Lets get some facts straight...

First, to the author, IBM renamed the DB2 pillar in Software Group to Information Management.

Naming your Brand and your product the same name was a dumb idea. (Lotus is a brand. Notes is a product. DB2 was the brand, DB2 was the product. Now its IM or Information Management and Informix, Datastage, DB2, etc are the products)

Second, if the rumors are true, IBM is laying off 16K employees in the US. I believe most of this restructuring is in Global Services. (When the market upticks, IBM will re-create these jobs, but not in the US or EMEA, but in India or some other low cost center of the world.)

Third, the only reason IBM is doing ok is that it has 3 areas to pull in revenue. Services, Hardware and Software group.

Neither HP nor Sun have those 3 major divisions. Sun , while they would like to call themselves a well rounded company is still a hardware company. Sun hasn't figured out how to make money off of software (Java, MySQL) and have traditionally used them as a tease to sell more hardware.

IBM hopes that the new Obama administration does push forward with some tech initiatives. IBM would love to land those accounts, keep the margins, and employ more people in India.

(That wasn't a joke.)