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IBM doesn't make much of their own software. They bought lotus notes, they made rational clear case a massive product by buying other companies and cobbling it

IBM doesn't make much of their own software. They bought lotus notes, they made rational clear case a massive product by buying other companies and cobbling it together. There is literally not a single company that is adding lotus notes or rational to their enterprise development suite. Their dwindling profits are accumulated from older companies who cannot or will not put up the cost to transition to latest tools. However every month another one of those companies finally bites the bullet and replaces those outdated tools. Aside from Watson when was the last time IBM MADE SOMETHING? Maybe they have but I haven't heard of it. I feel bad for anyone losing their job but if your company does not make anything and is this large what hope is there?

paulmd 11y ago
IBM is fairly active in the hardware space - Blue Gene supercomputers and POWER processors have a pretty solid presence in the HPC space. To produce those products they do quite a lot of basic science in semiconductor and nanotech research. I agree with you in general though - IBM is all about the lock-in. zSystem, for example, is basically a product for mainframe users (i.e. banks) who are petrified of updating their software and will pay whatever it takes to get an incrementally faster replacement. It literally lets you run your System/360 programs that you wrote 50 years ago, and System/360 was designed to directly replace physical tabulator machines. So your program logic may be the best part of a century old. It's basically the IBM-est product.
- padseeker 11y ago
  I was not aware of that. Thanks for informing me. If they had no value they would collapse and that has not happened. But I have wondered about their sub par products that are not growing and this does seem to be finally coming back to haunt them.
- hindsightbias 11y ago
  z has supported Linux for a long time, they sell Linux-only models now.
stoicform 11y ago
Plenty bro. Guess what? When you're bought, you now are a part of that company. Anything that purchased company makes is now made by IBM. What hope is there? Are you kidding me? Have you seen Berkshire Hathaway? Have you ever heard of Berkshire Hathaway?!
- padseeker 11y ago
  Maybe I wasn't clear enough. What has IBM either made or bought that is GROWING and has big upside? What have they bought that is fairly recent and is highly popular? Lotus notes and rational are older applications. Who the heck uses DB2 instead of Oracle/MySQL/Postgres? When was the last time you heard of a company becoming a new customer of DB2? Of choosing DB2 over the other database products on the market? Maybe they do make stuff but I have not heard of them buying anything relatively new on the market that is popular. Oracle is always buying new companies and adding them to their offerings (Workday, BigMachines to name a few). What is new that IBM bought that is GROWING? Lotus Notes, Rational and DB2 are not GROWING. Berkshire Hathaway buys companies that are growing. Name a company that IBM bought that is adding new customers.
  - stoicform 11y ago
    Any company that supports cloud. Revenue of cloud department is 8%-10% of IBM's revenue. It grew from last year. It's projected to grow yet again this upcoming year. We've continuously added on customers in several of the cloud companies that were purchased. I'm in one of those cloud companies that was purchased. Our customer count is going up leading to our revenue going up, contributing to IBM's overall cloud push.
paulddraper 11y ago
There's Bluemix, though I think that is built on top of their Softlayer acquisition.

paulmd 11y ago

IBM is fairly active in the hardware space - Blue Gene supercomputers and POWER processors have a pretty solid presence in the HPC space. To produce those products they do quite a lot of basic science in semiconductor and nanotech research. I agree with you in general though - IBM is all about the lock-in. zSystem, for example, is basically a product for mainframe users (i.e. banks) who are petrified of updating their software and will pay whatever it takes to get an incrementally faster replacement. It literally lets you run your System/360 programs that you wrote 50 years ago, and System/360 was designed to directly replace physical tabulator machines. So your program logic may be the best part of a century old. It's basically the IBM-est product.

padseeker 11y ago
I was not aware of that. Thanks for informing me. If they had no value they would collapse and that has not happened. But I have wondered about their sub par products that are not growing and this does seem to be finally coming back to haunt them.
hindsightbias 11y ago
z has supported Linux for a long time, they sell Linux-only models now.

stoicform 11y ago

Plenty bro. Guess what? When you're bought, you now are a part of that company. Anything that purchased company makes is now made by IBM. What hope is there? Are you kidding me? Have you seen Berkshire Hathaway? Have you ever heard of Berkshire Hathaway?!

padseeker 11y ago
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. What has IBM either made or bought that is GROWING and has big upside? What have they bought that is fairly recent and is highly popular? Lotus notes and rational are older applications. Who the heck uses DB2 instead of Oracle/MySQL/Postgres? When was the last time you heard of a company becoming a new customer of DB2? Of choosing DB2 over the other database products on the market? Maybe they do make stuff but I have not heard of them buying anything relatively new on the market that is popular. Oracle is always buying new companies and adding them to their offerings (Workday, BigMachines to name a few). What is new that IBM bought that is GROWING? Lotus Notes, Rational and DB2 are not GROWING. Berkshire Hathaway buys companies that are growing. Name a company that IBM bought that is adding new customers.
- stoicform 11y ago
  Any company that supports cloud. Revenue of cloud department is 8%-10% of IBM's revenue. It grew from last year. It's projected to grow yet again this upcoming year. We've continuously added on customers in several of the cloud companies that were purchased. I'm in one of those cloud companies that was purchased. Our customer count is going up leading to our revenue going up, contributing to IBM's overall cloud push.

paulddraper 11y ago

There's Bluemix, though I think that is built on top of their Softlayer acquisition.