I was at IBM from 1999 until my layoff in 2002. It was the 9th layoff for our group (Websphere). These layoffs suck and the stress nearly killed me. Back then the layoffs occurred after the dot com bubble burst. Lately I've been hearing lots of rumors from investors of wide spread belief of a tech bubble about to pop again. I'm guessing IBM is aware of this speculation and trying to be ahead of the game this go round.
They hate to see their stock price drop and I'm very glad I'm not in a situation like that anymore.
I can't believe they did this kind of thing in 1999 - 2002 for WebSphere. That is the era where Enterprise Java, XML, and SOAP took off and App Server was selling pretty hot.
Having said that, the 1999/2000 dotcom bust is different than if it was to happen today. In 1999/2000, open source wasn't as mature/diverse/strong as today so companies will buy commercial technology provided by SUN, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle.
These days, majority of the VC backed companies are using FOSS software with minimum Oracle/Microsoft software (probably the ERP/Finance/HR modules).
They hate to see their stock price drop and I'm very glad I'm not in a situation like that anymore.