John Akers, IBM CEO during shift from mainframes to PCs, dies at age 79

John Akers, CEO at International Business Machines Corp. for eight years during the company's struggles to adapt its dominance in mainframes to the personal-computer era, has died. He was 79.

Akers died Aug. 22 in Boston, IBM said Saturday in a statement on its website. The cause was a stroke, company spokesman Ed Barbini wrote in an email.

A former U.S. Navy pilot, Akers joined IBM in 1960 and stayed there for 33 years, until being ousted as CEO in favor of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. chief Louis Gerstner -- IBM's first top executive from outside the company -- as financial losses mounted and the stock price skidded.

Early in his IBM career, Akers was an executive assistant to Frank Cary, who himself became a CEO at the company. Akers also served as president of the data-processing division and president before becoming chief executive in 1985.

One of his executive assistants was Samuel Palmisano, who also later became CEO. He described Akers in IBM's statement as the ultimate company man and "so committed to the institution and its culture."

In sales and executive roles, Akers is credited with helping elevate and sustain IBM's dominance of the mainframe-computer business, through pushing the adoption of the System/360 and successor machines.

IBM had lost $7.83 billion in two years when the company's board convinced Gerstner, who had turned down the IBM job previously, to replace Akers. Gerstner replaced much of the Armonk, New York-based company's top management, slashed thousands of jobs and cut $7 billion in costs. IBM's shares rose ninefold from when Gerstner took over through the announcement in 2002 that Palmisano would be the new CEO.

Palmisano said in the IBM statement that Akers was loyal to the company. "People liked John Akers, because they knew he cared about them -- as employees, as people, and as IBMers," Palmisano said in the statement.