Samuel Palmisano Quotations

Shirley Ann Jackson's significant background and experience in technology and her leadership at one of the most highly regarded technological research universities in the world will make her a valuable member of our board. We are very pleased she is joining us.

IBM had a good quarter with excellent earnings-per-share results. We continued to improve our profit performance with our strategic focus on higher-value segments of the marketplace, as well as with our emphasis on productivity and global integration.

Let me suggest a simple and straightforward description of global integration. It is doing the right work, in the right places, at the right cost.

Our cash position remains strong. After investing in our business and returning nearly $3 billion to investors, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of more than $12 billion, significantly above a year ago.

We have more work to do, but we are off to a good start this year, building on the momentum of 2005.

With the z900 and 'Shark,' we've raised the bar in enterprise systems for e-business.

We had solid performance in systems, middleware and business transformation services, which grew over 25 percent for the year. Our cash position remains very strong, and we saw impressive growth in important parts of our business. We continued to make gains in emerging markets and in important sectors such as healthcare and transportation, and our microprocessors are powering the fast-growing home entertainment market.

Our consulting and services professionals will provide a powerful capability, beginning with business innovation and extending through implementation, to help clients improve their competitiveness and drive sustained growth and profitability. Together with the world-class innovations of IBM Research and our business partner offerings, this new business unit will deliver comprehensive end-to-end business and technology solutions.

We integrate our capability to create unique, innovative, high-value solutions to give our clients an edge they cannot get from any other company.