Some encouraging news from IBM with its 4Q results. System z fell year-to-year but not by much:
Fourth-Quarter 2008: Diluted earnings of $3.28 per share, up 17 percent; Net income of $4.4 billion, up 12 percent; Gross profit margin of 47.9 percent, up 3 points; Revenue of $27.0 billion, impacted by strong U.S. dollar, down 6 percent, down 1 percent adjusting for currency; Software revenues up 3 percent, up 9 percent adjusting for currency; pre-tax income up 15 percent; Global Technology Services revenue down 4 percent, up 3 percent adjusting for currency; pre-tax income up 35 percent; Global Business Services revenues down 5 percent, flat adjusting for currency; pre-tax income up 26 percent; Services signings of $17.2 billion, 24 deals greater than $100 million; Strategic outsourcing signings up 20 percent worldwide, up 44 percent in North America. : : ³Revenues from the Systems and Technology segment totaled $5.4 billion for the quarter, down 20 percent (16 percent, adjusting for currency). Systems revenues decreased 18 percent (14 percent, adjusting for currency). Revenues from the converged System p server products increased 8 percent compared with the 2007 period. Revenues from System z mainframe server products decreased 6 percent compared with the year- ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, which is measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 12 percent. Revenues from the System x servers decreased 32 percent, and revenues from the legacy System i servers decreased 92 percent. Revenues from System Storage decreased 20 percent, and revenues from Retail Store Solutions decreased 28 percent. Revenues from Microelectronics OEM decreased 34 percent.² ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390