20 ms·

I read Cringely's recent book about IBM and it sure makes the case that IBM is in a world of trouble. I can't say whether or not he's right, but what good softw

I read Cringely's recent book about IBM and it sure makes the case that IBM is in a world of trouble. I can't say whether or not he's right, but what good software has come out of IBM recently? Eventually a tech company needs to be good at tech, no matter how great your sales guys and brand reputation.

AznHisoka 12y ago
One word: consulting.
- vo1aQXJ3 12y ago
  and are these the same consultants that suggested the EPS target was a good idea?
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    Not as a rule, no -- I believe IBM does offer business consultants, but most of their consulting business (by revenue) is technical consulting - you know, "charge us a lot of money for some medium-low-quality tech infrastructure".
vo1aQXJ3 12y ago
you are assuming here that IBM is a tech company. It isn't. It is a financial engineering company. And the problem is that there is only so much you can do in this space (otherwise you become like Enron).
- ProAm 12y ago
  I thought these days it was more of a services consulting company?
- VLM 12y ago
  Patent holding company...
- api 12y ago
  It's more of an enterprise consultancy like Accenture.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/ http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/
protonfish 12y ago
I have observed that being a large corporation is an asset unto itself, regardless if the company has any valuable product. I believe this comes from connections to people in other big corporations that will funnel you huge sums of money if you stroke them sufficiently. I currently am employed at a large corporation that pays astronomical sums to IBM and SAP and who knows what other enterprise consultants for software that either doesn't work, or at best is significantly inferior to free alternatives. The view from the trenches is insane, but I am sure it's cushy at the top.
- pjc50 12y ago
  "Too big to fail" + "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" + complicated & expensive tendering requirements. It's much easier for a big company to buy from another single giant company than to assemble a solution from smaller contractors. More expensive, but easier to organise.
- big_co_ 12y ago
  Yep, I also worked for Big Co. and they wouldn't even consider smaller corporations. IBM has a history and a deeply ingrained "support" structure within other corporations. I could have built in house solutions that deployed faster and better auditing in just a few weeks than what they paid hundreds of thousands in licensing fees and man hours to do the same job. Hell, I even pitched it and management said no.
  - vo1aQXJ3 12y ago
    which makes sense for them... Lets assume they went with your solution. All fine. up and running in no time. Then you get hit by a bus or leave the company. Then things go wrong. How are you going to explain this to senior management. If they take IBM/Oracle/etc. and things go wrong? you call them. they fly over an exec you can beat up and all is fine.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      It's not irrational. I went from using an in-house DMS at my work to one made by Big Co. I'm sure it was more expensive, but at the end of the day, it's someone else's problem, not ours. If something goes wrong, there is someone we can call and tell at, someone else in charge of fixing bugs, etc. There are rational reasons to want those things.
smackfu 12y ago
Didn't he say they should give up the $20/share goal?
- vo1aQXJ3 12y ago
  I think he did say that... and it sounds like they have (for now)
parasubvert 12y ago
Keep in mind that IBM is the 3rd largest software company in the world, behind Oracle and Microsoft, with around $28 billion in annual revenue JUST from software (out of their total $100 billion). Revenue has been mostly flat for the past 7 years, though they've been squeezing out more profitability. That's a big ship to turn around. That said there are plenty of examples of IBM doing new things, just the question is whether it's enough... - IBM BlueMix, and IBM is actively contributing to Cloud Foundry (particularly the new Diego runtime): http://www-01.ibm.com/software/bluemix/ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/bluemix/ - IBM Watson analytics is also fairly impressive: http://www.ibm.com/analytics/us/en/index.html http://www.ibm.com/analytics/us/en/index.html - The Jazz.net products for agile requirements and development tracking are fairly modern and has a happy customer base (replacing the older crap Rational ClearCase stuff): https://jazz.net https://jazz.net - They've also acquired some good software, such as Urban Code, for automated app deployment: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ucdep http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ucdep Pretty much the entire software sales force is pushing cloud/devops, mobile, and analytics, which are the bulk of their new license streams. Their maintenance stream is still the large annuity from the mass of WebSphere, Tivoli, DB2, Lotus, and mainframe legacy deployed out there over the past 30+ years...
- cordite 12y ago
  They also recently acquired cloudant, which is much like couchDB but as a Database as a service.
  - jeangenie 12y ago
