Saturday, January 29, 2011

The End is Near for IBM

I was one of IBM's biggest fans.  IBM helped me develop my career, provided education, and helped me for years with support and advice.  Sadly, IBM today is a dinosaur who promotes dated legacy technology and sends a message to its customers that it is too risky to change and move to new technologies.

The reality is that IBM is focused on systems like its multi-million dollar zSeries line of computers, its midrange Power Systems where it continues to drag alone obsolete systems like IBM i. 

Sadly IBM under Lou Gerstner's leadership and the subsequently under Sam Palmisano's has focused on selling technology to IT executives and technologists.  Lou Gerstner decided that IBM did not need to work with the CEO or Chairman of Business Enterprises and virtually eliminated the field support staff consisting of System Engineers, Business Consultants and business industry specialists.  He dismantled specialty organizations that studied various industries identifying business requirements.

Today IBM sells raw hardware and system software to people with a PhD, MS or BS in Computer Science. They no longer care about business executives or what the requirements, problems, or challenges of your business may be.  All they care about is keeping you on the technology you currently use and buying multi-million dollar upgrades as they become available.

Well, I'm here to tell you that the world has changed.  That IBM is no longer relevant and that there are much better and much more cost effective solution available today, many in a cloud computing based environment where you may not even have to buy any hardware or expensive systems software.

Today's enterprise must look within and at its IT leadership.  Do you need a technologist running your IT organization?  Is it time to reinvent the organization that manages computer systems?  Do you need any programmers on staff?

Should you outsource?  Should you use Cloud computing?  Should you switch to open source or Linux or Microsoft based systems? 

Should you be paying COBOL or RPG Programmers $80k to $100k or can you rent much less expensive programmers from off shore vendors as you need them (if you need them)?

The world is changing.  I am now working with a major company who provides cloud based solutions.  No hassles for the clients, total reliability, high availability, and a total cost that is pennies on the dollar compared to in-house IT.

Its time to make a change.  Its time to dump your dinosaur and move into the 21st Century. I don't know what the "color" of  21st century computing is, but it isn't blue.