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IBM the Next Great Software Company?
Diomidis Spinellis writes "A report in this week's Economist discusses IBM's globalization strategy and the company's presence in India. Refreshingly, the article admits that there's more to outsourcing than cheap labor, contrasting IBM's calculated investments with Apple's rapid pull-out from Bangalore. Although the jury is still out on how sluggish multinationals can compete with vigorous tigers, it seems that IBM has a credible strategy for becoming the next great software company, and that outsourcing is only a part of the puzzle."
What a retarded article. They were (and still are) the first great software company.
I remember cheering Microsoft for toppling their monopoly.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Apple is a marketing firm. They are in the fashion and luxury items business, not the nuts and bolts computer business. The probably spend more on internet marketing (including astroturfing) than they do in-house manufacturing.
But when it's IBM, it's "refreshing" and "interesting"? That's just too funny.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Lotus Notes is definitely some pretty clunky bloatware... but have you ever had to administer an Exchange server? It's a nightmare. As I have no experience administering a Lotus Notes server, I can only imagine it would be slightly less convoluted.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
I find it fascinating that the article calls out IBM's presence in India as anything more then an accounting advantage, especially with all the issues of late with India's college system. I was very interested to learn that many bachelor degrees that come from Indian Universities are no where near as comprehensive or difficult to get then the majority of our public universities, not even mentioning our private or elite schools.
For all the concern about the Indian Technologists and how they were going to commoditize software development, somewhere along the way all the 'experts' forgot they wern't comparing apples-to-apples with regard to their qualifications and education.
Flame on. =) (I jest, but my comment is a very real issue.)
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Things like MQseries, Notes, TSM. They understand how these products mathematically benefit customers. A lot of other software houses have no clue how to actually benefit businesses, they just want to sell software. I'm not saying that no others can do the same job, but IBM is a one stop shop of best practices.
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Obviously, you have never seen migration from NT domain to AD. Or from Exchange X to X+1.
Yes, Microsoft products also require consultants, they just don't work for Microsoft, they are "partners". They are the people who push Microsoft products.
I work as an IT Consultant whenever I get something done ahead of schedule or give consulting advice that actually benefits my client more then myself I usually go. Well we are not IBM Global Services, we are actually a good consulting firm.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You gotta hand it to IBM
No matter how crappy their business is they can always find a chunk of fool's gold in the pile of dogshit and then get someone in the media (or everyone in the media) to focus on that. Latest example was this story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about how IBM's software division is just setting the world on fire. According to our spies at Fortune, IBM's flacks have been shopping this story around since January. At last someone bit. Wow, software sales were up 14% in the last quarter and a galloping 7% for the full year, and now Steve Mills is the second coming of Gerstner. Never mind that the way IBM did this was to move some revenue that used to get recognized in other categories over into the "software" division. Never mind that IBM spent $4.8 billion acquiring companies last year, and most of that went to software shops. Never mind that IBM's track record in software has been to buy up companies and ride them into the ground. Total assets at the end of 2006 are lower than at any time since 2002. Liabilities up, working capital down. Oh well. Who cares when that software division is setting the world on fire, baby?
Remember when the IBM story was the services division? Then that crapped out. Then they tried the "second coming of the mainframe" story. Then it was Linux. Then it was "business transformation outsourcing," which our good pals at Fortune swallowed and said here was a $500 billion market, "an ocean of potential revenue" that IBM was going to tap into. They predicted IBM would top $100 billion in revenues by 2005. Ahem.
Well, now it's software. Yup. That red-hot IBM software division. You know, someone ought to profile the one division that really is hot at IBM and which never gets any credit: the publicity department.
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
Could it be that "the consensus" is entirely accurate for the most part, and that outsourcing only benefits those receiving the jobs?
There should be a rule that IBM should never acquire anybody ever again. Aside from that, this article is the most useless piece of marketing.
They got the best *nix in AIX and they technologically don't know what to do with it. So they buy linux. And they barely know what to do with that.
Nice Troll.
Huh? Where? When?
So all you know about IBM is that they make Lotus Notes, right (which I'll grant you, it's a pig)? And of course, you've never had any up-close time with MicroSoft's Outlook/Exhange product, so it's just peachy, right?
Let's see - MicroSoft took DOS (a perfectly great system which performed almost exactly as advertised) and turned it into Windows Vista. Hmmm . . . were you saying something about a track record for selling "crummy products"?