    Was going to mention this as well. Samsung Ventures has also invested. Good potential in the mobile space.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  ClearCase is the reason why I'll never pay one cent to IBM in software if I can. That's what they sell, overpriced crap sold in a golf course.
  - 12y ago
maaku 12y ago
IBM hasn't been a tech (development) company since before some of my younger coworkers were born.
LaurensBER 12y ago
I have friends who work at IBM and I haven't heard anything good about big blue in the past few years about them. The entire management seems to have no clue what they're doing. They went through a huge investment period during which they expanded way to much, after that they had to tighten the belt to meet the stock targets and let go of a lot of experienced people and promoted young people way too quick with too little resources for them to succeed (despite them being more than capable of succeeding). Leading to a very bitter and cut throat culture. I applied a few years back (during the investment splurge), they seemed very enthusiastic, several friends who worked for them confirmed that I would be a pretty good fit in the team/culture. I nailed the challenging IBM IPAT test with a pretty decent score, I called them twice to ask what the next step would be and they promised me that I would be invited soon. After the second call without a fixed date I forgot all about it and found a better job. I had a friend ask his manager about the status of my solicitation and his manager told him that their team was not a priority for HR because they were on schedule and under budget (thus able to hire new developers) to meet their requirements/release. In other words, if you are doing well you're being ignored until your team screws up. The called me six months(!!!) after I took the test and almost begged me to come talk to me. I asked my friend how his team was doing and they slipped up on the schedule because colleges and budget were pulled of the release until it was obvious that they couldn't meet the requirements/release. Guess that explained their desperate phone call. He couldn't recommend that I took them up on the job offer and asked if we had any openings :) Considering what I've heard it doesn't surprise me that some parts of the organisation are so dysfunctional.
- Nelson69 12y ago
  Has anyone ever had great things to say about IBM? I did my 7 years there, FWIW... It's not a geek friendly company, I think it just happens to be that simple. They do some great technology, they've invented a ton of great stuff but where geeks embrace the technology for the technology and dream, IBM does technology because they can sell it and, again, it's just that simple. Whereas Microsoft and a lot of the SV companies are based on the idea that a great tech company needs to be run by a great engineer/nerd. IBM is firmly rooted in the camp that great companies are run by great sales folks and they've had an incredible run. That's why hackers so consistently hate them. Hackers and geeks just see the technology differently. I really don't know what their future holds, their downfall has been predicted for decades. Getting out of PCs made a lot of sense to me, I still think HP and Dell are potentially in heaps of trouble as soon as some Russian, Indian or Chinese company decides to really go after them and starts to figure things out, they're just putting commodity parts together at the end of the day anyways. Getting out of semiconductor manufacturing doesn't seem like a bad idea either, there are some very very good fab shops out there and they're only going to get better and the margins on fab-for-hire will drop so you have to corner the volume. I definitely can say I'd love to just screw around with a Watson, maybe even have a Watson app on my iPhone and just ask it stuff throughout the day, I'd pay some subscription for it (maybe like $20-30 a month if it's as good as it looked) but I bet what I'd pay is a drop in the bucket compared to what law firms, certain doctors or various financial executives would pay for one and so long as there is that market, I'd assume IBM will go after that and not the solo geek that just wants to have a really fancy google and wikipedia search. I'm not sure what they're going to build in the future, but I'm pretty confident they'll make piles of money and be disdained and have their demise predicted by geeks though.
jvm 12y ago
Cringely has been talking up IBM's demise since I was watching Triumph of the Nerds in the fifth grade (1996). Their stock has gone up 500% in that time, and they've been paying regular dividends. [1] I'm sure he'll be right one of these days, but he might not be around to gloat. [1] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AIBM&ei=209FVNDcEK60iALv_oCADg https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AIBM&ei=209FVNDcEK60i...
brudgers 12y ago
what good software has come out of IBM recently? 3.7% of the contributions to the Linux 3.2 kernel: nearly half a million lines of code. [1] Watson. [1] http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/560928-counting-contributions-who-wrote-linux-32 http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/560928-counting-contrib...
- math0ne 12y ago
  This seems huge! They are the 4th largest employers of linux kernal contributors.
  - jldugger 12y ago
    It makes a certain amount of sense: they're also the 4th largest employer in the US.
avn2109 12y ago
Well, Netezza is super fast and sometimes makes my life really easy. Though it it's neither particularly new nor pure in-house IBM. But their logo is on the manual, etc.

