IBM at Pains to Evolve

Lutz says when all parts of IBM work in concert, everyone benefits. "We're hoping that Vivek and his colleagues [in consulting] are informed of the downstream implications of what they do," he says, adding that the same is conversely true for IBM's semiconductor unit, for example.

To emphasize the importance of IBM's push in this direction, the company launched a global ad campaign in April with the tag line "The Other IBM," emphasizing its business leadership as opposed to its technology capabilities.

"This is definitely a strategy that has to evolve," Olds says. "The thing that's interesting about leading with services and business value is that once you know where the client's business is and where they want to go, that gives IBM a huge leg up on any competition because they can proactively build solutions before the customer really even knows there is a problem."

IBM made a huge bet in 2002 when it bought the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers for $3.9 billion. After talking the talk since then about leveraging what this business can do for the whole corporation, IBM is finally letting the consultants walk the walk in a leading role. Investors will now get to judge the wisdom of this shift.

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