Posted 11:08 PM by Blah blah

IBM Pulls a Fast One

IBM to Buy Pricewaterhouse Consulting (Reuters): "International Business Machines Corp. on Tuesday made its largest acquisition ever, saying it would buy PriceWaterhouseCoopers Consulting for $3.5 billion in cash and stock. The purchase is aimed at boosting slowing revenues in the computer giant's large services business, which now accounts for more revenue than its well-known computers and mainframes....

IBM's service business, which by itself employs about 150,000 employees and has grown to become larger than its flagship computer hardware division, will take on 30,000 new employees with the acquisition. IBM's head count at the end of 2001 was about 320,000 people but it has since trimmed its ranks by at least 8,000."

What the hell??? As someone from IBM's services division, I am pissed off by this.

These guys explain my view: guy 1, guy 2, and guy 3. PwC Consulting, in its brief effort to go independent, renamed itself "Monday" about two months ago. Dumb name, huh? "Friday Night" would have been better. Now they are trashing that.

Like those guys I linked said, we had been moving lots of IT work to India. And planning more layoffs. This doesn't count the 15,000 or so from the Storage Division who are being forced to leave IBM. What a joke. I feel bad for the PwC folks. I hope they can adjust and survive.

Software companies like Oracle are moving more jobs to India as well. Should I be learning Hindi?