AznHisoka 12y ago

One word: consulting.

vo1aQXJ3 12y ago
and are these the same consultants that suggested the EPS target was a good idea?
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  Not as a rule, no -- I believe IBM does offer business consultants, but most of their consulting business (by revenue) is technical consulting - you know, "charge us a lot of money for some medium-low-quality tech infrastructure".

vo1aQXJ3 12y ago

you are assuming here that IBM is a tech company. It isn't. It is a financial engineering company. And the problem is that there is only so much you can do in this space (otherwise you become like Enron).

ProAm 12y ago
I thought these days it was more of a services consulting company?
VLM 12y ago
Patent holding company...
api 12y ago
It's more of an enterprise consultancy like Accenture.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/ http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/

protonfish 12y ago

I have observed that being a large corporation is an asset unto itself, regardless if the company has any valuable product. I believe this comes from connections to people in other big corporations that will funnel you huge sums of money if you stroke them sufficiently. I currently am employed at a large corporation that pays astronomical sums to IBM and SAP and who knows what other enterprise consultants for software that either doesn't work, or at best is significantly inferior to free alternatives. The view from the trenches is insane, but I am sure it's cushy at the top.

pjc50 12y ago
"Too big to fail" + "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" + complicated & expensive tendering requirements. It's much easier for a big company to buy from another single giant company than to assemble a solution from smaller contractors. More expensive, but easier to organise.
big_co_ 12y ago
Yep, I also worked for Big Co. and they wouldn't even consider smaller corporations. IBM has a history and a deeply ingrained "support" structure within other corporations. I could have built in house solutions that deployed faster and better auditing in just a few weeks than what they paid hundreds of thousands in licensing fees and man hours to do the same job. Hell, I even pitched it and management said no.
- vo1aQXJ3 12y ago
  which makes sense for them... Lets assume they went with your solution. All fine. up and running in no time. Then you get hit by a bus or leave the company. Then things go wrong. How are you going to explain this to senior management. If they take IBM/Oracle/etc. and things go wrong? you call them. they fly over an exec you can beat up and all is fine.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    It's not irrational. I went from using an in-house DMS at my work to one made by Big Co. I'm sure it was more expensive, but at the end of the day, it's someone else's problem, not ours. If something goes wrong, there is someone we can call and tell at, someone else in charge of fixing bugs, etc. There are rational reasons to want those things.

smackfu 12y ago

Didn't he say they should give up the $20/share goal?

vo1aQXJ3 12y ago
I think he did say that... and it sounds like they have (for now)

parasubvert 12y ago

Keep in mind that IBM is the 3rd largest software company in the world, behind Oracle and Microsoft, with around $28 billion in annual revenue JUST from software (out of their total $100 billion). Revenue has been mostly flat for the past 7 years, though they've been squeezing out more profitability. That's a big ship to turn around. That said there are plenty of examples of IBM doing new things, just the question is whether it's enough... - IBM BlueMix, and IBM is actively contributing to Cloud Foundry (particularly the new Diego runtime): http://www-01.ibm.com/software/bluemix/ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/bluemix/ - IBM Watson analytics is also fairly impressive: http://www.ibm.com/analytics/us/en/index.html http://www.ibm.com/analytics/us/en/index.html - The Jazz.net products for agile requirements and development tracking are fairly modern and has a happy customer base (replacing the older crap Rational ClearCase stuff): https://jazz.net https://jazz.net - They've also acquired some good software, such as Urban Code, for automated app deployment: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ucdep http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ucdep Pretty much the entire software sales force is pushing cloud/devops, mobile, and analytics, which are the bulk of their new license streams. Their maintenance stream is still the large annuity from the mass of WebSphere, Tivoli, DB2, Lotus, and mainframe legacy deployed out there over the past 30+ years...

cordite 12y ago
They also recently acquired cloudant, which is much like couchDB but as a Database as a service.
- jeangenie 12y ago
  Was going to mention this as well. Samsung Ventures has also invested. Good potential in the mobile space.
raverbashing 12y ago
ClearCase is the reason why I'll never pay one cent to IBM in software if I can. That's what they sell, overpriced crap sold in a golf course.
- 12y ago

maaku 12y ago

IBM hasn't been a tech (development) company since before some of my younger coworkers were born.

