I worked breifly at IBM research last century. The spent a lot of money on research (6 Billion). software, chip design and algorithms and a lot of just basic research.

But when I left to go back to school "global services" a business to business consulting division was the big up and coming division. It seems that division is where IBM decided to go. Honestly they'll just sell to some big businesses so likely you'll never hear about what they're doing.

I'll agree they seem to have lost their way. Its a shame really. They did some good things: I remember a lot of the engineers there would travel to schools and promote engineering careers.