Richard Holway writes:
Although IBM has been around for 100 years, for me the IT industry started in 1964 with the launch of the IBM S/360 – the first computer designed for business. It happened to coincide, soon after, with my entry into IT as a humble Basic Assembly Language programmer.
There is no other company in the whole IT sector which has dominated the sector ever since. It has done this by reinventing itself several times. For example, the IBM PC in 1981 and IBM’s change in business model from ‘Big Iron’ to ‘Big Software and Services’ over the last 15 years.
I recently read an article which ended ‘To be reborn, first you have to die’. IBM has fully realised that it is just as important to get out of old market sectors as it is to enter new ones. For example, how brave, but sensible, it was to sell its PC division to Lenovo. Most other companies in our sector have failed to do that and have paid the price.
As an analyst, I find it difficult to give any cast iron forecasts on the future of any of the leading players – except one. I have absolutely no doubt that IBM has both the resources – both financial and managerial – to rise and adapt to any of the new challenges that the IT market throws at it.
Anthony Miller writes:
It was Monday 3rd September 1973 when I stepped over the threshold at (then) IBM Croydon to start my very first job after leaving university. I was 21 and IBM was 62. I only wish that I will look as good at 100 as IBM does today!
IBM is a very different company now, even from the one I left back in the early 90’s (jn Sydney, by then). Client-server computing was all the rage, to which IBM really only paid lip-service; there was, after all, still good money to be made from those gargantuan water-cooled mainframes. Unix was acknowledged – even tolerated under IBM’s own brand (AIX) – but otherwise, it was proprietary software all the way. Services (over and above break-fix) were still mostly seen as ‘value add’, to help cement customers to IBM hardware from mainframe, through storage, to printers, and from ‘dumb’ terminals through PCs into communications controllers seeking safe sanctuary in the hallowed halls of the data centre.
Indeed, much of IBM's transformation happened in the past 20 years. Today, IBM’s hardware business only represents about 18% of the total. No more PCs. No more printers. Mainly servers and storage. In 1991 IBM was a $65b company of which less than $6b came from non-maintenance services. Last year, IBM turned over a little short of $100b of which almost half was non-maintenance services. Its main competitors in the 90’s were the likes of DEC, Amdahl and Unisys. Today, it's perhaps first and foremost Accenture and HP, along with a host of India-based players like TCS and Infosys in hot pursuit. How times change!
From us both we say, “Happy Birthday IBM!”. Here’s to the next 100 years (and why not?).