LaurensBER 12y ago

I have friends who work at IBM and I haven't heard anything good about big blue in the past few years about them. The entire management seems to have no clue what they're doing. They went through a huge investment period during which they expanded way to much, after that they had to tighten the belt to meet the stock targets and let go of a lot of experienced people and promoted young people way too quick with too little resources for them to succeed (despite them being more than capable of succeeding). Leading to a very bitter and cut throat culture. I applied a few years back (during the investment splurge), they seemed very enthusiastic, several friends who worked for them confirmed that I would be a pretty good fit in the team/culture. I nailed the challenging IBM IPAT test with a pretty decent score, I called them twice to ask what the next step would be and they promised me that I would be invited soon. After the second call without a fixed date I forgot all about it and found a better job. I had a friend ask his manager about the status of my solicitation and his manager told him that their team was not a priority for HR because they were on schedule and under budget (thus able to hire new developers) to meet their requirements/release. In other words, if you are doing well you're being ignored until your team screws up. The called me six months(!!!) after I took the test and almost begged me to come talk to me. I asked my friend how his team was doing and they slipped up on the schedule because colleges and budget were pulled of the release until it was obvious that they couldn't meet the requirements/release. Guess that explained their desperate phone call. He couldn't recommend that I took them up on the job offer and asked if we had any openings :) Considering what I've heard it doesn't surprise me that some parts of the organisation are so dysfunctional.

Nelson69 12y ago
Has anyone ever had great things to say about IBM? I did my 7 years there, FWIW... It's not a geek friendly company, I think it just happens to be that simple. They do some great technology, they've invented a ton of great stuff but where geeks embrace the technology for the technology and dream, IBM does technology because they can sell it and, again, it's just that simple. Whereas Microsoft and a lot of the SV companies are based on the idea that a great tech company needs to be run by a great engineer/nerd. IBM is firmly rooted in the camp that great companies are run by great sales folks and they've had an incredible run. That's why hackers so consistently hate them. Hackers and geeks just see the technology differently. I really don't know what their future holds, their downfall has been predicted for decades. Getting out of PCs made a lot of sense to me, I still think HP and Dell are potentially in heaps of trouble as soon as some Russian, Indian or Chinese company decides to really go after them and starts to figure things out, they're just putting commodity parts together at the end of the day anyways. Getting out of semiconductor manufacturing doesn't seem like a bad idea either, there are some very very good fab shops out there and they're only going to get better and the margins on fab-for-hire will drop so you have to corner the volume. I definitely can say I'd love to just screw around with a Watson, maybe even have a Watson app on my iPhone and just ask it stuff throughout the day, I'd pay some subscription for it (maybe like $20-30 a month if it's as good as it looked) but I bet what I'd pay is a drop in the bucket compared to what law firms, certain doctors or various financial executives would pay for one and so long as there is that market, I'd assume IBM will go after that and not the solo geek that just wants to have a really fancy google and wikipedia search. I'm not sure what they're going to build in the future, but I'm pretty confident they'll make piles of money and be disdained and have their demise predicted by geeks though.

jvm 12y ago

Cringely has been talking up IBM's demise since I was watching Triumph of the Nerds in the fifth grade (1996). Their stock has gone up 500% in that time, and they've been paying regular dividends. [1] I'm sure he'll be right one of these days, but he might not be around to gloat. [1] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AIBM&ei=209FVNDcEK60iALv_oCADg https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AIBM&ei=209FVNDcEK60i...

brudgers 12y ago

what good software has come out of IBM recently? 3.7% of the contributions to the Linux 3.2 kernel: nearly half a million lines of code. [1] Watson. [1] http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/560928-counting-contributions-who-wrote-linux-32 http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/560928-counting-contrib...

math0ne 12y ago
This seems huge! They are the 4th largest employers of linux kernal contributors.
- jldugger 12y ago
  It makes a certain amount of sense: they're also the 4th largest employer in the US.

avn2109 12y ago

Well, Netezza is super fast and sometimes makes my life really easy. Though it it's neither particularly new nor pure in-house IBM. But their logo is on the manual, etc.