The State of R&D At HP, IBM, and Microsoft

jcatcw writes "Computerworld surveys the R&D efforts at HP, IBM and Microsoft ($17 billion annually) and raises the question: Are these companies supporting more long-term basic research, or just the usual short-term, product-oriented work? HP is consolidating its focus on a few 'big bet' projects in five major research areas — information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation, intelligent infrastructure, and sustainability. IBM has four 'high-risk' basic research areas — nanotechnology, cloud computing, integrated systems and chip architecture, and managing business integrity through advanced math and computer science. Many of the 272 research projects named at Microsoft Research's Web site are structured with major product lines like Windows, Office, or Xbox in mind, but many also seem to have no likely application to anything the company sells today."

Comments

No money in Research

[jshriverWVU]

These are businesses not institutions. They are in the business of making money via products they have mastered. Not a troll just the truth. However check out some of the better colleges and you'll find some sweet research going on. Then these big companies pay the kid 1m for the rights, patent it and make 100m off of it. Cycle of life :)

The nature of research

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Whether research is aimed at solving an immediate problem or a problem conjured up in the mind of a scientist, it is not the technical abilities that make research useful. Any project can come up with a solution, pretty much. Rather, it is the mindset that "we are doing research" that makes the activity so productive.

By opening your eyes to all possibilities and outcomes makes even mistakes useful, and having no penalty (relatively speaking, of course) when those mistakes arise frees researchers to create and build. Instead of creating a tailored solution, they can find various solutions and even branch out into more fruitful areas if the main branch turns cold.

Having overarching themes that you want to pursue, like HP and IBM have, makes it easy for researchers to focus. On the other hand, pure research as they do at MS allows the researchers to go off in any direction that seems fruitful, even if most of the projects end up as dead ends.

Re:The nature of research

[samkass]

R&D means product development.

Of course; otherwise, it would just be called "R" instead of "R&D".

A company doing research for purely altruistic reasons is probably going to get sued by its shareholders someday. Microsoft plans to make plenty of money by controlling future markets through its R&D efforts. That, and sequestering researchers who had a chance to make a difference behind a "silicon curtain" of obscurity so they don't threaten the status quo. ("If we give those graphics professors from CMU enough toys, maybe we can make them irrelevant without them caring.")

Re:As much as I don't like Microsoft...

[LaughingCoder]

Compare this to our dear present day carriers, whose primary mode of "innovation" appears to be writing ever more incomprehensible contracts.

That is so not true! They are very innovative at figuring out ways to charge their customers for add-on services. For instance - sell them a camera phone and then *charge* them to get the pictures out of the phone. Sell them a "music" phone that uses proprietary headphones only. Sell them their favorite song as a ringtone, then sell it again to them as a full track, and then sell it to them again as a ringback tone -- brilliant!

Re:Narrow view

[xtracto]

I completely agree.

I was fortunate to participate in (Comp. Sci.) a research project where some industry companies worked along with some Universities. One of those companies was HP (participating via a researcher appointed to the project).

I can say from first account experience that HP was one of the companies which put more interest and time in the research (while, other unamed companies sometimes were not even present at the meetings).

From that project, I learnt several things about HP research (at least in Europe). They indeed have several projects going. A lot of those projects are however "sensitive" or secret. But you certainly can see several good publications with interesting implications coming from HP.

How far Dell has fallen.

[ISoldat53]

At one time Dell had a very active R&D. They employed some of the best in the industry. Now they aren't even mentioned. Once the carper baggers got into the company, R&D became a needless expense.

Um, you're missing one...

[afabbro]

Sun.

As far as corporate R&D for IT companies, here's my take...

Microsoft: I have no idea what they spend their billions on, and yes, they do spend a bundle on R&D. They just never have much in the way of either (a) actual products to show for it, or (b) wow technologies like HP PARC. Seriously, considering all they spend, they should be HP PARC. They're not.

IBM: Well, they do make the fastest chips on earth at the moment (POWER6), as well as tons of other things, and the best O/S on the planet (z/OS), not to mention another awesome O/S (OS/400), plus...OK, IBM does great things with R&D.

Google: See Microsoft. Seriously - they have a great search engine. Best in the world. Hands down. And also...oh wait, I guess that's it.

HP: HP has pissed away more technology they've bought than anyone else. VMS? Tru64? Alpha? And then there are things they do that are awesome - Tandem Nonstop - but never integrated into the rest of their line. ARGH! They make great printers, I'll give them that...

Sun: Really forward-thinking, great R&D. The Solaris O/S has been Microsoft's crystal ball for years. DTRACE. ZFS. Java. Even just cool implementations like Thumper. Of course, Sun can't seem to make dime one on any of this...they really do seem to have the most clueless management on earth...a pity.

Did I forget anyone?