If you want to read the rest, Bob's already published all 6 articles in this series on his blog: http://www.cringely.com/

Normally, betanews quality is just so so, but occasionally they have some nice columns, this one begins with...

> The direct impetus for this column is IBM’s internal plan to grow earnings-per-share (EPS) to $20 by 2015. The primary method for accomplishing this feat, according to the plan, will be by reducing US employee head count by 78 percent in that time frame.

If they continue to improve AI like no other company, in the long term, it won't matter if they shutter their business consulting services. IBM might be better off betting on research and innovation than cut-throat competition.

Basically, you mean, they preserve their research organization that keeps doing cool things. There has been a recent wave-2 Exodus of IBM researchers to Google NYC; its not clear that they will be able to preserve their ability to make cool advances.