Let's see . . . MicroSoft Office . . . seems to me that no version of MicroSoft Office has ever shipped which didn't almost immediately require patching to correct some more-or-less egregious flaw.
As for MicroSoft's partners - I used to be a contractor working to install/configure/integrate MicroSoft products. I personally never saw MicroSoft products "work pretty well on their own" for businesses I went to . . . that's why in 1994 I was worth $5,000.00/week as a consultant - to make those MicroSoft products work "pretty well".
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there's more to outsourcing than cheap labor,
Perhaps, but if cheap labor was not the main factor, they would be growing outsourcing to Germany, Canada, etc.
But outsourcing does offer them more choices. In want ads, companies always ask for "5 years of Foo, 10 years of Bar, 5 years of OOXML, etc. etc. etc. etc.". The more countries you have to comb for staff, the better chance that you will find somebody who matches your eclectic desired skills combinations. However, this is still not good news for techies unless other countries do the reverse also, but for the most part they are not. I hope the next administration requires reciprical service trading (and perhaps manufacturing trade also). Otherwise our trade deficit will be even bigger than the fat bubble it already is. Why do we keep relearning bubble lessons the hard way?
Table-ized A.I.
IBMs failures in Software creation and marketing that software read like a list of accomplishments of an alcoholic and a bartenders flair competition.
PC Dos - Dead
OS2 - Dead
Pink - Dead before it was born.
Tivoli - you hardly ever even see this anymore.
I'm sure I'm missing quite a few others.
Not to mention making and marketing PC's themselves. IBM was the first big player, now they don't make them anymore (sold it all to Lenovo).
Fact:
- IBM's revenue was over $90 Billion in 2006 excluding PC sales
- Software accounted for 40% of their revenue
- WebShere grew 23%
- Notes grew 12%
You and/or your company either aren't very good admins or your just a MS shill
Wow, that was funny.
They buy the rights to deploy linux I should say.
Well, at least that is what Cringely would say.
Last year, IBM reported over $18 billion in revenue from Software alone. Which is more total revenue than Oracle, SAP, and every other software company not named Microsoft earned last year. I'd say IBM already is great software company (or at least a large one).
how much they depend upon Websphere MQ to run their operation.
Then compare it with MQMQ and hope you don't die laughing.
Yep, some IBM software is utter crap but there are some bits that Microsoft can only have wet dreams about.
for example, Websphere Message Broker vs BizTalk
I don't work for IBM but IMHO, in the Middleware sector WMQ is the only real game in town.
Notes is a far broader product that Exchange and for the most part puts Microsoft's offering into a cocked hat.
If IBM really got their act together then they could become a Dominant player in software. This is however about as likely as me winning the Lottery (I don't play...)
I have been working in IBM Research for the last year and have witnessed a lot of the bad and a lot of the good I heard about IBM while outside it. I have witnessed the shift in IBM to Software and Services. One person in my group is from India and he talks occasionally about the plants IBM opens there employing like 50,000 people in one plant. They are nearly all entry level and the turnover rate is high due to their bad education systems. About IBM, the bad and the good that I have witnessed. The Bad: There are plenty of clueless people in charge making the decisions for everyone else. There are plenty of brilliant people working in IBM, but they are put on the same level and sometimes even a lower level than others. Many phds are not allowed to actually do their research, but instead are used to try and create ways to keep existing, flawed, processes going. They are also pushing many people into the "Services" side and they occasionally treat people who are not part of that "next big thing" like crap. When I started the group I am in had 6 very smart phds from premier programs in their field. We lost one to retirement and IBM would not allow for a replacement. Another was forced into the "Services" end but instead just quit and is working for another company. Now we are down to 4 and the others who have been there a lot longer than I have are very frustrated at IBM basically telling them they are not important because they are not part of this "next big wave". The Good: If you are lucky enough to get in the right groups that have money IBM is a great place to research ideas. Also, IBM has made many advances that are not talked about widely so that one post about IBM only getting a couple things right and pushing them to the extreme is bogus. IBM issues more patents per year than most countries and they generate billions from those patents. I was told (don't know if it is for sure a fact) that IBM makes more money from the PS3 and from the XBOX360 than Microsoft or Sony. You hear about IBM being involved with the PS3 because of the cell processor, but most people would be surprised to hear that IBM did a lot of the work for the XBOX360 as well.
