NEW YORK (CNN/MONEY) - Back in the go-go 1960s, IBM was one of the top-performing stocks, along with other members of the so-called Nifty Fifty, such as Polaroid and Xerox. But after being crushed by the recessions of the early 1970s, these glamour stocks no longer looked so nifty.

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Since then, IBM has had its ups and downs. But even at its hottest, it has never really ranked with the newer tech stars, such as Cisco, Dell and Microsoft. Over the past five years, in fact, Big Blue's average earnings growth has lagged that of the top techs by five percentage points annually.

Now, however, IBM's days of underperformance may be over.

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