Yes, Rex, that's how I read it as well. If proven, someone should join Sanjay in Fairton (acually he got paroled six years ago last week).
I'm sure anyone who has worked for a large vendor has seen this happen to one extent or another. Sometimes it's relatively harmless, just pumps up some product internally. Other times it's significant enough, like this suite alleges, that it's willful fraud. We'll see what happens, obviously. On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 4:41 PM Pommier, Rex <rpomm...@sfgmembers.com> wrote: > Hi Bill, > > I understand the "basic claim" in the lawsuit differently from what you're > saying below. While I agree that a mainframe cloud is essentially no > different from any other cloud, actually not much different from the old > timeshare from decades ago, I understand the basic claim completely > different. I don't see the claim being based on wither or not IBM's > revenue went up or down, I take it as IBM shifting their revenue from one > stream to another, in order to deceive shareholders (and possibly > customers) into what areas of their business are performing well and which > are floundering. The main takeaway I get from this is based on these 2 > paragraphs: > > <quote> > "Defendants used steep discounting on the mainframe part of the ELA in > return for the customer purchasing catalog software (i.e. Strategic > Imperative Revenue), unneeded and unused by the customer," the lawsuit > stated. > > IBM is also alleged to have shifted revenue from its non-strategic Global > Business Services (GBS) segment to Watson, a Strategic Imperative in the > CAMSS product set, to convince investors that the company was successfully > expanding beyond its legacy business. > </quote> > > IOW, the way I read it, the customer didn't want the "strategic" products > but IBM basically discounted the mainframe product set enough to (almost?) > give away the "strategic" software, which sits at the customer site unused, > to make it look like the customer wanted and bought this product, and thus > shifted revenue from "legacy" business to "strategic" business, when it > didn't actually happen. IBM would have gotten the revenue in either case, > but - according to the lawsuits - IBM was playing fast and loose with where > the revenue was reported, because if the revenue was reported under > "strategic" the execs got bigger bonuses as compared to if the revenue was > reported under "legacy". . > > I'm not going to argue the merits of the lawsuits because none of us is > close enough to know what's really happening, but if the lawsuits move > forward and are proven in court, some big blue execs should be wearing > orange. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
