Thousands of IT professionals may have careers ahead of them at IBM. In presenting its third-quarter earnings last week, the company said it's looking to hire 10,000 workers in what CEO Sam Palmisano called the "key skill areas" of Linux deployment, middleware technologies, and professional services.

IBM, which recently said it's cutting 400 jobs as part of a skills-rebalancing effort, isn't the only vendor beefing up its ranks of business-technology consultants to win higher-margin services engagements, says David Garrity, an analyst at American Technology Research. Unisys Corp. has been boosting its staff of industry consultants and is having significant success winning outsourcing contracts, Garrity says. Over the last year, the company has hired hundreds of consultants to fulfill its ambitions in the services market.

IBM reported net earnings of $1.8 billion, compared with $1.3 billion a year ago, for the quarter ended Sept. 30. Revenue totaled $21.5 billion, up from $19.8 billion a year ago. The Global Services unit saw revenue increase 17% to $10.4 billion. The company signed more than $15 billion in new services contracts during the period. Software revenue also jumped 11% to $3.5 billion on the strength of strong sales of middleware products and its DB2 database.