IBM is expected to announce today that it is transferring the headquarters of its communications business from the US to Europe and according to the Wall Street Journal, IBM’s most senior female executive, Ellen Hancock, who is general manager of the business, will be moving with her staff to Hounslow, although much of the work is expected to be done in France, where IBM has the big La Gaude laboratory on the Mediterranean. The move is seen primarily as a further effort to persuade doubting customers that IBM really does believe in the Open Systems Interconnection seven layer data communications reference model, which is mandatory for most European public sector bids these days. After years of rearguard fighting against the X25 packet protocol, making it as difficult as possible to implement on its machines, IBM announced a vast array of open systems software two years ago, but those products only started to become available during the summer. IBM also sees enormous opportunities in the gradual liberalisation of telecommunications in Europe; the transfer will mark the first time a product group has been run from outside the US, making IBM look a little more like an international company.
