I don't think this isn't limited to IBM, my partner's PE firm recently hired a small consulting group touting a "revolutionary, AI-driven" real-estate analysis product that has zero AI whatsoever. It's basically a custom spreadsheet tool that they're claiming to be building AI on top of as they consume company data, but for a few hundred grand per year, they have a basic CRUD app on Azure with a reporting tool using…
The people with the problem here are the people buying it though. Even if you lie to yourself or are just stupid. If you can sell people that you have AI without actually having it, I'd argue that it's actually a strength.
> I mean how can a company build shitty products like this and be a world leader in services ? IBM is optimized in enterprise (including government) sales. Product is not quite irrelevant, but it's a specialized enough market that often mediocre substantive quality does quite well, because the only competition that matters are the others that are optimized for that market.
They sell products to people who will never personally use them. The executive signing cheques on the golf course has a PA to deal with its day to day use...
Even just trying to install Oracle 11g correctly was hard. I think it expected to be installed in /usr/local and company procedures demanded that it was installed in /opt (or the other way around). For this it would consequently misplace some permissions on some of the files causing a later stage in the installer to fail and bork the installation.
Hilariously Oracle database can't run on Oracle Linux OOTB...
While I'm not a fan of Oracle, I have to correct you: Oracle DB runs just fine on Oracle Linux. It installs exactly the same way that it does on RHEL, same checklist.
IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don't solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM's Watson. I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives' interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community. Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air? Ed…
'AI is the New Electricity' and people are moaning about Watson being over-hyped? Electricity was real and delivered immediate benefits. AI does not even exist yet! Imagine I could give you a true AI. yay! Unfortunately,it has the IQ of a 9 year old. Do you want to license that at great expense to make key business decisions for your company? All that Jeopardy and chess has become real double-edged now. People don't seem to get how thick-skulled pointy-haired bosses are. We are probably a century away from that. We can do some great inference from big data sets that will help invent cures for diseases and many things but it isn't a panacea. It isn't 'finicky' some applications will lend themselves more than others. I wouldn't worry too much about the IBM talent pool either. And yes okay disclosure ex-bluesuit.
Hilariously Oracle database can't run on Oracle Linux OOTB...
While I'm not a fan of Oracle, I have to correct you: Oracle DB runs just fine on Oracle Linux. It installs exactly the same way that it does on RHEL, same checklist.
Just as long as you follow the defaults without changing anything I guess :-)
It is actually a cycle. Managers in an enterprise are judged based on their ability to deliver low cost solutions ie "savings". IBM(or any service business) is very good at selling these low cost solutions to managers. We are starting a project and even with FTE's within the company, "consultant" has convinced management to hire IBM resources because of cost. The high sounding reason within the presentation twisted i…
So OK , you can do this cycle for some time, for a few people. But doesn't the word get around ? does nobody in most enterprizes think long-term when investing ?
No, because if you think for the long term you can find that you are not around after a short term.
Google and Amazon were presumably left out because the segment was in the context of the healthcare field. I don't think DeepMind's healthcare initiatives were very mature at that point. I agree the language is problematic for non-technical viewers, but at the same time these are difficult concepts to explain to non-technical people, and explain the details of what it can't do is obviously much less compelling than f…
> these are difficult concepts to explain to non-technical people But that's not the problem, is it? It's not that IBM is trying to explain something difficult. Rather, if IBM was trying to be honest, the box that won Jeopardy would be called Watson, and the box they're now trying to sell everyone and their dog would be called "Whitney, Watson's big sister" or whatever. At the very least, "Watson the third". By calli…
I mean, plenty of software gets rewritten and sold under the same name as an old version - I'm not really sure I see the difference there.
Hilariously Oracle database can't run on Oracle Linux OOTB...
While I'm not a fan of Oracle, I have to correct you: Oracle DB runs just fine on Oracle Linux. It installs exactly the same way that it does on RHEL, same checklist.
That's kinda my point - why do they ship a Linux distribution without the prerequisites for their flagship product preinstalled?
They sell products to people who will never personally use them. The executive signing cheques on the golf course has a PA to deal with its day to day use...
Reminds me of https://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html