IBM would come off so much better if they just stuck to the one thing they still do really well. Investors can be taken on high impact tours of the physical facilities that have been purpose built around IBM's hardware if they need any convincing of the value proposition into 2030.

The AI and quantum roadmaps are an albatross for a company like this. They'll always come up in 2nd place or worse. The competition is insane. Meanwhile, there are maybe 3 other humans on earth with the means and conviction to build a competitor to their mainframe business today. It's one of the better moats in technology. It's not the biggest or most lucrative one, but no one wants to touch it because the captive audience would never risk an alternative.

Data is still IBM's best hope. It's always what they've done well. Especially the very important "core" data of complex enterprises. Things like the account balances and transactions for all customers at a bank. DB2 is easily the most compelling mainframe service and I don't ever see that changing.

> The AI and quantum roadmaps are an albatross for a company like this.

I compare those (long-term roadmaps) with automakers showing-off concept-cars, and I like what John Gruber wrote about those[1]:

> Concept designs (and worse, concept videos) are a sign of dysfunction and incompetence at a company. It’s playing make-believe while fooling yourself and your audience into thinking you’re doing something real. Concepts allow designers to ignore real-world constraints: engineering, pricing, manufacturing, legal regulations, sometimes even physics. But dealing with real-world constraints is the hard work of true design. Concepts don’t stem from a lack of confidence. They stem from a dereliction of the actual duties of design.

Similarly, this vacuous concept-of-a roadmap from IBM is clearly free from real-world constraints; constraints like AI telling people to eat rocks...

[1] https://daringfireball.net/2020/01/concept_electronics_show