The stock market has been brutal to IBM. Last fall, IBM lost nearly half its value in the stock market plunge of 2008 when its share price dove from a high last August of 130.93 per share to a mind-numbing low of 69.50. The company's stock price is beginning to creep back up now and currently stands at 89.23. Yet that type of loss to investors--literally billions of dollars--doesn't come without a price: someone is going to have to pay. Many employees at IBM are beginning to wonder if it will be them, and the answer for many could be a distinct "yes."
IBM has approximately 386,558 employees worldwide, and when you have more people on board than live in many major American cities, there is bound to be some slack. You can almost hear the chorus reverberate down the executive hallways: "Cut, cut, cut-we need to trim costs!" Although IBM has a policy of not forecasting its own layoffs, the rumor mill is tossing around anywhere from 4-to-10 percent as a possible, yet unverifiable number. If that were to prove true, it would mean that anywhere from 15,000 up to 38,000 IBMers could be looking for work come this summer.
Will it actually be this many, and where will these cuts be taken from? No one is sure, but the IBM Employees Union, CWA Local 1701, AFL-CIO has a lot of members feeding tidbits of information and rumors into its Web site at http://www.allianceibm.org/jobcutstatusandcomments.php. There is a fear among union members that sometime in January, the company will slash thousands of jobs. Members are speculating on January for a variety of reasons including possible policy shifts on offshore jobs by the incoming Obama administration to the impending release of IBM's fourth quarter financial results. One poster who claims to have an inside track says there will be a layoff in January and another in June.
Meanwhile, shifts in company policies having to do with working-at-home and commuting are starting to emerge along with signs of a companywide reorganization that together are making IBMers feel insecure at an insecure time. As one pundit said recently of the economy, "We probably haven't seen the bottom of this yet." But were they referring to stock market losses or job losses? And what effect--and by when--will the government bailout have on jobs?
More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.
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Forms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.
Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
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