It was awfully sporting of IBM Corp to set up consultancy, systems integration and facilities management ventures in an attempt to put to profitable use the surplus skills of so many of its employees, and only curmudgeons asked if IBMers were actually the right people for the job: sad to say, the curmudgeons were right, and according to Computerworld, the head of the new IBM Consulting Group in White Plains, New York, Robert Howe, says that it is having to hire people from the likes of Andersen Consulting and Coopers & Lybrand, because as he told the paper, we’ve tried IBMers, but frankly we’ve had to send some home – some IBM people didn’t get the notion of the service business – they didn’t understand that we didn’t want administrators and middle managers.
