IBM focuses like a laser beam on delivering consistent earnings, and the corporate didn’t disappoint on Wednesday when it reported financial results for the second one quarter resulted in June. What it didn’t have the capacity to do was solve uncertainties in regards to the company’s future growth engines, because it spending continues to shift toward cloud computing and faraway from important categories for IBM.

For the 3 months ended June 30, IBM reported a year-over-year revenue decline of three% to $24.9 billion. Nevertheless, the corporate managed to ring up an 8% non-GAAP increase in quarterly earnings. It even raised revenue expectations for the total year by 20 cents.

At the beginning blush, the earnings figures were pleasing to investors, but “all in” data calculated according to generally accepted accounting practices included a $1 billion “workforce rebalancing” charge that sent quarterly earnings per share down 13% year over year.

Workforce rebalancing is a euphemism for layoffs pursued most aggressively in Europe and in addition in declining pockets of IBM’s services, hardware and software businesses. IBM does this type of rebalancing each year, but it surely packed this year’s moves all into one quarter after reporting disappointing first quarter results .

IBM does a superb job of monetary engineering and taking “tough-minded action,” as CFO and senior VP Mark Loughridge put it during a conference call with financial analysts. But taking measures to make sure profitability can’t hide anemic growth in some segments and reasonably dramatic declines in others.

[ Want more on IBM’s transformation challenges? Read IBM And huge Data Disruption: Insider’s View. ]

The brightest spots in IBM’s 2Q performance included a 5% increase in software revenues, a 9% increase in middleware revenue and an 11% increase in mainframe revenue (all figures in constant currencies). The largest disappointments were in hardware, where Power Server and Storage unit declines dragged Systems & Technology revenues down 11%, despite the gains inside the mainframe business.

Power revenues were down 24%, however IBM introduced a number new Power 7+ servers this year. Oracle and HP, too, are having trouble moving these high-end servers. This is often one area where market moves toward cloud-based apps and far from packaged apps running on Unix servers have changed into a true drag on IBM’s earnings.

IBM is additionally seeking to sell its low-margin X86 server business, but talks on a give attention to Lenovo reportedly broke off in May. IBM now says it doesn’t anticipate completing what some estimate can be a $5 billion divestiture in fiscal 2013.

IBM’s services business (including Global Business Services and Global Technology Services) declined 1% year-over-year within the second quarter. Loughridge noted a healthy backlog of services business and stressed that results improved over the former quarter. But here, too, you’re left wondering where the expansion will come from because the mainstream packaged app market moves toward cloud-based services and clear of on-premises systems integration and consulting.

IBM absolutely is investing in high-growth and high-margin businesses, and these categories generated the few robust, double-digit figures that the corporate reported. IBM’s cloud business, for instance, was up 70% in the course of the first half the year. It is where IBM recently spent $2 billion to procure SoftLayer, a privately held cloud computing infrastructure company that had $364 million in revenue in 2012, consistent with Moody’s. Another bright spot was Smarter Planet revenue, which was up 25% in the course of the first six months of the year.

The issue with these sunny figures is that there is no frame of reference, as IBM doesn’t get away its cloud or Smarter Planet revenue. Same goes for Watson, which Ginni Rometty , IBM’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, recently highlighted because the cornerstone of the company’s plans for the approaching era of cognitive computing.

What is going to the long run bring as big data changes spending patterns in IBM’s all-important information management software category? General Manager Bob Picciano recently told InformationWeek that database, data-integration and mainframe workloads may be disrupted by emerging platforms akin to Hadoop.

There are good the reason why IBM would possibly not need to disclose certain revenue figures. Lots of IBM’s Smarter Planet and business analytics offerings like Watson, for instance, are unique. They’re also highly profitable, partly because they are not really subject to competitive RFPs where you’re able to inspect comparable solutions. That’s all good for IBM and investors, but would-be customers may be less fascinated by buying products known to be highly profitable.

The alternative problem is probably going behind IBM’s reticence to reveal cloud computing revenue, as it is a notoriously low-margin business. InformationWeek has complained in regards to the loss of visibility into IBM’s cloud revenue before, and back in 2011 we were told it amounted to “hundreds of millions of bucks.” IBM has also said that its cloud revenue will reach $7 billion by the tip of 2015.

The purpose is that IBM’s best prospects for growth and its most profitable and promising categories are shrouded in mystery — financially speaking. They sometimes cut across multiple categories, and the figures which are shared are impossible to reverse-engineer into real insight about IBM’s business.

So long as investors keep seeing profits, they won’t insist on better reporting. But it’s hard to determine IBM’s future given the absence of quantifiable and powerful growth figures.

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