Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: IBM Downturn Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2021 12:46:32 -1000 Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 150 Message-ID: <87lf20lx6f.fsf@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="0b8a57472a0a6cd4e21c98febee4de23"; logging-data="14270"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19W+jlkkAtWUXBpGivV5nG717GRY4g2++s=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.2 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:M6Nxey/DKERd9/UFW2320kTIm5k= sha1:+VJoftymjUeVCDenDSO+bRkBgXE= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:219667 The seeds for IBM downturn were sown as Future System was failing ... during the FS period in the 1st half of the 70s (complete different and completely replace 370), 370 work was being shutdown ... the lack of new IBM 370 products in the period is credited with giving clone 370 markers their market foothold. I continued to do 360/370 work all through the period and even periodically ridicule FS (which wasn't exactly a career enhancing activity). from Ferguson & Morris, "Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World", Time Books, 1993 .... reference to the "Future System" project 1st half of the 70s: and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr of free and vigorous debate was replaced with *SYNCOPHANCY* and *MAKE NO WAVES* under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in the shadow of defeat ... But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrong headedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive. ... other FS detail http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm note above also mentions Amdahl had left IBM before FS and shortly after ACS was shutdown ... executives were afraid that it might advance state-of-the-art too fast and IBM would loose control of the market ... following mentions some ACS features that don't show up until more than 20yrs later in ES/9000 https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html so some seeds of the downfall may have have been sown with killing of ACS. In late 70s and early 80s, I was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid/late 80s). Jim Gray left IBM research in fall of 1980 (palming some number of things on me) for Tandem and we would periodically visit him. Internal online computer conferencing really took off after I distributed Gray trip report spring of 1981 ... some claims that 25,000 IBMers were reading. Folklore is that when corporate executive committee were told about it, 5of6 wanted to fire me. From IBMJargon: Tandem Memos - n. Something constructive but hard to control; a fresh of breath air (sic). That's another Tandem Memos. A phrase to worry middle management. It refers to the computer-based conference (widely distributed in 1981) in which many technical personnel expressed dissatisfaction with the tools available to them at that time, and also constructively criticized the way products were [are] developed. The memos are required reading for anyone with a serious interest in quality products. If you have not seen the memos, try reading the November 1981 Datamation summary. from "Tandem Memos" Executive summary (along with about 300 pages printed from the memos, along with the executive summary and summary of the summeary, packaged in TANDEM 3-ring binders and sent to corporate executive committee) : PREFACE This summary is an attempt to extract from the "Tandem memos" those points which seem worthy of management attention, emphasizing those points for which a clear plan of action can be recommended. Since this summary is less than 5% as long as the original documents, some points worthy of mention are inevitably left out I have done my best to represent the discussion as accurately as possible. Occasionally, I have added comments which are not actually present in the "Tandem memos", but are consonant with them and, in most cases, were made in other contexts by the participants The decisions of what material and topics to include in this summary are strictly my own. I apologize if something of significance has been omitted. The intention was to include those comments which seemed to be most widely held, most globally relevant, and most amenable to action by management SUMMARY OF THE SUMMARY To give the reader an overview of what follows, I include here the most important points. It is impossible to do justice to the entire discussion in such a short summary of a summary * The perception of many technical people in IBM is that the company is rapidly heading for disaster. Furthermore, people fear that this movement will not be appreciated until it begins more directly to affect revenue, at which point recovery may be impossible * Many technical people are extremely frustrated with their management and with the way things are going in IBM. To an increasing extent, people are reacting to this by leaving IBM Most of the contributors to the present discussion would prefer to stay with IBM and see the problems rectified. However, there is increasing skepticism that correction is possible or likely, given the apparent lack of commitment by management to take action * There is a widespread perception that IBM management has failed to understand how to manage technical people and high-technology development in an extremely competitive environment. ... snip ... aka, which comes to pass a decade later (1981-1992) ... reorging into "13 baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company (gone behind paywall, mostly free at wayback machine) http://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html may also work http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,977353-1,00.html we had left but get a call from bowels of Armonk (IBM corporate hdqtrs) asking if we could help with the breakup of the company. Lots of business units were using MOUs to leverage supplier contracts in other units, which would be in different corporations after the breakup. All these MOUs would have to be cataloged and turned into their own contracts (before we get started, a new CEO is brought in and reverses the breakup). We also get email from former coworkers complaining that top executives weren't paying attention to running the business but totally focused on moving expenses from the following year to the current year. We ask our contact in Armonk. He says top executives won't get a bonus for the current year, but the way the bonus plan is written if they can move enough expenses from the following year, nudging it even slightly into the black, they will get a bonus more than twice as large as any previous bonus (aka, getting rewarded for having taken the company into the red) A little after "Tandem Memos", I was introduced to John Boyd and would sponsor his briefings at IBM. Note in 89/90, the Commandant of the Marine Corps leverages Boyd for a Corps make-over ... at a time when IBM was desperately in need of a make-over (two organizations had about same # of people) Note, in the late 80s a senior disk engineer had got a talk scheduled at annual, world-wide, internal communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance ... but opened the talk with statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had strategic ownership of everything that crossed the datacenter wall and were fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing. The disk division was seeing drop in disk sales with customers moving to platforms more distributed computing friendly. The disk division came up with a number of solutions, but they were constantly being vetoed by the communication group with their strategic stranglehold on datacenters. The communication group datacenter stranglehold not only affected disk sales but much of the rest of IBM computing business. An European IBM executive view of the crises (The rise and fall of IBM) https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970