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. Rex -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bill Johnson Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2023 5:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: IBM does it again They dismissed the original lawsuit without prejudice. Which means they reserve the right to refile, often with new claims or dropped claims. Both being true in this case. The basic claim, that the mainframe is old technology and therefore can’t be part of “new” technology, the cloud, is ridiculous. Like saying a Tesla isn’t new technology because it’s a car. The IBM cloud isn’t all that different than non mainframe clouds. And why reinvent the wheel when MQ, DB2, CICS, & IMS can be used to access the data? It appears to me that the participants in the suit are unhappy that IBM stock didn’t perform like MSFT, AMZN, or Google. Of course IBM has performed better than those 3 in the last year or so. I’ve never invested in IBM but I did buy into earnings once and made a few bucks. Actually, you could have made a bundle in IBM in the last couple of years buying around 120 and selling around 140. It has been in that trough for awhile now. And collecting the dividend. Lastly, IBM’s revenue has been declining for quite a few years until recently. The latest quarter, just released, had the best revenue growth in years. Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Thursday, January 26, 2023, 5:35 PM, Tom Brennan <[email protected]> wrote: Or maybe when the article said "similar" they were referring to this: "The new complaint expands upon the one filed last year while also omitting previous allegations that the supposed securities fraud allocated revenue for the purpose of maximizing executive bonus compensation." On 1/26/2023 1:37 PM, Bill Johnson wrote: > Pretty clear. > Due to the way complex securities litigation works, the firm representing the > largest group of investors – Ironworkers Local 580 Joint Fund – took over the > handling of the case, then in September, 2022, moved to have the case > voluntarily dismissed without prejudice [PDF], meaning the charges could be > refiled. > > > Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone > > > On Thursday, January 26, 2023, 4:12 PM, Tom Brennan > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Then I wonder why they used the word "similar" in the article and not > "same". > > On 1/26/2023 12:31 PM, Bill Johnson wrote: >> Same lawsuit refiled. Did you read the entire article? >> >> >> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone >> >> >> On Thursday, January 26, 2023, 3:19 PM, zMan <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> IBM top brass accused again of using mainframes to prop up Watson, >> cloud sales >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/18/ib >> m_sued_securities_fraud/__;!!KjMRP1Ixj6eLE0Fj!tWeYBVko5R2QTqw5ZaP7pj4 >> 6TMgx_c7SM8XPn_vKLDZooE9mPuSqgMOce3RCbiEXAK1WgG_P-hO22n5T6mPhWFYA8-nf >> ltWmrAke$ >> >> What has happened to the IBM we knew and loved?! >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >> send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO >> IBM-MAIN >> >> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >> send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO >> IBM-MAIN >> >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send > email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send > email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. 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