Why is ibm successful

He made decisions quickly and told Lowe and Cary about them later. He obtained microprocessors from Intel , made sure Microsoft kept the development of DOS secret, and quashed rumors that IBM was building a system. The Boca Raton team put in long hours and built a beautiful machine. The big day came on 12 August Estridge wondered if anyone would show up at the Waldorf Astoria. Some people crowded into the hotel. Estridge described the PC, had one there to demonstrate, and answered a few questions.

The IBM PC was aimed squarely at the business market, which compelled other computer makers to follow suit. Meanwhile, IBM salesmen had received packets of materials the previous day. On 12 August, branch managers introduced the PC to employees and then met with customers to do the same.

Salesmen weren't given sample machines. Along with their customers, they collectively scratched their heads, wondering how they could use the new computer.

For most customers and IBMers, it was a new world. Nobody predicted what would happen next. IBM's original manufacturing forecasts called for 1 million machines over three years, with , the first year. In reality, customers were buying , PCs per month by the second year. Those who ordered the first PCs got what looked to be something pretty clever. It could run various software packages and a nice collection of commercial and consumer tools, including the accessible BASIC programming language.

For some corporate customers, the fact that IBM now had a personal computing product meant that these little machines were not some crazy geek-hippie fad but in fact a new class of serious computing. Corporate users who did not want to rely on their company's centralized data centers began turning to these new machines. Estridge and his team were busy acquiring games and business software for the PC.

They lined up Lotus Development Corp. And Cary's decision to avoid the product-development bureaucracy had paid off handsomely.

In came the XT's successor, the AT. During his tenure, Opel remained out of touch with the PC and did not fully understand the significance of the technology. We could conclude that Opel did not need to know much about the PC because business overall was outstanding.

The company was routinely ranked as one of the best run. The media only wanted to talk about the PC. On its 3 January cover , Time featured the personal computer, rather than its usual Man of the Year. IBM customers, too, were falling in love with the new machines, ignoring IBM's other lines of business—mainframes, minicomputers, and typewriters. Don Estridge was the right person to lead the skunkworks in Boca Raton, Fla. Estridge's 4,person group mushroomed to 10, He protested that Corporate had transferred thousands of programmers to him who knew nothing about PCs.

PC programmers needed the same kind of machine-software knowledge that mainframe programmers in the s had; both had to figure out how to cram software into small memories to do useful work. By the s, mainframe programmers could not think small enough. Estridge faced incessant calls to report on his activities in Armonk, diverting his attention away from the PC business and slowing development of new products even as rivals began to speed up introduction of their own offerings.

Nevertheless, in August , his group managed to release the AT, which had been designed before the reorganization. The company had no experience with this audience, and as soon as IBM salesmen and prospective customers got a glimpse of the machine, they knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Salesmen ignored it, not wanting to make a bad recommendation to customers. IBM lowered the PCjr's price, added functions, and tried to persuade dealers to promote it, to no avail. ESD even offered the machines to employees as potential Christmas presents for a few hundred dollars, but that ploy also failed. IBM's relations with its two most important vendors, Intel and Microsoft, remained contentious. Rivals figured out that IBM had set the de facto technical standards for PCs, so they developed compatible versions they could bring to market more quickly and sell for less.

The notable exception was Apple, which set its own standards and retained its small market share for years. As the prices of PC clones kept falling, the machines grew more powerful—Moore's Law at work. By the mids, IBM was reacting to the market rather than setting the pace.

Estridge was not getting along with senior executives at IBM, particularly those on the mainframe side of the house. Then disaster struck. Over the Dallas airport, feet off the ground, a strong downdraft slammed the plane to the ground, killing people including the Estridges and all but one of the other IBM employees.

IBMers were in shock. Despite his troubles with senior management, Estridge had been popular and highly respected. Not since the death of Thomas J. Watson Sr. Hundreds of employees attended the Estridges' funeral. The magic of the PC may have died before the airplane crash, but the tragedy at Dallas confirmed it. While IBM continued to sell millions of personal computers, over time the profit on its PC business declined.

