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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

#21

Post by mikro2nd »

scottLobster wrote: post #11
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, d…

> they were the Apple of their day

What day was that? Back in the 70's with the Selectric typewriters?

No, seriously, those were fucking fantastic machines!

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#22

Post by ksk »

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.

Those appear to be products - which is different than hiring IBM to develop something for you. IBM has had a storied history in tech from developing/popularizing the PC to OS/2 to their thinkpad laptops, to designing systems for the space shuttle, and natural language projects like the Watson. I don't think IBM lacks talent.

Its almost seems like when you can get away with milking the system, nobody seems to have any moral qualms in selling the government a $200 screwdriver.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#24

Post by eesmith »

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.

I'll share another bad experience. AstraZeneca pulled out of a $1.4 billion/7-year deal with IBM a couple of years early, because of dissatisfaction with IBM's service.

I remember hearing about it then, but I cannot now find details of the problems.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#25

Post by eitland »

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.

> Can anyone share a good IBM experience? I'm honestly interested.

The IBM pc we bought in the 90ies was fantastic.

It had working suspend resume many years ahead of other computers and came with 365/24 free phone support for a year (and the next years was about 50USD). This being was very useful since I didn't have Internet access.

The support team had unlimited time, patience and knowledge and would walk me (15-16 y.o) through any procedure including if necessary: backup, reconfigure disk with fdisk, restore os from backup etc etc. I learned a whole lot from them both technical stuff as well as how to deal with customers ;-)

(And yes, old IBM ThinkPads were very popular IIRC.)

Edit: details.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#26

Post by eesmith »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #18
Shoothe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The argument from the linked-to piece is that "IBM is a hollow shell of what it once was".

The Model M keyboard is from IBM 40+ years ago.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#27

Post by sg0 »

Well, this news that came out last year is somewhat relevant. MD Anderson Cancer Center's IBM Watson project failed, with $62 million paid to IBM and PwC for essentially no results. However, I don't blame IBM, I blame people who dove in without clearly thinking it through. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2017/02/md-anderson-cancer-...

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#29

Post by kev009 »

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 will copy my comment from the last thread on this project:

"IBM is a multifaceted company.

These kinds of projects fall under what used to be called IBM Global Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Global_Services. It could be compared somewhat to EDS (HP), Accenture, Perot Systems (Dell) etc. I've never heard of over-delivery from any of these kinds of outsourcing arrangements, they always seem so obviously destined for boondoggle.

IBM proper, the one that makes mainframes and POWER and DB2 and a ton of operating systems and storage etc is very much a technology company. Some of their best products have the worst sales and marketing efforts. I'm working directly with the senior leadership of the POWER group right now and there are no salesmen in sight.. the technology will either sell itself or not. When we met in person the first time the GM told me "we can build any kind of computer you want" - meaning microarchitecture changes, SERDES configuration, new board layout, sheet metal, OS, application tweaks. Not a lot of companies can do that. There is hubris, less technology, and lack of technical value at FANG or most startups or whatever your benchmark is in comparison.

IBM Research is one of the only remaining great industrial research organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research. Their results speak for themselves."

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#30

Post by danso »

frostburg wrote: post #16
reaperducer wrote: post #13

The article criticizes the quality of some Indian coders. Expect to be downvoted into oblivion.

The footer about Slovakia / France / Germany is a lot more disturbing. Low-rent Indian coding shops being bad isn't news or racist.

Yeah, I don't know much about Slovakia but the author's broad, unsupported generalizations of the country (Slovaks are very talented at mid-level service jobs: responsible and polite if not particularly fast-moving... Slovaks, particularly in the service industry, are astonishingly honest) don't inspire a lot of confidence. I was also surprised to see the author's use of "the Ukraine". I still remember someone at my college newspaper using that archaic phrase in an otherwise innocuous article and getting a very angry letter-to-the-editor about the history/politics of Russia and Ukraine, and that was more than a decade ago.
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