5 ms·
probably not. IBM haven't been that much relevant in tech for years. they pivot to the cut throat consulting services while kind of abandoned what IBM used to b
by MangoCoffee 5y ago
probably not. IBM haven't been that much relevant in tech for years. they pivot to the cut throat consulting services while kind of abandoned what IBM used to be. a tech leader.
Microsoft was like IBM after Bill Gates. Not a tech leader for many years until Microsoft pivot to Cloud computing and software as services.
- walrus01 5y agogoogle "IBM phoenix payroll canada" for a fine example of what has gone wrong. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ibm+phoenix+payroll+canada https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ibm+pho...
- momothereal 5y agoBy far the biggest software fuckup in Canada's history.
- walrus01 5y agohowever, the therac-25 killed more people
- momothereal 5y agoNot trying to downplay that one either, but Pheonix put thousands of people in major financial risk and/or ruin, and at least 1 suicide was attributed to it.
- raverbashing 5y agoNah, don't forget Target's SAP migration
- datahead 5y agoOne of my favorite lessons "learned the hard way" by someone else. You fundamentally cannot run a business on poor data practices. It will sink you before you realize what happened. https://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-canada/ https://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-can...
- markus_zhang 5y agoHow did they get so wrong...
- Bayart 5y agoI don't know what's with payroll management software (low-hanging government contracts ? Inter-agency factionalism ?) but every time I hear about a nationwide software-inflicted catastrophe somewhere, it's one of those. In France we've had to deal with LOUVOIS, the payroll software for all the armed branches, being an unending train wreck. There were quite a few families of deployed soldiers who had to deal with near-bankruptcy because of it.
- adventured 5y agoMicrosoft was not like IBM after Bill Gates. Not remotely close. Microsoft was still overwhelmingly a product company in the decade after Gates. It did not abandon its product-centric focus and switch to a service-centric business model ala IBM. IBM hasn't been a product heavy company in several decades at this point. Microsoft never stopped being product heavy. IBM liquidated its core product businesses, one after another. Microsoft never did that. Microsoft's sales increased dramatically during the Ballmer years, going from $23b in 2000 to $77b in 2013. IBM's sales haven't increased like that in decades (quite the opposite in fact, they've had a stagnant or contracting business for a long time). The cloud boom that Microsoft is currently enjoying, was planted during the Ballmer era, and it's being very successfully harvested during the Nadella era. Nadella is a superior CEO to Ballmer, and far superior at product. However Ballmer did not wreck the ship nor switch Microsoft to being primarily service focused in the model of IBM. IBM by contrast is a wrecked ship.
- rst 5y agoIBM in its heyday (1930s through the '70s) wasn't primarily a service company either -- its core products were always data processing equipment (computers, and the plugboard-programmed punched card tabulators and other gear that preceded them). It became largely a service company in a pivot -- executed slowly over many years -- after losing dominance in the DP equipment market.
- geodel 5y agoExactly right! Simplistic narrative of old leader that could do no right and new leader that could do no wrong. People do love these fairy tales.
- sjg007 5y agoAll big tech has a consulting arm. It's how you get people to use your software.