I was an IBM Systems Service Rep for 11 years.....What IBM did was get out of the service end of the business and just got rid of everyone. All service went to 3rd party vendors....I now work for one of those 3rd party vendors who now has not only a bunch of the old IBM contracts, but a lot of the old HP contracts...
IBM has an enterprise service division that runs service desks. It makes sense that they bid on desks maintained in India since many companies have support centers there.