IBM Shutters Somers, New York, Campus

By Robert McMillan 

International Business Machines Corp. is closing its Somers, New York, campus, home to approximately 2,000 employees in the company's systems and software divisions.

Workers will be relocated by March 2017 to an IBM facility in nearby North Castle, New York, which is being modernized, said IBM spokesman Edward Barbini, Big Blue plans to sell the 700-acre Somers property, he said.

The Somers campus was built to accommodate 2,700 workers. It was designed by architect I.M. Pei and completed in 1989.

IBM is struggling with the contraction of its traditional software and services businesses and trying to reinvent itself as a seller of cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. It has reported four consecutive years of quarterly revenue declines as it has sold off its Intel-based server and chip-making businesses.

The company has laid off 14,000 employees in the past few months, by one analyst's estimate. Meanwhile, it has spent $9 billion on acquisitions in the past year and is looking to hire new employees in growing businesses such as cloud computing, security, and data analytics.

IBM had 378,000 employees at the end of 2015.

"The bulk of our transformation is really around skills and shifting skills to these new areas," IBM Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeter said in an interview last month. "Our overall employment could end the year relatively flat to what we have today," he said.

News of the Somers closure was first reported by The Somers Record.

Write to Robert McMillan at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 17, 2016 18:27 ET (22:27 GMT)

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