By Nick Farrell
Publication Date: 2025-12-30 09:13:00
Dragged Big Blue from near-death and made services the main event
Louis Gerstner, architect of one of tech’s biggest corporate turnarounds, has died. He was 83.
Gerstner took charge in 1993, with Big Blue bleeding cash and facing breakup or bankruptcy. He hauled it into a services-led shape that mattered again by 2002. Plenty of big-name tech types did time at IBM during his reign and carried those habits into today’s boardrooms.
Gerstner was IBM’s first chief executive hired from outside the company, and so far the only one. When he arrived in April 1993, the previous boss wanted to split IBM into semi-independent units to fight rivals without corporate baggage.
Gerstner went the other way and kept IBM as one integrated outfit, with a serious R&D engine, while tearing up how it worked day to day. The key technical shift was to ditch hardware-first economics in favour of business services, systems integration, and enterprise software.
Under his watch, IBM…
