I think that undersells IBMs continued technical achievement in the mainframe space. It's a niche business but the folks who need it really need it. Sure fine it's not their growth sector, software (thanks mostly to RedHat), but they managed to keep a really cool and unique segment of engineering going despite commodity hardware eating the world.

Gerstner left ibm far better than when he found it. That's the main point.

Now generally speaking most American OEMs lost their manufacturing chops since 1985 when software began eating everything.

Today, tech companies need to decide: did that go too far? Should we reincorporate physical r&d, and down size manufacturing supply chain bringing it back inside?

Those are legit questions. Summarily stating ibm is just a consulting company doesn't get us anywhere.