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Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

businessweek.com

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Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#61

Post by tptacek »

hello_moto wrote: post #59

IBM is a little bit weird. While it's true that they don't build product, they're still milking those old LotusNotes, FIM, WebSphere (enterprise version) installation. Those things will become more expensive to maintain through time. The recent IBM offerings are all based on Open Source being re-packaged: - IBM packaged Hadoop - WebSphere Community Edition is based on Tomcat - IBM HTTP Server is based on Apache By ut…

IBM also contributes to many open source projects. Many major open source projects are staffed primarily by developers from companies like IBM. So this may just be what dev output looks like when a company embraces open source; a good thing.

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#62

Post by pork »

Perceval wrote: post #55
jvehent wrote: post #2

Invest in companies that are actually producing something valuable. That's the way to restart the economy. Can we all move on from the social media bubble and get back to real work now ?

But IBM doesn't build products anymore. They're primarily a consultancy.

On the contrary, they build specialized products for their clients; they just don't build consumer products. They build very complicated, extremely expensive products based on cutting edge research that they perform in their own labs, which is why this investment is solid.

I heard an IBM guy give a talk at a research conference recently, about a 1U rack system that processes 8 live feeds of traffic, automatically classifies vehicle color and type, and optionally registration, so you can ask queries like "show me all red sedan cars traveling north on monday the 8th". It was part of their better cities initiative.

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#63

Post by malkia »

pork wrote: post #62
Perceval wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But IBM doesn't build products anymore. They're primarily a consultancy.

On the contrary, they build specialized products for their clients; they just don't build consumer products. They build very complicated, extremely expensive products based on cutting edge research that they perform in their own labs, which is why this investment is solid. I heard an IBM guy give a talk at a research conference recently, about a 1U rack system that processes 8 live feeds of traffic, automatically cla…

As an example, this reminds me a bit about P4 (Perforce www.perforce.com). It seems to be not that well known as say git, or other versioning systems, but in reality it's widely used in the game development, and last I've heard google, Microsoft and other big companies do use it (or use some licensed source code based version of it).

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#64

Post by drewda »

malkia wrote: post #63
pork wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, they build specialized products for their clients; they just don't build consumer products. They build very complicated, extremely expensive products based on cutting edge research that they perform in their own labs, which is why this investment is solid. I heard an IBM guy give a talk at a research conference recently, about a 1U rack system that processes 8 live feeds of traffic, automatically cla…

As an example, this reminds me a bit about P4 (Perforce www.perforce.com). It seems to be not that well known as say git, or other versioning systems, but in reality it's widely used in the game development, and last I've heard google, Microsoft and other big companies do use it (or use some licensed source code based version of it).

The cool open-source kids (me included :) may use git, but big corporations have been using Perforce for years: http://www.perforce.com/customers/solutions

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#65

Post by pinko »

nknight wrote: post #49
hessenwolf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P/E is pretty important, or could you back up why it is not?

Earnings are strictly past performance. They are a fixed quantity that has no meaning other than "for X time period, the company had Y profit". Price is based on a combination of assets (not all of which have fixed values), future outlook (which can change at any moment and is based on subjective judgements and irrational consumer spending decisions), scarcity of the stock, and even second-to-second manipulations by…

Very helpful, thanks. And for what it's worth, this is what I (and xyzzyz above, I imagine) wished you would have said initially, two comments up, for a higher HN S/N.

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#66

Post by AJ007 »

hello_moto wrote: post #59

IBM is a little bit weird. While it's true that they don't build product, they're still milking those old LotusNotes, FIM, WebSphere (enterprise version) installation. Those things will become more expensive to maintain through time. The recent IBM offerings are all based on Open Source being re-packaged: - IBM packaged Hadoop - WebSphere Community Edition is based on Tomcat - IBM HTTP Server is based on Apache By ut…

What I've noticed is Berkshire Hathaway public stock investments tend to fit two criteria -

First, does it pay a dividend? Yep, IBM does.

Second, is it integrated into the overall economy? I think of it as if imagining what would happen if the company just up and vanished over night. So railroads, power companies, this would result in a lot of other companies would have big problems.

Then of course there are all the other details like the companies finances, executives, and so on that you hear about over and over again in any literature about Berkshire Hathaway.

Consumer oriented companies dominate the news and books because all the inner workings are like a soap opera to the public. But, you can learn just as much from all of these other companies. Most certainly it hones your research skills since the details aren't being delivered to you on a silver platter.

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#67

Post by zanst »

jvehent wrote: post #8
zanst wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong, because "social media" is not a bubble. Actually, it's part of the real life. :-) And I don't know what Warren wants with this, maybe he's believing in another monopolistic move of IBM, which is not too smart these days.

Actually, I agree with you on the benefits from social media to the society. But for 5% of useful features, there is 95% of trendy/fashionable projects that do not have any benefits to the grand scheme of things, are really expensive (color?) and are driving workforce away from more important projects.

Speaking about this side, I agree with you. But it always have been this way in our society, a lot of disposable efforts.

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#68

Post by ori_b »

malkia wrote: post #63
pork wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, they build specialized products for their clients; they just don't build consumer products. They build very complicated, extremely expensive products based on cutting edge research that they perform in their own labs, which is why this investment is solid. I heard an IBM guy give a talk at a research conference recently, about a 1U rack system that processes 8 live feeds of traffic, automatically cla…

As an example, this reminds me a bit about P4 (Perforce www.perforce.com). It seems to be not that well known as say git, or other versioning systems, but in reality it's widely used in the game development, and last I've heard google, Microsoft and other big companies do use it (or use some licensed source code based version of it).

Perforce is unpleasant to use, but it scales effectively to positively massive codebases with large binary blobs and many developers.

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#69

Post by hello_moto »

AJ007 wrote: post #66
hello_moto wrote: post #59

IBM is a little bit weird. While it's true that they don't build product, they're still milking those old LotusNotes, FIM, WebSphere (enterprise version) installation. Those things will become more expensive to maintain through time. The recent IBM offerings are all based on Open Source being re-packaged: - IBM packaged Hadoop - WebSphere Community Edition is based on Tomcat - IBM HTTP Server is based on Apache By ut…

What I've noticed is Berkshire Hathaway public stock investments tend to fit two criteria - First, does it pay a dividend? Yep, IBM does. Second, is it integrated into the overall economy? I think of it as if imagining what would happen if the company just up and vanished over night. So railroads, power companies, this would result in a lot of other companies would have big problems. Then of course there are all the…

I think you're right. My perspective of IBM is from what I read in IT related magazines/articles while investors's (Berkshire in this case) view it from a different angle that makes more sense for them.

Mine probably too detail and too narrow and may not paint IBM as a whole.

Re: Buffett Says Berkshire Has Bought About $10.7 Billion in IBM

#70

Post by rayiner »

jvehent wrote: post #8
zanst wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong, because "social media" is not a bubble. Actually, it's part of the real life. :-) And I don't know what Warren wants with this, maybe he's believing in another monopolistic move of IBM, which is not too smart these days.

Actually, I agree with you on the benefits from social media to the society. But for 5% of useful features, there is 95% of trendy/fashionable projects that do not have any benefits to the grand scheme of things, are really expensive (color?) and are driving workforce away from more important projects.

You're conflating useful with productive. Huge productive industries employing tons of people are built around things that are merely trendy and fashionable (pop music, LV purses, etc).
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