. But over the next three years, we expect 30-50 percent of the infrastructure services work to migrate to a cloud model. What impact will it have on the RIM market?

First of all, RIM’s impact on the existing IT infrastructure market is not finished. We think RIM service providers have at least three more years of significant share gain shifting from IT asset-heavy infrastructure to a RIM model. After that? Not so much. And towards the third year, we expect to see cloud disintermediate the RIM market.

It will be interesting to see whether RIM providers can make the accommodations for the new cloud world. Yes, there will be a role for RIM in cloud, but we believe it will be less than in its current IT infrastructure space. And managing the the automated cloud world will require fewer people, which means lower revenue for RIM vendors.

For vendors and service providers, the non-cloud IT infrastructure space is becoming a very bad place to be.

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Tag: IBM