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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

#11

Post by scottLobster »

joncrane wrote: post #4

Does 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.

Clearly too many people remember. Shows the power of branding. IBM has largely moved out of the consumer space, and occasionally their research labs come out with some cool new tech (Watson and such). In the common consciousness they were the Apple of their day who then ascended out of the market to bigger, cooler things. As a result most people, including non-technical business execs who make purchasing decisions, don't have a good current frame of reference. IBM rode that facade for a while, it's only recently that their blunders have started hurting their reputation within the industry.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#12

Post by smacktoward »

joncrane wrote: post #4

Does 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.

I do, but it's important to remember that the saying "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" was not intended as a testament to the quality of IBM's work. It was intended as a testament to the irrelevance of the quality of IBM's work.

"No one ever got fired for buying IBM" because IBM was the safe, established choice. If you bought IBM and the project ended up failing, nobody would blame the failure on your decision, because buying IBM was what you were expected to do. If you bought from some other vendor and the project ended up failing, however, people would rush to claim that the failure was your fault for not doing the safe thing and buying IBM. In other words, you bought IBM to protect yourself from appearing to have taken a risk, not because you expected them to do a particularly good job.

If TFA is accurate, it would appear that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" is as true today as it ever was. If the Canadian government had hired the Freshbooks guy to build their new payroll system, and the project had failed, the person who had made that decision would have had a whole lot of explaining to do. That person bought IBM, though, so everyone will just shrug their shoulders and assume the fault for the failure lies elsewhere.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#14

Post by gargravarr »

AlisdairO wrote: post #10
gargravarr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay, my bad.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#15

Post by [deleted] »

gargravarr wrote: post #7
joncrane wrote: post #4

Does 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.

[deleted]

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#17

Post by eitland »

joncrane wrote: post #4

Does 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.

> Does 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 never though of it that way but rather as a CYA move.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#18

Post by Consultant32452 »

Shoothe wrote: post #5
jusonchan wrote: post #2

Seems 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.

Model M keyboard ftw.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#19

Post by mikro2nd »

joncrane wrote: post #4

Does 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.

> I'm not sure when that changed

Late 1980's. I was there, working for a skunkworks fragment in a Big Blue shoppe. To express doubt about IBM was to get no bonus. Then they started to haemorrhage cash to the tune of 5B$/quarter.

Really it's that Oracle is closer, these days, to what IBM was 30 years ago.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#20

Post by blakesterz »

Shoothe wrote: post #5
jusonchan wrote: post #2

Seems 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.

They bought SoftLayer a few years ago and haven't ruined it. Not sure if that really counts or not, but I was really worried. I've been there for quite a few years, and nothing went downhill after they got bought.
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