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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

#41

Post by toast0 »

Naga wrote: post #36

There's a dimension left out here on the Phoenix disaster: It wasn't really IBM's fault at all. The Canadian public service is really complex. There are multiple unions with multiple overlapping collective bargaining agreements, where the public service is allocated to different classes. These classes are paid specific rates, with retroactive pay being common for changing classes. The majority of the problems with Ph…

At some level, isn't IBM supposed to point out that training and transition are important for a large project and shouldn't be left out?

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#42

Post by aluhut »

matte_black wrote: post #23

Is there any proof that the technical work for IBM is sent out to Indian boiler rooms with very high turnover? Or is this just based on some belief that any software in India must automatically be shitty?

I work for a global US company with offices throughout the world. They outsourced IT to IBM recently. Haven't had contact to anyone not from India.

They were forced to put some IT guys in our office. Those are 2 kids working as cheap freelancers for a local subcontractor hired by IBM.

Service is horrible. Tickets stacking up and being deleted regularly. Project relevant IT not working, people leaving because of it. It's a mess.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#43

Post by RobLach »

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.

GPFS (Called spectrum scale now).

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#46

Post by MrLeap »

kev009 wrote: post #29
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…

IBM has been accumulating a persona among my cadre (developers who consult for companies that are bootstrapping a new tech division on top of a profitable business).

The problem is that having a boondoggle division reflects on the whole company. When I'm making decisions for a client, I never even think about what IBM solutions I could apply to a problem.

I've only had a few projects using IBM products, admittedly most very old legacy systems -- but those introductions failed at just basic dev hygiene things. Documentation behind paywalls, couldn't get things to run on my dev machine without very experimental projects made by individuals - last updated in 2003. Just frustrating. I don't like advocating complete rewrites, I've happily updated a company's internal tool that was written in as3. Could have squeezed more hours out of them if they wanted to go with html5, but doing so didn't open up any new possibilities they wanted so I didn't.

If your company is running on RPG, and it's just a CRUD app -- I'm going to save you money by recommending a rewrite under the two circumstances I've encountered in the wild.

Honestly, this isn't their fault. It's awesome that their products have lasted so long for companies. I don't expect a company to keep up to date documentation / interoperable interpreters for 30 year deprecated tech. IBM's just so old that they've accumulated many layers of fossilized products, and those things have caused an unfair bias in my mind (and probably the minds of others)

I'm sure that there are problems IBM research is uniquely qualified to solve, my perception is that they're the wrong choice for most problems. I'm pretty thankful for companies like them. (IBM, Siemens, SAS etc) Their expensive ERP systems have enabled me to raise my rate over the years off the information asynchrony that forms the foundation of their success.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#47

Post by dredmorbius »

eitland wrote: post #17
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.

And an integral component of a FUD strategy.

Employed elsewhere (o hai msft) but originated, under that particular acronym, at IBM.

The cconcept itself can be traced back at least as far as Sun Tzu.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#48

Post by dv_dt »

drieddust wrote: post #40
Naga wrote: post #36

There's a dimension left out here on the Phoenix disaster: It wasn't really IBM's fault at all. The Canadian public service is really complex. There are multiple unions with multiple overlapping collective bargaining agreements, where the public service is allocated to different classes. These classes are paid specific rates, with retroactive pay being common for changing classes. The majority of the problems with Ph…

As someone who works in same space, I can say this is happening because unrealistic expectations of customers are not challenged by bidding Vendors because they fear losing the project. This in turns happens because customer tries to outsmart vendors by pressing them for reducing the timelines to absolute impossible. If any vendor tries to play by the rules, they are thrown out. Smart vendors respond by crafting the…

Yup, this kind of contracts game is what really needs modern innovation. I think the space is kind of living in an extensions of 70's assumptions with many decades of beauracratic rules added on to try to fix up fundamental problem. For another factor, it would be lower risk to allocate into many smaller projects and sign contracts in phases and sub-systems - but then the funding of the total project becomes more at risk politically, and then there is a higher technical load on the contracting dept to architect the boundaries.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#49

Post by kraig911 »

As someone who used to work in/on/underneath websphere. I can tell you I am loathe to even consider anything IBM. I was almost recruited by them and then I recalled how miserable I was on one particular project. The money was good but I said no. I recommend everyone I mean to stay away from IBM and Oracle as best I can. I just don't think the line between open source and enterprise is crystal clear anymore.
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