Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

IBM the Next Great Software Company?

Posted by Zonk on Thu Apr 05, 2007 12:54 PM
from the brave-new-world dept.
IBM Programming Software IT Technology
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."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Apple: Apple Pulls Out of India 696 comments
tanveer1979 writes "Barely 3 months after it commenced India operations, Apple has decided to pull out its software operations from Bangalore. The employees will be given a severance package which is equal to two months' pay. The sales and marketing operations will remain on (these consist of around 30 people) but the software and support will be completely pulled out." From the article: "Apple had set itself a hiring target of 600 by the year-end. After a gala induction ceremony on April 17, the operations team went to Transworks for training. Some of the managers were about to leave for the US for further training when they were asked to stay put."
[+] Mobile: OLPC Manufacturer to Sell $200 Laptop On Open Market 214 comments
srinravi writes "ArsTechnica reports that Quanta, the company manufacturing the XO laptops, has plans to begin selling low-cost budget mobile computers for $200 later this year. 'According to Quanta president Michael Wang, the company plans to leverage the underlying technologies associated with OLPC's XO laptop to produce laptop computers that are significantly less expensive than conventional laptops.' While OLPC plans to sell the laptops in bulk to governments, which will then distribute the hardware to school children, the XO computer itself is not for sale on the open market. These XO-like commercial devices are still something of an unknown, but it has been announced they'll be using Open Source software."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

IBM the Next Great Software Company? 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • IBM is in the computer business now? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stratjakt (596332) on Thursday April 05 2007, @12:58PM (#18623709) Journal
    What a retarded article. They were (and still are) the first great software company.

    I remember cheering Microsoft for toppling their monopoly.

    • Re:IBM is in the computer business now? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by flynt (248848) on Thursday April 05 2007, @01:02PM (#18623783)
      You do realize something can be a former X without precluding it from being a future X. IBM may have been the first great software company, but it does not follow that it will not be the next great software company. Is that your assertion? Grover Cleveland may beg to differ.

    • I remember cheering Microsoft for toppling their monopoly.
      IBM can be a vicious company, but damn if they don't usually end up with an excellent product.

      • IBM is a great hardware company. It has never been known for great software. Ask anybody who has had to use JCL. The inventors of IEFBR14 could never be known as a great software company.

        I will admit that Eclipse [eclipse.org] is an excellent application but does anyone here remember Visual Age for Java? That app was seriously FUBAR and it would clobber ODBC on the machine when you uninstalled it which you invariably would since that is how bad Visual Age for Java was.

        I'd like to know the story behind those two products. How could the same company produce two products with such disparate quality? Is the open source development model so superior that even a company like IBM can learn to make great software? Is it possible for a mega corp, like IBM, to be able to turn itself around and learn from its failures to start producing such great success? I haven't a clue.

        • I suppose that depends. IBM has never been known for great consumer software, business or personal.

          As far I'm aware however, IBM is known for great development software, especially for inhouse dev cycles and hardware. Octopiler anyone?
          • Yeah. Their consulting services overpromise and underdeliver though. I've seen a number of their projects fail at a big customer's site.

        • Re:IBM is in the computer business now? (Score:5, Informative)

          by darjen (879890) on Thursday April 05 2007, @02:02PM (#18624719)

          IBM is a great hardware company. It has never been known for great software. Ask anybody who has had to use JCL. The inventors of IEFBR14 could never be known as a great software company.
          Ever hear of their Webphere Commerce suite of products? There are large companies all over the place that are built on it. My employer consults with and builds web sites for many of them. In fact I'd say their software is more solid than anything from Oracle or Sun. These last few months I have been building an internal application based on Oracle's technology/middleware stack and let me tell you, it is flaky as hell. I guess there's a reason most of my company uses Websphere Commerce to build enterprise applications...
        • While I have used my fair share of IBM software produts that made me want to scream, it needs to be pointed out that the operating system for the as400 is one of the best business server OS's produced (object based, organization, stability, security, scalability, abstraction from hardware, etc. etc.)

          • In the world of the IBM 360 mainframe, only the JES (Job Entry Subsystem) was allowed to do any file maintenance. So, in order to copy or move a file, you had to invoke a program. The program wouldn't and couldn't copy the file. You invoked the program using JCL (Job Control Language) and in that job step that invoked the program, you would specify the disposition of the file(s). That is how you could copy or move a file, in the disposition part of the job step.

            But what if that is all you needed to do?

    • Well, at least that is what Cringely would say.
    • I remember cheering Microsoft for toppling their monopoly.

            It takes a brave person to admit that. I bet you feel a bit silly NOW though, don't you? :D

  • Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dedazo (737510) on Thursday April 05 2007, @01:06PM (#18623843) Journal
    When Slashdot reports anything about outsourcing the consensus around here seems to be that it's bad and evil. Especially when it involves someone like Microsoft, like when Gates says more visas are needed.

    But when it's IBM, it's "refreshing" and "interesting"? That's just too funny.

  • Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by teknopurge (199509) on Thursday April 05 2007, @01:16PM (#18623967) Homepage
    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.)
    • The only reason in the US that private or elite degrees are harder to get is because the cost is 5x public universities. I suspect India has similar issues.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Undertaker43017 (586306) on Thursday April 05 2007, @02:26PM (#18625097)
      Having worked for a company that outsourced a couple of projects to India, I can tell you that all companies care about is how much money it is saving them right this minute. I told my boss repeatedly, and he told his boss, etc on up the chain that the quality wasn't nearly the same, the answer always came back, "Yeah, but it is costing $Y less to do it!".

