I spent some time with IBM: Worked on the inside in an AI (artificial intelligence) project at their research lab and also outside -- sometimes a happy custome

I spent some time with IBM: Worked on the inside in an AI (artificial intelligence) project at their research lab and also outside -- sometimes a happy customer and sometimes fighting with IBM and being happy with other computer vendors. Here is how IBM worked when their approach worked well: They would have polished sales representatives (reps) who would get the confidence of a relatively high decision maker, commonly a CEO, also with contacts with the BOD, in an organization that had some serious data processing problems. The IBM rep would talk with the CEO (decision maker) about the problems and claim that IBM could implement a good solution. Commonly that was music to the ears of the CEO -- just give the leadership, design work, technical work and products of the solution to IBM. Generally we would regard IBM's charges as high, but in the target companies (1) IBM didn't have serious competition and (2) the company and their problem was so big that the IBM charges were worth it. With the business at a target customer, IBM worked hard, made sure the hard/software was highly reliable, and delivered good results. E.g., one customer was a medical insurance company. They had staffs in three time zones keying in medical claims applications. For this they had a mainframe computer, with their usual operating system, their network equipment ending with their 3270 terminals, COBOL-based (right, maybe PL/I, etc.) applications software, DB2 relational data base, etc. The system worked very well: A significant outage meant that to keep up with the work staff would have to be called back after hours and paid overtime. Soooo, it was important that the whole system had almost no downtime. Part of the approach was to have a test system and for any hard/software update, run it on the test system for some days before using the update for the real work. Both IBM and the customer were very serious. Uh, having to pay some overtime could cost the System Manager his bonus. Now, there are lots of options for data entry. PCs and even laptops can play a major role. The mainframes IBM was selling as computers were tiny and slow compared with nearly any desktop or laptop PC now. Having one PC out of hundreds+ quit does not have to be serious problem. Now lots of people and companies can set up serious, reliable, powerful computing installations, and IBM is no longer the only option. And the IBM target customer is no longer such a big part of computing.