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Mainframe Meets 'The Office'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the who-knew-big-blue-was-funny dept.

BBCWatcher writes "Tom Foremski (a.k.a. Silicon Valley Watcher) claims that IBM is doing some guerilla marketing for the mainframe. The three videos, now on YouTube, show how IBM allegedly trains new mainframe salespeople, in the style of the BBC's "The Office." IBM's videos arrive in the midst of a Microsoft "Office" controversy. Microsoft was not amused when somebody leaked internal training videos from 2004 that feature Ricky Gervais, The Office man himself. Gervais wasn't happy either."

6 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Funny? by homer_s · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is as funny as a coporately funded, PHB-driven campaign could ever be.

    But the IBM employees who are forced to watch this will laugh though. They better.

  2. Lies! by ImTheDarkcyde · · Score: 5, Funny

    This article has NOTHING to do with a comibinatin of Reboot and The Office

  3. Listen to the bubbles pop by TopSpin · · Score: 4, Funny

    Remember the Enron "Why" campaign? When corporations have so much dead wood wandering the halls that this sort of stuff begins to emerge, you should expect mass layoffs. I don't like being the pessimist, but I'll need this on the record when I say I told you so.

    --
    Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
  4. Oh wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It's nice to see some coverage of mainframes here on Slashdot once and a while. Even more so when it's these videos.

    The mainframe market tanked in the 90's. In the past year it's starting to see some life in it again. There's even one company of former Amdahl people who are doing mainframes with Linux (and z/OS on top of it). Here's the link: http://www.platform-solutions.com/

    Disclaimer: I know some of these people.

    Honestly, without some sort of life, and especially competition, the mainframe market was looking quite dead. Which would be a pity, as mainframes are still quite cool in the niche they fill.

    1. Re:Oh wow by btarval · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mainframes are absolutely competitive. The main reason why people have stuck with mainframes is IO bandwidth. The PC solutions (even clustered) just can't touch the channel architecture, and never have been able to.

      The second main reason why people go with mainframes is that it's more cost-effective to centralize your compute resources in one system, when it comes to maintenance, for many solutions. One single rack or so is a heck of a lot easier to maintain than a Beowulf cluster of boxes, particularly if the latter are scattered.

      So yes, for certain niches, mainframes are the way to go.

      --
      The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
  5. Re:Eek. Boring by mccalli · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am so out of touch with the funny bone in this type of humor. I had to google for Ricky Gervais to find out who he is. I know some of my friends love the Office but... I tried to watch that "Microsoft video" and wanted to snooze after five minutes. The IBM one was even faster.

    Ricky Gervaise is brilliant at what he does, but I'm in the same position as you and can't really appreciate it. Slightly different reason though - I find comedy that makes me squirm hard to watch. The Office (UK, I've never seen the US version) is very cutting and accurate for so many places. Trouble is, being in those places makes me want to squirm and so seeing it reproduced on screen also makes me want to squirm.

    Cheers,
    Ian