In more recent years, it has been seen as having successfully re-invented itself as a services firm. What both these descriptions have ignored of course is the fact that Big Blue is one of the largest software suppliers in the industry.
That's not exactly news: IBM was in fact for a long time the largest software supplier (before being overtaken by Microsoft), and its software business is worth US$16.8 billion, larger than most IT firms. However, most discussion of IBM's software business has tended to focus on how it fits in with its mainframe sales: the perception has been that while software is still a steady and reliable source of income, it was going to become slowly but surely overshadowed by the more exciting — and more profitable — services business.
