A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
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A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
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Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#2Seems like a baseless article that is pulling fake facts out of thin air to supplement a couple of real ones like the cost basis and failures of large government projects.
It's not uncommon for large government projects to fail with all the bureaucracy and politics that is in play. I am not saying IBM is great, but this article is just not worth it.
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#3All of the big consultancy firms are bodyshops in some sense. But in my experience IBM is truly one of the worst. And people still keep falling for it.
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#4Does anyone else remember the days when "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" was true? You might pay a little extra, but it was never a total fail to use IBM products.
I'm not sure when that changed, but I feel like these days, IBM is closer to Oracle than AWS.
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#5Seems like a baseless article that is pulling fake facts out of thin air to supplement a couple of real ones like the cost basis and failures of large government projects. It's not uncommon for large government projects to fail with all the bureaucracy and politics that is in play. I am not saying IBM is great, but this article is just not worth it.
I've used two services from IBM: Notes and node DB2 package. Both of them were pretty low quality, the db2 package was so unstable that it constantly segfaulted the entire node process. It's not fixed for years since the issue was reported with reproducible code. Needless to say I wouldn't recommend IBM even to my enemies.
Can anyone share a good IBM experience? I'm honestly interested.
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#6I get why IT contracts can balloon in some cases, but I can't even fathom $1B for setting up PeopleSoft.
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#7Does anyone else remember the days when "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" was true? You might pay a little extra, but it was never a total fail to use IBM products. I'm not sure when that changed, but I feel like these days, IBM is closer to Oracle than AWS.
IBM has sold off most of their divisions - hardware to Lenovo, storage to Hitachi, etc. They no longer actually produce anything. So 'buying' IBM is no longer a real concept - they're pure consultants now, and consultants never 'sell' a product, just help you implement someone else's. A lovely legal distinction that they seem all too happy to abuse.
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#8Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16494387 (327 comments)
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#9I get why IT contracts can balloon in some cases, but I can't even fathom $1B for setting up PeopleSoft.
Then again, it's Oracle. I'm sure their licensing department is attempting to track how many neurons in the brain are actively engaged when using their products and billing the customer accordingly.
Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services
#10Does anyone else remember the days when "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" was true? You might pay a little extra, but it was never a total fail to use IBM products. I'm not sure when that changed, but I feel like these days, IBM is closer to Oracle than AWS.
IBM has sold off most of their divisions - hardware to Lenovo, storage to Hitachi, etc. They no longer actually produce anything. So 'buying' IBM is no longer a real concept - they're pure consultants now, and consultants never 'sell' a product, just help you implement someone else's. A lovely legal distinction that they seem all too happy to abuse.
> They no longer actually produce anything
This is not true. IBM produces a ton of software (spanning a range from terrible to excellent, quality-wise). This is where much of their profit comes from now. They still produce a bunch of hardware, mostly at the higher (and legacy) end.