Hey Nick! You're a bit late. The best fireworks here happened after we caught Saddam Hussein.<g>
Big Blue had a good quarter.
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IBM Corporation (IBM)
Y/Y Growth Rates
Selected Product Lines
4Q03 FY03
zSeries +33% + 7%
pSeries +12% +13%
iSeries + 2% + 7%
xSeries +20% +17%
Total Storage +14% +10%
DB2 + 3% +13%
Tivoli +17% +12%
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From IBM's prepared remarks it is clear that the zSeries mainframe (up 33%) continues to pull in most of Tivoli Storage's sales (up 32%) and Tape sales (up 21%). Shark probably had another so-so quarter. Interestingly, IBM's market-leading ECM software only grew by 2% while Documentum probably reeled in another 30%+ quarter during 4Q03 when it became part of EMC. EMC quietly added mainframe support to Centera a few months ago and I suspect this is already starting to suck the oxygen out of IBM's market-leading ECM platform.
...........Turning to storage, revenue for total storage hardware grew 14%, on strength in midrange disk and tape. Total disk was up 9% year-to-year in the 4th quarter, up 10% for the full year. Our Tape business also had strong growth with 21% year-to-year growth in the 4th quarter, the second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth......
......And once again, we believe that, when the industry data becomes available, IBM storage will have gained more than a point of revenue share in disk, and gained several points of share in Tape.......
.......Our DB2 database software grew 3% in the quarter.
Enterprise Content Management software, which enables customers to manage all forms of unstructured data, grew 2% in the quarter. There was a slowdown in content management sales, primarily in Europe. On the other hand, our DB2 database tools business grew 20% in the quarter.
Tivoli software grew revenue 17% for the quarter. Tivoli’s products are an important part of our on demand strategy, enabling businesses to securely automate many of their processes and gain operational efficiencies.
Tivoli Storage software grew 32%.
Tivoli Systems software grew 14% for the quarter.
Our largest competitors are expected to grow at low- to mid-single digits. However, Tivoli Security software, against a strong 4th quarter last year, grew less
favorably........
ibm.com |