"OS/2 the next big thing"
"hey buy the rights to deploy linux I should say."
From who?
Can anyone name any software IBM produce? I don't think I use any.
This has been around for a while, and there's no jokes about Kwik-E marts, convenience stores, grape squishee or curry. Glad to see the juvenile racist crap that we used to see spat at articles like this almost instantly seems to be gone.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Aweful? You mean "full of awe"?
... at least work pretty well on their own...
"pretty well" ha ha. Have you even used it? I've made over $250,000 at various helpdesks picking up after its royal crumminess. My customers ask me, "Why does it happen (IE stop responding, for example)?" to which I have to say, "because Microsoft doesn't care that the software they sell sucks since people are buying it anyway."
Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange are different products: the first is a "groupware" platform that happens to do mail, the other is a mail server that might be linked to some other Microsoft platforms (notably: sharepoint). The Notes client can be used for accessing "databases" (which are actually a container with semi-structured data and application logic in one), for which IBM provides a "mail database" that is kinda capable of handling mail. Outlook is a superb mail client that does nothing else unless you've got someone willing to create "outlook foms" that link to other MS technologies.
The good about Domino/Notes:
- Domino is multiplatform, Notes kinda (current Linux client is barely usable)
- Security is a design fundamental in Notes/Domino. Notes has been doing private key crypto and signed code before Exchange was even conceived.
- Domino/Notes is way better when integration company processes/workflows in your mail environment.
- Restoring backed up mails/documents/databases can be done relatively easy, and has been like that for at least 12 years.
The bad:- The Notes UI is infamous because it is so different from Windows and counter-intuitive to some people. This is for the major part historical (i.e.: Notes has been developed as a multiplatform client, and it includes a lot of legacy). If you want you can easily update the design of your mail database and replace it with an open source one (try that with Outlook
;-) -- see openntf.org for that. If you really want, you can just use outlook with Lotus Domino natively with the DAMO plugin.
- The learning curve for Domino administration is steeper than that of MS Exchange. The impact of a good administrator versus a not-so-good one will be much more visible in a Domino environment than in an Exchange/outlook environment. Getting both to go further than a couple of machines requires good admins regardless of the technology
The actual cost per user won't differ that much between either platform, and the featureset is different. If you're a Microsoft shop and have an all-windows datacenter, SQL Server, Sharepoint portal and whatnot you'll be installing Exchange. If you're not already linked as much to Microsoft technologies chances are that Domino/Notes is a better choice. If you're sensitive regarding security (or having to abide to certain security regulations), Domino/Notes is probably your best shot (a lot of banks think so, anyway).So, it's not a black and white issue, and there are very good reasons why Notes and Domino can be a better choice for a particular situation.
Disclaimer: I know a thing or two about IBM/Lotus technologies (and of Microsoft and Linux, so don't hold that against me ;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
I've been hearing since 2004 that IBM was going to buy Novell, which the rumor spread faster after Novell purchased SUSE and partnered with IBM and started co-branding some Linux training packages. The rumors took off again in 2006 at Brainshare where most of the signs around the conference were white and blue rather than the red and white that is typical of the host's branding colors. Looks like they missed out and MS swallowed their soul instead.
Thanks for keeping it cool here on SD
it seems that IBM has a credible strategy for becoming the next great software company
And it belongs to the chairman of SCO, saying "by stealing other people's code, you bastaaaaaaaards!"
But hey, if it worked for Microsoft... (ducking and running)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I believe the GP meant RH Linux.
Of all major operating systems, UNIX is the only one originally meant for gaming.
"hey buy the rights to deploy linux I should say."
From who?
Heck I'll sell them! Just sign here, and the CD is yours... uh sign quickly please. You brought the cash right? I'm allergic to checks, doctor says I can't see one. Hey can I interest you in our special on bridges this month? How about an Eiffel Tower?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The only troll-ish thing the parent post is that it songle out IBM; all the other bloated shiteware providers like CA and BMC work exactly the same way.
