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From the comments: > These guys were important once, right? I don't think I'm old enough to remember such a time. I thought they were a law firm for a while be

by a3n 5y ago

From the comments: > These guys were important once, right? I don't think I'm old enough to remember such a time. I thought they were a law firm for a while because they only seemed to be mentioned in court cases. Ouch.

LeftHandPath 5y ago
Its funny how differently people probably perceive them based on what tech they work with. At work, I use their IBM i / AS400 on the daily. At school, I work with IBM Q for research. I would contend that IBM is one of the most important players in QC / NISQ today, and still notable for their mainframes and things like zOS. And what about RHEL? According to their Q4-FY2020 earnings report, they did $2.5bn in revenue from their systems segment last year (which includes IBM Z, Power, and OS's). But their most important segments are Global Technology Services ($6.6bn revenue) and "Cloud & Cognitive Software Segment" ($6.8bn revenue). GTS is cloud infrastructure + support, while C&CSS includes "Cloud & Data Platforms", "Cognitive Applications", and transactions processing platforms... I'm not sure what exposure the commenter has had to IBM, but it's a bit of a culture shock to hear someone saying they're not important.
- tibbetts 5y ago
  I’m 41, and know all those things, and my father’s company ran for most of my life on AS/400. But they replaced those systems over a decade ago. My whole professional career IBM has been trying to commit corporate suicide in a stumbling awkward way. It’s a testament to how long you can keep spending down brand credibility. I struggle to call them important today. Maybe historically interesting. But not important.
  - op00to 5y ago
    So a Fortune 50 company is “unimportant”? In what way?
    - mromanuk 5y ago
      Maybe is more irrelevant, than unimportant
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Because they're only predictive of what's worked in the past, and works okay enough to ride the entropy in the present — not what will progress really well in the future.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- atatatat 5y ago
  IBM made RHEL?
  - LeftHandPath 5y ago
    I should have been clearer. IBM acquired RedHat in 2020 (https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes-landmark-acquisition-red-hat-34-billion-defines-open-hybrid-cloud-future https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes-la...), and it looks like it will be a significant part of their business going forward. It's a really interesting proposition, given IBM's push for open source in enterprise systems (https://www.ibm.com/opensource/ https://www.ibm.com/opensource/).
- Spooky23 5y ago
  IBM was the Google or Microsoft of the 80s. Like HP, in realigning the company to survive they destroyed what made them great. I worked with many smart IBM folks… without exception they were laid off or driven out to meet some random metric. The Red Hat acquisition and spin out of the services garbage might make them more relevant again.
  - osipov 5y ago
    IBM was the entire IT industry of 1950s, 1960s, and most of 1970s. It is hard to explain IBM's dominance in today's terms. IBM used to be so dominant that the entire financial industry could not operate without their IBM mainframes and today major banks still run on IBM. The downside (to IBM) was that Wall Street decided "never again" and fought hard to prevent another company of IBM's scale from reappearing.
op00to 5y ago
Anyone who makes such a comment is ignorant. IBM has far more access to the highest levels of the biggest companies and governments than just about any other IT company. Just because they’re not hosting free email doesn’t mean they are irrelevant.
ElViajero 5y ago
> Ouch. Yes, that is such a complete misunderstanding on what IBM does that it hurts. IBM is a huge corporation close to be 100 years old that still is one one of the most innovatives in the world. "In 2020, IBM topped the list of patent recipients for the 28th consecutive year with 9,130 patents, while Samsung Electronics Co. was second with 6,415. IBM received the most patents in three of the 10 fastest growing fields in technology -- quantum computers, machine learning and computer systems using neural networks that imitate how the human brain works, according to a recent study by Fairview Research’s IFI Claims Patent Services." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/ibm-s-patent-income-slips-as-companies-resist-godfather-deals https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/ibm-s-pat... Google Gross revenue: $161.85 billion. IBM Gross revenue: $73.62 billion. Twitter revenue: $3.72 billion IBM does not dominate the cultural landscape like Google or Facebook do. But, it is a robust company that has stand the test of time. It would be like laughing at Akamai or Incapsula because nobody talks about them on the general media.
- DannyBee 5y ago
  The data about patent filing does not support your claim about innovation. IBM literally optimizes for the patent filing metric (and others generally do not), and that metric is not at all correlated to "innovation". Most people would also likely argue that data would not support your claim about robustness either. The graph of IBM's revenue over the past few decades does not tell a happy story: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265003/ibms-revenue-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265003/ibms-revenue-sinc... It doesn't get better if you go further back. IBM has the same revenue now that it did in 1996. Robust usually means strong and vigorous. I think it would be a challenge to find someone who believes the past decade at IBM has been that, particularly the Rometty era (IE 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline)
benhurmarcel 5y ago
Everybody is in its own bubble. You can be working in tech and be under the impression that Microsoft Office or SAP aren't used anymore.

