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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

#171

Post by harry8 »

zokier wrote: post #68
bartread wrote: post #55

It's not just IBM: any of the larger enterprise consultancies should, at best, be regarded with suspicion. I well remember the EDS/UK Inland Revenue fiasco of the late nineties/early noughties, and there are plenty of other examples involving other big players.

If you think that all big consultancies fail so equally, then doesn't that hint strongly that maybe, just maybe, the issues are on the other side?

No.

No really.

The issues on the other side are the opportunity ibm, accenture, oracle etc exploit. They're not just aware of those issues going in, they are 100% counting on them.

They're not even interested unless those issues exist - it's one or two orders of magnitude less profit. In fact you can say that those issues are why these consultancies get hired in the first place. No competent manager would go near these carpet baggers.

You can blame the marks for being marks and say they deserve it (tax payers) but this has nothing to do with IBM being a con. A con they are. If they don't like that reputation they shouldn't do it, again and again. But it's so profitable it pays for the PR to restore reputation up to a point. We've now got that point. No PR can cover the stench.

IBM - only an idiot or the corrupt on kickbacks would engage them to con.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#172

Post by tonyedgecombe »

drieddust wrote: post #143
danmaz74 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a dimension left out here on the Phoenix disaster: It wasn't really IBM's fault at all. I respectfully disagree. IBM management either knew what they were contracting was a recipe for disaster, or they were incompetent. In both cases, as they were supposed to be the billion-dollar expert on the matter, they bear great responsibility for this failure. And at an industry level, companies that promise the impo…

IMHO most of the times such concerns are completely ignored by management. Customer even gets angry and asking for removal of such risks. Vendors comply by sneeking it in the contract in clever words.

I've seen that pattern several times, often enough that it's a bit of a red flag as it seems management know their own weakness but don't want to be exposed to it.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#173

Post by tonyedgecombe »

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…

IBM was never in the consumer space.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#174

Post by vadimberman »

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 feel like these days, IBM is closer to Oracle than AWS

That's a compliment. IBM is by far more dysfunctional.

It changed in early 2000s, I believe.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#175

Post by jaclaz »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #150
Mizza wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Europeans are more exposed than Americans to folks of different nationalities, wouldn't they be less inclined to broadly generalize them? Why would it? It's just more data to pattern-match on, and that can mean confirming bias and prejudice as well. It might also shock you to find out that people who work in retail or food service also develop prejudices as well. It's not a good thing but it happens. I'm not say…

>> I can just read it and think "Okay, this guy is obviously using stereotypes about other countries here" and then keep reading without it necessarily immediately invalidating else that's been written. The author's whole point in this article seems to be "IBM offshored its work to Bratislava and India and that's bad". I don't know how you can decouple the stereotyping from an article when it's the main line of reaso…

>The author's whole point in this article seems to be "IBM offshored its work to Bratislava and India and that's bad". I don't know how you can decouple the stereotyping from an article when it's the main line of reasoning of the article.

And - in passing by and without any particular apparent reason - he manages to bad mouth half of the rest of Europe or nearby countries:

"... nothing like Romania, the Ukraine, Albania or even Poland in turning out petty criminals or promiscuous online fraudsters. Not to forget Western Europe, France has a far more unhealthy work culture ..."

If the above is not (additionally gratuitious in the context) stereotyping, I wonder what it is.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#176

Post by pbadenski »

hindsightbias wrote: post #77
seemstoaddup wrote: post #59

This is an interesting narrative. However it cannot be the only one. Let us explore some alternatives and side notes. Who was responsible for picking IBM? Are they still working for the CA gov? Have they passed the hot potato to someone else? How were their technical skills and soft skills evaluated? Did they receive any donations for the contract? Where are the safety clauses in the contract? Is IBM the only benefac…

IBMCA was the only bidder. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-ibm-contract-un... Few if any 'integrators' will touch these projects.

It seems that the logic is: "We know this will go bad, are we capable of taking PR hit when (not if) this goes bad". Many companies failed that risk assessment. IBM concluded - "Yes, let's make a run for the money. We are likely doomed for failure, but this will not damage us.". I hope I'm just overly cynical...

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#178

Post by marcosdumay »

fphhotchips wrote: post #170
marcosdumay wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When The Daily WTF was still maintained it reserved an entire section of the site for Oracle Database. It may rarely have catastrophic failures (although it's the second one I've seen most catastrophic failures, just after MySQL), but it is composed of one unreasonable choice after the other.

What makes you say The Daily WTF isn't maintained?

It is online, but it doesn't seem to get much more new content.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#179

Post by easytiger »

user5994461 wrote: post #108
blueside wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule, if a work task lands on your desk that involves working with a IBM/Oracle/SAP product, preemptively apologize to those regularly around you for your miserable attitude in the near future.

I'm not sure why Oracle is in the list. The databases are very expensive but they work well.

Oracle are ostensibly a large services company. They don't just sell the DB

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#180

Post by skgoa »

drieddust wrote: post #143
danmaz74 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a dimension left out here on the Phoenix disaster: It wasn't really IBM's fault at all. I respectfully disagree. IBM management either knew what they were contracting was a recipe for disaster, or they were incompetent. In both cases, as they were supposed to be the billion-dollar expert on the matter, they bear great responsibility for this failure. And at an industry level, companies that promise the impo…

IMHO most of the times such concerns are completely ignored by management. Customer even gets angry and asking for removal of such risks. Vendors comply by sneeking it in the contract in clever words.

Yeah, some of these comments here seem very naive.
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