> old school IBM values
The only place where this seemed to work reasonably well for a while was YouTube & Google, but even that was ruined the moment Google decided it needs "unified accounts" and to insert the Google+ social network into YouTube.
Yep, often times the upper management thinks "wow what a successful company", then sees why said company is so successful after the merger and thinks "we're the best, we gotta make them just like us and they'll be even more successful", and the meddling begins.
It also helps management get bonuses for helping "integrate" the acquired company with the parent one, helping "boost efficiency" and "reducing overhead" or some other way of glossing over "we destroyed what made them attractive and successful".
Many companies seem to have copied that strategy of just pretending they are sprinkling some AI fairy dust on whatever and that it's better somehow, while actually doing zero work.
Outside of that accomplishment I have no idea what IBM has been doing since the 90s.
They won't, they've never let any acquisition be "independent" for any real length of time.