Mostly, it's the fault of the users. *Some* of IBM, BMC, and CA's stuff isn't crap, but any good sales rep is perfectly willing to sell all the bells and whistles to gullible users who want every feature glommed onto everything, until the whole creaking mess takes a support staff of a dozen consultants to run. Eleven of whom might be supporting the data mining or "dashboard" or some other such shoddily engineered add-on that produces reports that one one ever, ever reads after the initial requirements are met.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
No, that's their old strategy, before Microsoft took over as top dog. You got another thing wrong: IBM didn't sell to IT departments, but to people above IT departments. It was a lot easier to talk a higher-level executive into staying true Blue than somebody who actually had to make IBM's stuff work.
Still, their products did work. They were awful expensive for what you got, and often rather clumsy (the only reason JCL wasn't an absolutely horrible design was that there was no actual design), but they worked for the majority of businesses. Just like Microsoft products: they work mostly, they're expensive, there's some real problems. The difference, I guess, is that IBM did share source code, and there was a thriving community that was darn close to the open source community (although far too corporate to resemble the free software community).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I work for a very large IBM business partner, and we use IBM products almost exclusively. Anything IBM has developed themselves is a piece of shit. IBM has done the following to us: Released software that would not work. After struggling with it for weeks they will finally admit it does not work. They constantly reintroduce bugs when they release new versions. The have no version control. They provide horrable customer support. Often it seems like we pay for the privilidge of reporting bugs to them. They will throw you under the bus as soon as they get an oppertunity. When the customer gets upset for the poor quality of software they will blame thier business partners for poor implementation. Thier release cycle is 100% based on getting stuff out the door on time. This is why they release garbage that does not work.
The good about Domino/Notes:
* Domino is multiplatform, Notes kinda (current Linux client is barely usable)
The latest Notes 8 client for Linux is pretty good. Only released as a beta at the moment but snappy and pretty much the same as the Windows version. Mostly the same codebase now that it's all Java/Eclipse based.
Just because YOU can't imagine Lotus Notes being worse doesn't mean it is...
I have been watching people type that for more than a year. It is liberating.
A coworker pointed out that if an outsourcing firm bills(1) you only a third what an American development team would, that allows the business to fail three times before they've spent as much as they otherwise would have.
Chip H.
(1) Note that I consider cost a different data point from what they bill you. e.g. There is an opportunity cost in failing three times.
Now what year was it that itty bitty machines spelled their name in electrons? And they want to venture into the swamp of mediocrity that is software? oh... (thinks of all the trillions to make with a better product) I didn't realize how much of an artform hardware was until I saw Murder by Phone and they were designing a chip on the wall of a building right near the front door of a corporation headquarters...
I cant believe that so many people are ignorant of the range of software IBM does. IBM has entire vertical stack of software including compilers, os, virtual machines, databases, servers, java webserves. Incase you dont know it, it is said that IBM understands Java better than Sun. I am not sure if they have updated their vm', but as of Java 1.4, theirs was faster than Sun.
If there is a industry for a major software product, IBM does it.
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
Anyone mention this one yet? :)
IBM, the last great software compant?
Chances are you're just a rabid anti-Notes troll, but I'll bite anyway.
.id files), I have to concede this point.
I am rabidly anti-Notes, because I've been exposed to it as a user and as a helpdesk worker. Notes left such a bad impression on me that I now ask, in the interview, whether a company uses Notes or Outlook for groupware... if they say Notes, I walk.
Look, I know programmers love Notes. I'm not a programmer; I'm just a user who has a busy calendar and likes to sync my Palm, and Notes is about the worst solution for doing that.
Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange are different products: the first is a "groupware" platform that happens to do mail, the other is a mail server that might be linked to some other Microsoft platforms (notably: sharepoint).
Whatever it is, it's buggy and bloated and a royal pain in the ass to use. For some reason, IBM lovers always jump into this conversation by saying "it's not a groupware product!" despite IBM selling it as a groupware product. Somehow, this excuses Notes' bugs. Kind of like saying, "oh this program I wrote to enter text into isn't a 'word processor' even though it's sold as one, it's a text management system... therefore it's ok if it crashes every hour and loses data." But, hey, I'll let it slide; I took on that point in another thread anyway.
The Notes client can be used for accessing "databases" (which are actually a container with semi-structured data and application logic in one), for which IBM provides a "mail database" that is kinda capable of handling mail.
Thank you for being honest about Notes' mail capabilities. Saying it is "kinda capable of handling mail" is pretty accurate. Unfortunately, tons of companies use Notes as their *only* groupware product, thus subjecting their users to something that even a big Notes fan admits only "kinda" works. Not cool.
