Senior management of Global Technology Services at IBM have reportedly been advised to cut around 10,100 staff roles, according to a leaked company document.
A presentation slide seemingly created by IBM with data from consultancy firm Bain & Company detailed 30% of service delivery and technology staff “to be productively redeployed in 2018”, The Register reported. Heading up a bar chart of staff allocations to various departments is a title indicating that proposed staff move concerns “~30% of SD&T”, meaning managers are reportedly considering movement of approximately a third of employees in this division.
The Register came to the figure of 10,100 staff roles potentially cut in a shake-up by interpreting the “Attrition w/o backfill” column on the graph. A subtitle on the graph read “Projected headcount impact of 2018 actions”, indicating the contemporary nature of the alleged management discussion.
The US-based company has not confirmed or denied the veracity of the photographed presentation slide, which reads “IBM confidential” in the bottom left corner and “Do not distribute” in the top right.
Asked for comment on the Global Technology Services jobs redeployments, IBM told press “We do not comment on speculation.” The bluechip added: “Many consultants recommend things to IBM, many of which remain merely recommendations.”
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IBM endured further negativity this week as the computing giant confirmed its POWER CPUs were vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown cyberattacks, a week after the weaknesses were first uncovered among a panoply of devices. Firmware updates for POWER7+ and POWER8 CPUs have been released, with a POWER9 patch expected on Monday. AIX and IBM i OS fixes are set for release on February 12. Apple and Microsoft are among other major companies hit by the hardware vulnerability in chips manufactured by AMD, ARM and Intel.
The news comes as IBM struck a $85 million managed services agreement with Emirates for private cloud over the next decade.
