Chinese PC maker Lenovo might qualify for a frequent buyer’s discount with IBM. In 2005 Lenovo acquired IBM’s personal computer business along with the ThinkPad brand. Now Lenovo has announced plans to acquire IBM’s x86 server division for $2.3 billion.
IBM isn’t giving up its entire server division in the deal. The company is holding onto System z mainframes, Power Systems, and a fee other platforms. But over the past decade IBM has been shedding its hardware divisions and focusing on software and services — businesses with higher profit margins.
IBM plans to continue developing software for Windows and Linux servers. But when the deal is complete, about 7,500 IBM employees will be offered jobs at Lenovo, the Chinese company will take over the hardware division as well as customer service and maintenance for the x86 servers.
Lenovo is already the biggest PC maker in the world and the company’s been building its mobile division over the past few years. This acquisition will help Lenovo build its enterprise business at the same time.
IBM needs to stop pretending they are GE. They are #*# stupid for selling off their servers. Nobody in IT will touch these things. They can pretend that one market won’t affect the other but it will – we have higher end IBM 770/P590s running AIX all the way down to cheap x86 servers. But make no mistake about it when we are looking for new x86 servers the vendors will pitch some nice appealing options to replace the high end, all under one vendor contract/support. Stupid.
There goes the server platforms Lenovo’s going to buy. Probably like with the ThinkPad line, it’s going to go downhill from here.
So long, IBM.
You were a stogy old company and it came back to bite you in the wallet.
Now the assets get sold piecemeal to a Chinese company.
So long IBM.