      Companies have a very short term focus on the bottom line, it's all about making sure the "street" is happy next quarter, so cut all of the costs you can. Long term doesn't matter to them anymore, because the average life span of a C-level executive is 1-2 years, so they don't care what happens to the company in 3 years, they are on some beach enjoying their mult-million dollar severance. Hum... maybe more companies should compensate their C-level executives based on their and the companies performance, and no "golden parachutes". ;)
      • 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.

  • IBM understands how the maths work (Score:5, Informative)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Thursday April 05 2007, @01:16PM (#18623975)
    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.

     

  • Fake Steve Jobs nailed this, as usual. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PavementPizza (907876) on Thursday April 05 2007, @01:21PM (#18624059)

    You gotta hand it to IBM [blogspot.com]

    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 [wsj.com] 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 [cnn.com] 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.

  • 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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by trongey (21550)

      ...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...

      News Flash!
      When you see an add with those rediculous qualifications the company has already got a deal with their H1B candidate. They advertise with outrageous requirements so they can say that the necessary skill set isn't available domestically.

  • IBM from the Inside (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hypharse (633766) on Thursday April 05 2007, @01:57PM (#18624651)
    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.
    • about the plants IBM opens there employing like 50,000 people in one plant.

      God, can you imagine the payroll? 82 loaves of bread, 20 gallons of milk, and a case of beans. Per month! Sigh, way too expensive.

      Seriously outsourcing is a "Good Thing" (on paper) for the host country, since they learn from all you foreigners and start charging more for their services after a surprisingly short time. Unfortunately the quality of product/service is nowhere near the same - a

  • Did they grow up? (Score:3, Informative)

    by BluedemonX (198949) on Thursday April 05 2007, @02:08PM (#18624823)
    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.
  • 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)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by shotgunsaint (968677)
      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.
    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mmell (832646)

      "As far as I can tell . . ."

      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 .

    • MMmmm, nope (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Colin Smith (2679) on Thursday April 05 2007, @01:34PM (#18624291)

      The textbook case would, of course, be Lotus Domino/Notes. Which is more expensive per-seat than Outlook/Exchange
      Sorry, Notes isn't just an email/groupware client/server like Exchange. It's a distributed application and database platform. And yes, it takes more work than your typical MS certified whatever can handle. Many of them don't even understand the benefits of the system. Set up and developed by a competent team, Notes can transform the way business processes work.

       
      • Two thinbs up!

        This is slashdot, people always blame the 'clueless Admins', unless they are discussing Notes.

        IBM is still the one company that writes more software titles for Windows than does Microsoft.
      • Set up and developed by a competent team, Notes can transform the way business processes work.

        Gee, now I feel guilty for complaining about the 20 archived emails Notes corrupted a couple of days ago!

      • This is the standard response. The standard response to that response is:

        1) IBM advertises and markets it as a groupware product, therefore IBM has no right to complain when people compare it to another groupware product. While you can create apps in Notes to do all sorts of things, the app it ships, and installs by default, is a groupware app. If you were handed a Notes CD out of the blue and installed it, you wouldn't know it did anything except groupware functions.

        2) Regardless of what the program is, it

        • I'm sorry. If the class of "distributed database clients"

          No it isn't just a distributed database either. It's a distributed application and database platform. Hell it's even described in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_notes#Programmi ng [wikipedia.org]

          It gets marketed as a groupware system because that's all most people can understand about it. That's a criticism of most IT staff and management btw and possibly an explanation of why most company's infrastructures are so fucked.

          It's just a crummy piece of software.

          What you really mean is you're simply not up to the job of operating it competently. I

    • Re:IBM's Strategy (Score:5, Informative)

      by morzel (62033) on Thursday April 05 2007, @02:13PM (#18624893)
      Chances are you're just a rabid anti-Notes troll, but I'll bite 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 ;-)

    • 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 mini
    • 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.
      • So they buy linux

        Huh? Where? When?

        • They buy the rights to deploy linux I should say.
            • "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?

    • Just ask any major financial biz (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by C_Kode (102755)
      DB2, Tivoli, Websphere, Lotus to name a few...

    • Re:Software company? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by edward350z (1084677) on Thursday April 05 2007, @02:23PM (#18625051)
      No, you probably don't use any IBM software on your *PeeCee*. However, your company's accounting department probably uses an IBM mainframe running CICS. That airline ticket you booked on Orbitz went through IBM WebSphere to an IBM MQSeries server to IBM DB2, etc. If you drive a Honda/Acura automobile with voice-activated navigation, that's IBM ViaVoice. If you use Linux, a good chunk of the recent kernel patches were developed by folks on IBM's payroll. IBM is like Tyco or 3M -- they're involved in EVERYTHING you touch even if you don't see their branding front and center. Anyone who thinks IBM isn't a software company clearly does not have a big picture view of the IT world.
    • According to Apple's 2006 Annual report [corporate-ir.net](PDF Warning) Apple spent approximately $300 million on marketing last fiscal year(p. 96) and had approximately $20 billion in net sales, from which the gross margin of these sales totalled only about $5 billion(p.113-114). So, a little subtraction: $20 billion - $5 billion = $15 billion. This is the total manufacturing costs of Apple's products, which is approximately 50 times what they spent on marketing. Furthermore, Apple spent approximately $700 billion on R

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.