There is a rule against taunting in football along with penalties. That has not moved to big business yet.
International Business Machines Corp. told Wall Street to raise its 2008 according to the AP.
IBM has the advantage of having large businesses in Eastern Europe and Asia. Smaller companies which did not move into those markets will likely suffer as the US economy falls apart this year. IBM’s adroit balancing act will probably save it from that.
But, that is short-term thinking. The genius behind the IBM numbers is what the company has done over the last decade by moving from hardware to software and services. Services revenue rose 17 percent to $14.9 billion in the last quarter of 2007.
Firm’s like Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) are still largely at the mercy of hardware spending. Those expenses are easier to delay at many large companies than the software upgrades of the current IT structures.
The financial fruits of IBM’s success rest much more with a decision made in the last century than they do with geographic diversification.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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