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The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

sloanreview.mit.edu

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Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#21

Post by jacknews »

yardie wrote: post #3

When has IBM been considered on the rise? I thought they just reinvented themselves into services, sold off the "business machines", and now just suck at the teat of government contracts and consulting? They were considered pioneers in AI with Watson but have been leapfrogged in execution by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. So I ask again, what does IBM actually do?

They were definitely recovering dramatically from the early 1990 s&l crisis, with strong offerings in Unix (RS/6000), re-juvenated mainframe hardware in the Z-series, a huge push into services, etc.

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#23

Post by mistrial9 »

63 wrote: post #19
yardie wrote: post #3

When has IBM been considered on the rise? I thought they just reinvented themselves into services, sold off the "business machines", and now just suck at the teat of government contracts and consulting? They were considered pioneers in AI with Watson but have been leapfrogged in execution by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. So I ask again, what does IBM actually do?

Are government contracts and consulting considered disreputable for some reason? A reliable and accountable third party firm for custom software development feels like a valid niche worth filling to me, and strikes me as much more moral than the other behemoth tech companies constantly pursuing surveillance capitalism and eroding the digital rights of individuals.

> Are government contracts and consulting considered disreputable for some reason

here in California over decades, income and empires were often consumer-based products with consumer distribution chains.. huge money.. the halls of upstate New York and the skyscrapers of Manhatten were viewed as distant and out of touch. IBM and maybe others were household names, but the source of revenue and the way to participate was completely alien.

So I think you have hit on a nerve, yes.. there is some disrespect

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#24

Post by shagmin »

63 wrote: post #19
yardie wrote: post #3

When has IBM been considered on the rise? I thought they just reinvented themselves into services, sold off the "business machines", and now just suck at the teat of government contracts and consulting? They were considered pioneers in AI with Watson but have been leapfrogged in execution by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. So I ask again, what does IBM actually do?

Are government contracts and consulting considered disreputable for some reason? A reliable and accountable third party firm for custom software development feels like a valid niche worth filling to me, and strikes me as much more moral than the other behemoth tech companies constantly pursuing surveillance capitalism and eroding the digital rights of individuals.

The tech sector is big on innovation and that probably seems orthogonal to government contracts to many. It feels like IBM is a dinosaur using the government to stay alive meanwhile companies like Microsoft and Google have contributed to the ecosystem of tools I use every day while thriving and feel like sexy companies in comparison. I don't know the company that well but this is how I think many view it.

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#25

Post by paulddraper »

makeitdouble wrote: post #17
paulddraper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protobufs are pretty good. Sure, there's things that can be improved, but years later they are still the most ubiquitous binary message format.

The only other binary message format I saw were flat files with fixed bytes length fields, dtp/sftp in legacy banking systems. And many moved to first csv, then json/xml wherever they could. I feel there's no one trying to take that crown really.

BSON, Thrift, Avro, MessagePack, FlatBuffers, Capn Proto

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#26

Post by datameta »

yardie wrote: post #3

When has IBM been considered on the rise? I thought they just reinvented themselves into services, sold off the "business machines", and now just suck at the teat of government contracts and consulting? They were considered pioneers in AI with Watson but have been leapfrogged in execution by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. So I ask again, what does IBM actually do?

Servers and mainframes that push the envelope every few years. About anything else idk, I don't see those parts of the company.

Power10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power10?wprov=sfla1

No page for Z16 so here's the Telum processor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Telum_%28microprocessor%29...

The wicked thing I got to work on is the Explorer memory chip. Crazy fast throughput and lane width, truly. 38Gbps for DDR4 RAM

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#27

Post by doctor_eval »

elzbardico wrote: post #15

Kind of funny that 40 years ago, IBM had what would be the golden dream of modern CEOs, a subscription-based business, and decided to destroy it for selling stuff outright.

I had a great subscription business - and when I sold it, the buyer just couldn’t care less. Body shop all the way baby. 5x the revenue - but barely broke even.

The old saying that “revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity” never rang so true.

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#28

Post by pyuser583 »

sys_64738 wrote: post #4

Arrogance of IBM execs flowed into the DNA of IBMers. It's why those let go struggled to find employment elsewhere in the same industry. Obsolete technologies and processes that were too bureaucratic are tough to unlearn.

I personally know tons of whitebeards who worked at IBM, Silicon Graphics, Ma Bell, etc.

They landed on their feet.

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#29

Post by ninacomputer »

The scary thing is how many IBM "experts" from the quantum computing teams fled to quantum startups. I interviewed with some after interning at a FAANG, and as a female in tech with family members who have run tech companies, I like to think my BS radar is pretty good.

It went off constantly with a certain "type" of "startup executive", and I noticed they were all former IBM or Intel. I'm not a negative person but found them all to be visibly political, all sounded like that didn't actually do anything really real, and talked a big game that the company outputs didn't seem to match.

I guess they are costing the quantum startups (aka VCs) a lot of money for very little actual work. This is just my observation and just my experience but I'm keeping tabs because it will be interesting to see how many quantum startups fail over the next few years, and which were run by IBM execs. I have my hypotheses ready.

Re: The Decline and Rise of IBM (1996)

#30

Post by AlbertCory »

63 wrote: post #19
yardie wrote: post #3

When has IBM been considered on the rise? I thought they just reinvented themselves into services, sold off the "business machines", and now just suck at the teat of government contracts and consulting? They were considered pioneers in AI with Watson but have been leapfrogged in execution by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. So I ask again, what does IBM actually do?

Are government contracts and consulting considered disreputable for some reason? A reliable and accountable third party firm for custom software development feels like a valid niche worth filling to me, and strikes me as much more moral than the other behemoth tech companies constantly pursuing surveillance capitalism and eroding the digital rights of individuals.

Are they disreputable? Well, they're a niche that you don't get out of.

Companies that depend on big government contracts, and "consulting" (quotes are deliberate here) don't ever rejoin the small business and consumer sectors, ever. They're too big, bureaucratic, and slow.

If you're trying to hold up government and Fortune 100 companies as somehow more virtuous than small-to-medium businesses, you can't be serious. At least they're not too big to fail.

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