@OP: IT Industry Opportunities
I am a software engineer, so you should take my view with the proverbial pinch of salt:
IT is only to a small degree software and systems engineering. A lot of IT is devoted to sales, marketing, technology consulting, business consulting, project management, general management, finance and customer support.
I guess that most IBM or HP employees are actually focusing on the latter activities. When I studied CS at HP and BA Stuttgart, the company emphasized presentation, communication and project management trainings. Technology was taught at the uni and in only a few courses.
Technology is changing at a very fast pace and more important than that is the ability to communicate and quickly learn something new. Of course, you should know the basics, but the specific technologies often change quickly. During my education, HP sold the MPE operating system, the Allbase DB and used Windows 3.1 with NetWare. All of that is gone now.
Java and the internet was in a primitive state. Google did not yet exist !
Capturing user requirements, communicating complex issues, project management, presentation skills. These are key qualifications of most IT professionals these days.
My guess is that HP and IBM will shrink or disappear dramatically with the emergence of cheap-pc-cluster technologies and the "cloud" during the next ten years. But IT does indeed have a great future, as it is a key technology for virtually all sectors of the economy. Just don't expect it to look like today in ten years time.