It’s a value vector 30% of software, the tremendous source of profit and cash that gives us financial flexibility to reinvest for growth overall. It also provides a tremendous incumbency position for our IBM multiplier effect. We entered the year, Arvind and I talked about we saw the inflection shift in TP in ’23. And that was predicated on the successful mainframe programs that we’ve had over the last two. By the way, the last program were up 2 times our installed MIPS capacity. So we have a much more extended opportunity base to go get those strong renewal rates overall. But we said from a model perspective, we saw the inflection shift versus being down mid-single-digit, which is a tremendous drain on us, we saw low-single-digit growth.
Now on top of that, just given the highly inflationary environment, we talked about we were going to get disproportional price in ‘23. Call that, I don’t know, 2, 3, 4 points somewhere in that ballpark. So when you look at our first-half performance, our first half were up 8%. By the way, our first-half last year was relatively flat. It’s our easier compare. So we have to acknowledge it’s easier compare. We’re going to enter a different — more difficult compare in the second-half. But that 8 points of growth overall, I would say, once you normalize for the easier compare, we can grow low-single-digit on a sustainable basis. This year, just given the differentiated price position, we said we’d grow mid-single-digit. We feel very confident exiting first-half.
Patricia Murphy: Thanks, Wamsi. Let’s go to the next question, please.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is from Amit Daryanani with Evercore. You may go ahead.
Amit Daryanani: Yes, thanks for taking my question. Yes, I guess, I was hoping you could spend a bit of time on the consulting side and the growth did decelerate there a little bit from 8% in Q1 to 6%. I’d love to understand how does that 6% growth in consolidated Q2 stack up versus your internal expectations? And then given the deceleration we saw in June, maybe just talk about what gives you confidence that the growth rate holds up, and that’s 6% to 8% range for the back half of the year when some of your peers have actually talked about that market decelerating a bit? Thank you.
Jim Kavanaugh: Thanks, Amit. I’ll take this one. We’re actually pleased with our consulting performance. You remember you dial back 90-days ago and we saw a real change in buying behavior, particularly in the United States around discretionary project-based activity that slowed down in the month of March and that impacted our backlog — realization in the quarter. But we’ve actually posted relatively strong growth, 8% in the first quarter, we had mid-teens, if I remember correctly signings growth. When we look at second quarter, we have not seen any substantive change in client buying behavior at all. So I think that’s actually a positive indicator. We didn’t see it, permeate across other markets around the world. Clients like us, internally I’m focused every single day, I’m getting productivity cost, quick payback ROI and our clients are looking at that.
But on top of that 6% growth here in the second quarter, I think it should be noted, we delivered very strong signings growth that was pervasive both large deal, small deal. So we see continued momentum where client demand is there, where there is a value to clients, overall. And how we differentiated ourselves and I would argue we’re gaining share. We grew 24% in signings in the second quarter. And that was driven by areas that you would quite expect around digital transformation, application, modernization, data and technology, AI by the way, grew 50% signings in the first quarter. So to Arvind’s opening valley about AI and how we’re going to monetize, this is early green shoots on some of these things. So we exited the quarter with about 1.1 book-to-bill, by the way, that’s the strongest book-to-bill we’ve had in quite some time.