Outlook is a superb mail client that does nothing else unless you've got someone willing to create "outlook foms" that link to other MS technologies.
Great. It's a small, quick (relatively speaking) program that does one thing and does it damn well. It does less than Notes, but it also costs less than Notes. (Half as much per-seat, last I priced it out.) And your users will thank you for switching by being much more productive.
Domino is multiplatform, Notes kinda (current Linux client is barely usable)
So... Notes has good support on Windows, crummy Macintosh support and really crummy Linux support. (Yes, I've used it on a Macintosh... crummy is as generous as I'm going to be.) Meanwhile, Outlook has good support on Windows and crummy Macintosh support (via Entourage). I see no real difference here.
Security is a design fundamental in Notes/Domino. Notes has been doing private key crypto and signed code before Exchange was even conceived.
While I think some of IBM's ideas of "security" are somewhat lame-brained (like the hieroglyphics when you type your password-- WTF!?, the extremely annoying-to-admin
Domino/Notes is way better when integration company processes/workflows in your mail environment.
Huh?
Restoring backed up mails/documents/databases can be done relatively easy, and has been like that for at least 12 years.
Um, ok. Does that compensate for the emails/documents you'll lose with Notes' brain-dead filing system? I can't count the dozens of emails I lost by having the audacity to attempt to file documents neatly into folders.
The Notes UI is infamous because it is so different from Windows and counter-intuitive to some people.
It's not that it's counter-intuitive, it's that it's actually hostile to users. For instance, many users might hit F5 in an attempt to refresh their in-box. Like Outlook, Notes' shortcut for that is actually F9. Unlike Outlook, when you hit F5 in Notes, the entire UI disappears and gives no indication of how to get back to your mail. (I find most users would just clo
Comment of the year
And of course, you've never had any up-close time with MicroSoft's Outlook/Exhange product, so it's just peachy, right?
Compared to Notes, it's heaven. I don't know how "up-close" I need to be, but I'm at least ten times happier with Outlook than I ever was with Notes.
Let's see - MicroSoft took DOS (a perfectly great system which performed almost exactly as advertised) and turned it into Windows Vista. Hmmm . . . were you saying something about a track record for selling "crummy products"?
They've sold millions upon millions of copies, they must be doing something right. Personally, I like Vista... but then I'm not easily influenced by the Slashdot FUD. (Tomorrow's headline: Windows Vista kills kittens with radiation somehow!")
I personally never saw MicroSoft products "work pretty well on their own" for businesses I went to . . . that's why in 1994 I was worth $5,000.00/week as a consultant - to make those MicroSoft products work "pretty well".
Ok; but even if I concede that point, the fact that Notes costs more per-seat and has much worse productivity benefits and features... doesn't really change the thrust of my argument.
Comment of the year
667 - one step ahead of the beast.
* Domino is multiplatform, Notes kinda (current Linux client is barely usable)
The latest Notes 8 client for Linux is pretty good. Only released as a beta at the moment but snappy and pretty much the same as the Windows version. Mostly the same codebase now that it's all Java/Eclipse based. Notes 7 for OS X which has a trial (great to play around) gets very good reviews from OS X users.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx
I actually installed it to my home desktop and I wouldn't think a second if there was a home edition.
The security and redundancy features were awesome. First time I felt like using all features of my fastmail.fm IMAP server.
IBM never developed Eclipse first hand, it was developed by a company that IBM bought :)
If am not wrong, they didn't developed Visual Age. The same way.
Eclipse PDE and Me
Selling millions of copies is a testament to the skill and dedication of the sales staff at MicroSoft, not the quality of their product.
Malodorous troll.
I totally agree, I worked for a company that deployed & maintained plenty of Exchange and Notes enviroments. Notes functionality leave Exchange for dead. Exchange is not the bed of roses people make out, the funky way it ties in with AD, Exchange and Outlook can make finding some problems are real PITA. Notes does require more care and feeding than Exchange but it is hands down the better system if you compare the two.
It is interesting to see that Americans starting outsourcing everything off shore, try to make profit out of cheap labor. They have not realized the problems for doing that. Software engineering is not the same as auto-manufacturing. People in India do not receive the same kind of education as Americans do. IBM ignores these software elits back in the USA, and hire these mediocre software engineers in India to start their software empire?
Software companies do not care about shrinking economy and unemployment in the USA, but saving money does not equal making more money.