IBM has established a Services Council to co-ordinate its consulting, integration and facilities management activities. According to a recent report in Computer Systems News, the council was formed last year as part of the move to increase revenue, with IBM said to expect 50% of total turnover to come from software and services by 1995 […]
IBM has established a Services Council to co-ordinate its consulting, integration and facilities management activities. According to a recent report in Computer Systems News, the council was formed last year as part of the move to increase revenue, with IBM said to expect 50% of total turnover to come from software and services by 1995 – but then the company was looking for 30% of to total to come from software alone by the late 1980s, yet it is still only around 14%. The council will formulate a strategy for co-ordinating services and establishing consistent pricing, which may lead to less business being parcelled out to third party integrators. Observers say that the council may be having an effect already, since the past few months have seen IBM winning major services contracts. However, others say that the growing scale and complexity of services projects, perhaps demanding a combination of facilities management, systems integration and consulting, is forcing IBM to continue working with third parties, even where in-house skills exist. Logistics is not the least of IBM’s problems, and even if the company does have extensive in-house skills, they are spread far and wide, and bringing the necessary people together for a a period of time can be problematic. Secondly, despite its size, certain divisions are known to be underresourced, and sources say that the consulting services unit has suffered in the past because of demands from other units, although consulting is a crucial component when bidding for large service projects. IBM has been devolving responsibility to local offices over the past 18 months, but the council will attempt to define strategy and pull various groups together at a central point. There will be representatives from a number of units, including Professional Services and Systems Services, which will be responsible for commercial integration and facilities management respectively. Also represented on the new council are Software Support, New Business Offerings, Executive Consulting, Education, Information Networks, Marketing and Systems Engineering.
