IBM Shutters Somers, New York, Campus
May 17 2016 - 6:42PM
Dow Jones News
By Robert McMillan
International Business Machines Corp. is closing its Somers, New
York, campus, home to approximately 2,000 employees in the
company's systems and software divisions.
Workers will be relocated by March 2017 to an IBM facility in
nearby North Castle, New York, which is being modernized, said IBM
spokesman Edward Barbini, Big Blue plans to sell the 700-acre
Somers property, he said.
The Somers campus was built to accommodate 2,700 workers. It was
designed by architect I.M. Pei and completed in 1989.
IBM is struggling with the contraction of its traditional
software and services businesses and trying to reinvent itself as a
seller of cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. It
has reported four consecutive years of quarterly revenue declines
as it has sold off its Intel-based server and chip-making
businesses.
The company has laid off 14,000 employees in the past few
months, by one analyst's estimate. Meanwhile, it has spent $9
billion on acquisitions in the past year and is looking to hire new
employees in growing businesses such as cloud computing, security,
and data analytics.
IBM had 378,000 employees at the end of 2015.
"The bulk of our transformation is really around skills and
shifting skills to these new areas," IBM Chief Financial Officer
Martin Schroeter said in an interview last month. "Our overall
employment could end the year relatively flat to what we have
today," he said.
News of the Somers closure was first reported by The Somers
Record.
Write to Robert McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 17, 2016 18:27 ET (22:27 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
International Business M... (NYSE:IBM)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
International Business M... (NYSE:IBM)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024