IBM software chief talks automation

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On HP’s $13.9 billion EDS buy:

This is a challenging task that they have set for themselves here in terms of EDS and EDS’ business profile and how they leverage that. We will see how they do. Certainly there have been a lot of questions raised. [HP CEO] Mark Hurd insists this is a great deal, you wouldn’t expect him to say anything else, but time will tell how effective they are in leveraging EDS. Can they leverage it beyond their services business? This is one of the things that has taken us decades to get good at here at IBM because in fact you can’t build a software business without an independent software go to market. My services colleagues don’t sell my products. In fact, services people are so busy trying to take care of using their people there is no time left to sell product. They are not product salespeople. You don’t make your hardware and software more successful by having more services. They have to build their business on their own. Their profile is not our profile. They don’t have our profile of hardware, software or services. They are a different company: big PC business, printer business, supplies business. It’s a very different business than ours.