The company known as Big Blue posted a $196.7 million profit for the 12 months ending December 31, 2007, which was driven by double digit growth in both its services and software divisions.

IBM also managed to generate some $3.96 billion in revenue last year, a 16.4 per cent increase over 2006.

IBM says its revenue growth was driven by its services business, which increased 21 per cent to $2.7 billion and its software business, growing 13 per cent to $445 million.

The company also had a slight increase in hardware revenue, which grew five per cent to $601 million.