IBM's share of the PC market shrank from roughly 80 percent in — to 20 percent a decade later. By then, Windows had been on the market for two years and was proving hugely popular.

It was already clear that Microsoft was going to become one of the most successful firms in the industry. But Lowe declined the offer, making what was perhaps the second-biggest mistake in IBM's history up to then, following his first one of not insisting on proprietary rights to Microsoft's DOS or the Intel chip used in the PC. In fairness to Lowe, he was nervous that such an acquisition might trigger antitrust concerns at the U. Department of Justice.

But the Reagan administration was not inclined to tamper with the affairs of large multinational corporations. More to the point, Lowe, Opel, and other senior executives did not understand the PC market. Lowe believed that PCs, and especially their software, should undergo the same rigorous testing as the rest of the company's products.

That meant not introducing software until it was as close to bugproof as possible. All other PC software developers valued speed to market over quality—better to get something out sooner that worked pretty well, let users identify problems, and then fix them quickly. Lowe was aghast at that strategy. Salesmen came forward with proposals to sell PCs in bulk at discounted prices but got pushback. The sales team I managed arranged to sell 6, PCs to American Standard, a maker of bathroom fixtures.

But it took more than a year and scores of meetings for IBM's contract and legal teams to authorize the terms. Lowe's team was also slow to embrace the faster chips that Intel was producing, most notably the The new Intel chip had just the right speed and functionality for the next generation of computers.

Even as rivals moved to the , IBM remained wedded to the slower chip. As the PC market matured, the gold rush of the late s and early s gave way to a more stable market. A large software industry grew up. The cost of performing a calculation on a PC dropped so much that it was often significantly cheaper to use a little machine than a mainframe. Corporate customers were beginning to understand that economic reality. Opel retired in , and John F. Akers inherited the company's sagging fortunes.

Akers recognized that the mainframe business had entered a long, slow decline, the PC business had gone into a more rapid fall, and the move to billable services was just beginning. He decided to trim the ranks by offering an early retirement program. But too many employees took the buyout, including too many of the company's best and brightest.

Gerstner Jr. It did not matter that Microsoft's software was notorious for having bugs or that IBM's was far cleaner. IBM was still the third-largest producer of personal computers, including laptops, but PCs had become a commodity business, and the company struggled to turn a profit from those products.

All are businesses far more profitable for IBM than its personal computer unit. IBM already owned 19 percent of Lenovo, which would continue for three years under the deal, with an option to acquire more shares. Ward Jr. The deal ensured that IBM's global customers had familiar support while providing a stable flow of maintenance revenue to IBM for five years.

For Lenovo, the deal provided a high-profile partner. Now the company was partnered with China's largest computer manufacturer, which controlled 27 percent of the Chinese PC market.

The deal was one of the most creative in IBM's history. Part of a continuing series looking at photographs of historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology. James W. That, according to historian James W. Cortada , is the most interesting question he's ever asked. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template.

At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference.

Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. I really enjoyed reading this. I can relate to this, as it's something that I've done to help me achieve many of the goals I've had in my life. When I was shy and introverted, I decided to act as if I was confident and outgoing. I would take on the posture, the mannerisms, and beliefs of someone that was the way I wanted to be.

IBM is, perhaps, the best known computer company in the world. IBM was the world leader in providing computer systems for both business and scientific applications. Because it was designed that way 40 years ago long before Android. And iOS is eating Android for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. It's home to the largest industrial research facilities in the world, so it makes sense that IBM is still a powerhouse of large-scale business hardware offerings—specifically mainframe computers, servers, and infrastructure.

Google began as an online search firm, but it now offers more than 50 internetservices and products from e-mail and online documentation for mobile phones andtablets computers. In addition, acquisition of Motorola Dynamics has put itin a position to sell hardware as a mobile phone. StartupTalky Krishna kumar. Microsoft and Apple are the two largest companies in the world.

The business model of Apple is based on customer-centric devices and innovation. HCL is a pioneer of moderncomputing with many firsts to its credit, including the introduction of the8-bit microprocessor-based computer in , well before its glo….

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