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I mean, it's still pretty unclear to me how IBM continues to operate. They run like Oracle but with 20 year old tech.

esseph 8mo ago
They're one ~ 3 main companies in the US that will sell you quantum computers, and the only one offering a quantum PaaS. They do a lot of stuff. Also own Hashicorp now, so they have things like: Ansible / RedHat Linux (already owned), Terraform, Consul, Nomad, Packer, etc. A lot of "let's build modern infra" tooling.
smj-edison 8mo ago
iirc they still do a lot of chip research and fabrication equipment. They were able to keep that side of the business going at least.
evilduck 8mo ago
Mainframes aren't going anywhere.
- stogot 8mo ago
  They are, but slowly
- blinding-streak 8mo ago
  Well they're really heavy.
topspin 8mo ago
Last I looked (about a year ago,) IBM is 3 things: Software licensing, services and Big Iron. The companies' revenue is split roughly equally among these three areas. An interesting perspective of IBM is its relative position. It's leveled off at about $60b/y, after a lengthy decline. It is far overmatched by many big tech companies today in terms of revenue. It's a niche business, serving niche demands. I think IBM's moat is that most of its business is highly uninteresting: industrialized box ticking work, deeply entangled by contracts and a strong need for continuity by its customers. I actually had a recent encounter with one of IBM's products. A commercial B2B REST API I created was analyzed by an IBM vulnerability scanning platform on behalf of a major US municipality. It didn't find anything actually critical, but there were some worthwhile points in the report, and working around a false positive was a frustration. The product, in this case, is diffusion of responsibility. On the Big Iron end, IBM isn't really selling hardware. They selling an ecosystem: services, software, support, continuity (over decades,) etc. It pleases me that they chose to stick to Power: it's nice to know Itanium didn't kill off every enterprise RISC platform. Maybe, one day, some major quantum computing breakthrough happens at IBM. As far as I can see, that's the only play they have that could change their trajectory. In the meantime, they have a large software portfolio and plenty of institutions that will keep signing contracts long after I'm gone.

They're one ~ 3 main companies in the US that will sell you quantum computers, and the only one offering a quantum PaaS. They do a lot of stuff. Also own Hashicorp now, so they have things like: Ansible / RedHat Linux (already owned), Terraform, Consul, Nomad, Packer, etc. A lot of "let's build modern infra" tooling.

smj-edison 8mo ago

iirc they still do a lot of chip research and fabrication equipment. They were able to keep that side of the business going at least.

evilduck 8mo ago

Mainframes aren't going anywhere.

stogot 8mo ago
They are, but slowly
blinding-streak 8mo ago
Well they're really heavy.

topspin 8mo ago

Last I looked (about a year ago,) IBM is 3 things: Software licensing, services and Big Iron. The companies' revenue is split roughly equally among these three areas. An interesting perspective of IBM is its relative position. It's leveled off at about $60b/y, after a lengthy decline. It is far overmatched by many big tech companies today in terms of revenue. It's a niche business, serving niche demands. I think IBM's moat is that most of its business is highly uninteresting: industrialized box ticking work, deeply entangled by contracts and a strong need for continuity by its customers. I actually had a recent encounter with one of IBM's products. A commercial B2B REST API I created was analyzed by an IBM vulnerability scanning platform on behalf of a major US municipality. It didn't find anything actually critical, but there were some worthwhile points in the report, and working around a false positive was a frustration. The product, in this case, is diffusion of responsibility. On the Big Iron end, IBM isn't really selling hardware. They selling an ecosystem: services, software, support, continuity (over decades,) etc. It pleases me that they chose to stick to Power: it's nice to know Itanium didn't kill off every enterprise RISC platform. Maybe, one day, some major quantum computing breakthrough happens at IBM. As far as I can see, that's the only play they have that could change their trajectory. In the meantime, they have a large software portfolio and plenty of institutions that will keep signing contracts long after I'm gone.