IBM 2010 Annual Report is in
by Volker Weber
This is the software business. Download the full report here >
First quarter results for middleware:
Revenues from the WebSphere family of software products increased 51 percent year over year. Information Management software revenues increased 13 percent. Revenues from Tivoli software increased 8 percent. Revenues from Lotus software increased 1 percent, and Rational software increased 5 percent.
Comments
that screenshot is for 2009....
2010 is much less dramatic (phew)
please look at page 28 of the linked report to see the numbers for 2010:
Lotus (2.3) (2.1)
Cheers!
Lars, thanks for the correction! In relative numbers it's even worse though.
Huh? in the text on page 42 the number 10 is defined as a percentage. So I assume the 2.1 also is a percentage. How must this be made more relative?
Compare with the WebSphere business.
At least the Q1 2011 results are going in the right direction, though still nowhere where they need to be (and wow, WebSphere).
http://www.ibm.com/investor/1q11/press.phtml
1% isn't growth if inflation is higher than 1%. So is Websphere doing so well because it's what IBM puts the effort into, or because it's what customers want, which came first?
Lotus Notes is the new Nokia, not only IBM seems to have lost a real interest in the platform but it also needs a new CEO. MS BPOS won in one of my client's workplace so they stopped using Lotus. Sorry, but someone had to go in IBM management, and not for a trip around the world ...
I wish Lotus management team stops blaming the user, and stop blaming MS and start delivering big updates, big and really polished updates to their software.
Has anyone ever had a customer say they really wanted WebSphere specifically? I've been out of the IBM/Lotus world for a while, but my impression is that you tend to get Websphere if something you want requires it. Kind of like IIS.
What is reported here as WebSphere is more than WAS. A lot more.
Rebrand, reallocate, resource action. Problem solved.
@Vowe: Valid and important point that the WebSphere number is more than WAS.
There have been A LOT of products rolled into WebSphere. Many that I have had a hard time understanding why, although in conspiracy terms it is easy to think it's just so they can bolster the brand name of WebSphere.
Personally I've always found it difficult to understand how that brand increases THAT much year on year. But I suppose when you drag in as much other product into the brand even when it isn't so much the core historic product...it works!
Now, on the other hand, take WebSphere Portal. Technically that's supposed to be a Lotus product now, although they haven't changed the name. So, where does that revenue go in terms of IBM's reports? Lotus or WebSphere?
And that also leans to what all else is included in Lotus that's really a WebSphere based product. It is all mingled anymore.
We saw this with the Power Systems "merger" For quite some time, IBM listed the revenue as "Converged System p" and "Legacy System i" making it sound like i was going away entirely, while not really addressing the fact that they were rolling the two into one. It caused a lot of confusion and customers to leave the platform.
Does 86% gross profit margin on software seem a tad high to anyone? I have no context to compare that to, so maybe that's "normal".
I wonder what pricing has to do with market share/penetratation and annual growth?
We continue to wrangle with IBM on the ILMT technical conundrum and exhorbitant cost for a Domino running under a BES, and the 86% gross profit margin sure seems unreasonable given all of the crap we have been put through on ILMT.
