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IBM Says its Future is in Services, Not Goods
TFGeditor writes "An article at Technology Review quotes IBM exec Paul Horn saying that the company's business model is shifting from goods and products to software and services. From the article: 'Horn's challenge, then, has been to take a $6 billion research organization dedicated to work that advances technology products and get it to do work that benefits service businesses. IBM is thus in the process of answering an important question for all technology companies: can corporations perform useful research in the services arena?'"
Appartently,
Slashdot just told me there's nothing to see here. Way to go on the services, slashdot!
-gjr
They decide they would gear their business to services years ago.. Why is this such a shock now? Maybe it's even more relevent after the sales of computer devision
At each step of technological advancement, the less complex "stuff" gets commodified and the real money to be made (e.g., profit margin, not gross) moves up to the more complex, and difficult problem to solve.
"Services" research is basically attempts to solve problems in complex dynamical systems and draws on alot of cutting edge research in systems research, cognitive and social psychology, econometrics, etc. Its not that there aren't novel problems in physics to be solved but a great deal of the practical applications from research in physics is going to be incremental advances in CPU power, memory, etc.
On the other hand, the advances in areas related to services is going to be (catchphrase alert) "disruptive" (sorry but it seems appropriate). That is, areas of research, novel in their own right, will need to be combined to make advances and these advances could radically change organizational structure and practices in entirely unpredictable ways. It seems like the only analogy is with biotechnology. Perhaps to survive, IBM was destined to move either into biotechnology or services.