IBM In Talks To Sell x86 Server Business To Lenovo 202
FrankPoole writes "According to CRN, IBM is in serious negotiations to sell its low-end x86 server business to Lenovo, which is looking to grow its server revenue. If the deal goes though, it will be the second time in eight years that Big Blue has exited a major hardware business and sold the operation to Lenovo. IBM sold its PC business to Chinese computer maker in 2005."
Summary should probably also mention... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IBM should just drop the M (Score:5, Informative)
but they ought to just drop the M and call themselves 'International Business'.
Correction: 'India Business'.
Re:A quick buck from the Chinese (Score:2, Informative)
I would mod you up if I could. Well said. And people wonder why the economy here is so fucked up and jobs are so god damn hard to come by. They all went to fucking China.
Re:Summary should probably also mention... (Score:5, Informative)
. . . and Networking Hardware Division to Cisco . . . and Federal Systems Division to Loral . . .
Some companies start as small operations in people's garages.
IBM holds garage sales.
Although, it should be noted that they buy a lot of software businesses . . . like Lotus . . . Tivoli . . . Rational . . .
Re:IBM should just drop the M (Score:4, Informative)
They've still got System Z mainframe line, and I can't see them selling that business unit off
...and they also still have the IBM Power Systems line [ibm.com] (Power Architecture boxes running IBM i, AIX, and Linux).
Re:A quick death from a dying market. (Score:4, Informative)
A quick buck, or a quick death in a dying market?
Well said! IBM might not be the giants they once were but they're still pretty clued up. They sold off Thinkpad to Leveno and it's pretty clear now that the PC* market is dying.
The server market may well be about to choke it with cloud servers becoming so popular (AWS and whatnort). It doesn't seem sensible for a company of IBM's size to hold on to a market that is fast becoming a niece market.
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*I use "PC market" to mean "desktop/laptop market"... I hate it how Apple commandeered the term PC as if it somehow doesn't apply to Macs
Re:Lenovo - a collector of IBM garbage (Score:5, Informative)
IBM PCs were hardly garbage when IBM sold it. The ThinkPad line was highly regarded and the business as a whole was doing ok. The profits were low and declining but that was due to the cutthroat competition and commoditization of PCs rather than anything majorly wrong with IBMs.
Looks like Lenovo has done well since buying the Thinkpad line. They're the only PC maker with a pulse right now.
Re:Summary should probably also mention... (Score:2, Informative)
Hitachi sold their hard drive business to WD, not their storage array business. They still make fantastic storage arrays that are rock solid.