[toast0]

> in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm.

IBM got out of an industry they didn't want to be in, but they still have a lot of positive brand feelings, and a large stake in Lenovo (not sure if they still hold that). Where's the bad for IBM?

They sold off their PC server line to Lenovo about a decade later, so clearly the first deal wasn't too bad.

IBM seems to want to focus on Enterprise, so getting rid of things that individuals use, while still having relationships to sell them (because individuals exist in the enterprise), seems to work for them. After IBM bought SoftLayer, Lenovo servers started showing up instead of SuperMicro.