Despite the deals that give it 10% of a string of Agents in the UK, and whatever you may have heard in the past few weeks, don’t look for IBM Corp to take too many more stakes in small software developers: we have raised a wry eyebrow at the way the management at target after IBM target has behaved as if it just won El Gordo lottery as soon as the IBM bundle of cash arrived, and promptly taken their eye off the ball so that a business that was sound and profitable plunges almost overnight into losses – but that is not the only reason IBM is thought to be disenchanted with the concept; it’s as much the fact that the pesky little ingrates rush off with IBM’s cash and do just what they always wanted to do, with little reference to what IBM bought into them for in the first place.