by a3n 5y ago

LeftHandPath 5y ago

Its funny how differently people probably perceive them based on what tech they work with. At work, I use their IBM i / AS400 on the daily. At school, I work with IBM Q for research. I would contend that IBM is one of the most important players in QC / NISQ today, and still notable for their mainframes and things like zOS. And what about RHEL? According to their Q4-FY2020 earnings report, they did $2.5bn in revenue from their systems segment last year (which includes IBM Z, Power, and OS's). But their most important segments are Global Technology Services ($6.6bn revenue) and "Cloud & Cognitive Software Segment" ($6.8bn revenue). GTS is cloud infrastructure + support, while C&CSS includes "Cloud & Data Platforms", "Cognitive Applications", and transactions processing platforms... I'm not sure what exposure the commenter has had to IBM, but it's a bit of a culture shock to hear someone saying they're not important.

tibbetts 5y ago
I’m 41, and know all those things, and my father’s company ran for most of my life on AS/400. But they replaced those systems over a decade ago. My whole professional career IBM has been trying to commit corporate suicide in a stumbling awkward way. It’s a testament to how long you can keep spending down brand credibility. I struggle to call them important today. Maybe historically interesting. But not important.
- op00to 5y ago
  So a Fortune 50 company is “unimportant”? In what way?
  - mromanuk 5y ago
    Maybe is more irrelevant, than unimportant
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Because they're only predictive of what's worked in the past, and works okay enough to ride the entropy in the present — not what will progress really well in the future.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
atatatat 5y ago
IBM made RHEL?
- LeftHandPath 5y ago
  I should have been clearer. IBM acquired RedHat in 2020 (https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes-landmark-acquisition-red-hat-34-billion-defines-open-hybrid-cloud-future https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes-la...), and it looks like it will be a significant part of their business going forward. It's a really interesting proposition, given IBM's push for open source in enterprise systems (https://www.ibm.com/opensource/ https://www.ibm.com/opensource/).
Spooky23 5y ago
IBM was the Google or Microsoft of the 80s. Like HP, in realigning the company to survive they destroyed what made them great. I worked with many smart IBM folks… without exception they were laid off or driven out to meet some random metric. The Red Hat acquisition and spin out of the services garbage might make them more relevant again.
- osipov 5y ago
  IBM was the entire IT industry of 1950s, 1960s, and most of 1970s. It is hard to explain IBM's dominance in today's terms. IBM used to be so dominant that the entire financial industry could not operate without their IBM mainframes and today major banks still run on IBM. The downside (to IBM) was that Wall Street decided "never again" and fought hard to prevent another company of IBM's scale from reappearing.

op00to 5y ago

Anyone who makes such a comment is ignorant. IBM has far more access to the highest levels of the biggest companies and governments than just about any other IT company. Just because they’re not hosting free email doesn’t mean they are irrelevant.

ElViajero 5y ago

> Ouch. Yes, that is such a complete misunderstanding on what IBM does that it hurts. IBM is a huge corporation close to be 100 years old that still is one one of the most innovatives in the world. "In 2020, IBM topped the list of patent recipients for the 28th consecutive year with 9,130 patents, while Samsung Electronics Co. was second with 6,415. IBM received the most patents in three of the 10 fastest growing fields in technology -- quantum computers, machine learning and computer systems using neural networks that imitate how the human brain works, according to a recent study by Fairview Research’s IFI Claims Patent Services." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/ibm-s-patent-income-slips-as-companies-resist-godfather-deals https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/ibm-s-pat... Google Gross revenue: $161.85 billion. IBM Gross revenue: $73.62 billion. Twitter revenue: $3.72 billion IBM does not dominate the cultural landscape like Google or Facebook do. But, it is a robust company that has stand the test of time. It would be like laughing at Akamai or Incapsula because nobody talks about them on the general media.

DannyBee 5y ago
The data about patent filing does not support your claim about innovation. IBM literally optimizes for the patent filing metric (and others generally do not), and that metric is not at all correlated to "innovation". Most people would also likely argue that data would not support your claim about robustness either. The graph of IBM's revenue over the past few decades does not tell a happy story: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265003/ibms-revenue-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265003/ibms-revenue-sinc... It doesn't get better if you go further back. IBM has the same revenue now that it did in 1996. Robust usually means strong and vigorous. I think it would be a challenge to find someone who believes the past decade at IBM has been that, particularly the Rometty era (IE 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline)

benhurmarcel 5y ago

Everybody is in its own bubble. You can be working in tech and be under the impression that Microsoft Office or SAP aren't used anymore.