International Business Machines Corporation
International Business Machines Corporation
Armonk, New York 10504
U.S.A.
(914) 765-1900
Fax: (914) 765-4190
Public Company
Incorporated: 1910 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
Employees: 383,200
Sales: $62.71 billion
Stock Exchanges: New York Midwest Pacific Philadelphia Cincinnati Boston Paris Frankfurt Vienna Tokyo Zurich Geneva Basel Montreal Toronto Brussels London Amsterdam Lausanne
International Business Machines (IBM) may truly be said to have attained a place of mythic importance in contemporary culture. Because of its enormous size, power, and success, and because it sells that most modern of tools, the computer, IBM has come to symbolize modern life itself for many. The company’s nickname—Big Blue—is a phrase that may have been originally suggested by IBM’s army of uniformly dressed salesmen, whose dark suits and white shirts were required by the firm’s leader, Thomas Watson Sr. Watson transformed a company called Calculating-Tabulating-Recording into a world leader in information technology known as IBM.
Calculating-Tabulating-Recording (CTR) was formed in 1910 by Charles Ranlett Flint. The so-called “father of trusts” merged two of his earlier creations, International Time Recording Company and Computing Scale Company of America, with a third, unrelated entity known as Tabulating Machine Company. The latter had been founded some years before by Herman Hollerith, an engineer who invented a machine that would sort and count cards based on the pattern of holes punched in each.
Hollerith had supplied the U.S. Census Bureau with these machines for use in the 1890 and 1900 census, and the device was quickly adopted by other organizations in need of rapid computation. As perfected, the tabulator operated in a simple three-step manner. Small cards were punched in a variety of patterns, each one representing a different category of the subject under survey; the assembled cards were run through a sorting machine, set to distribute them according to relevant categories; at the same time an accounting machine kept track of the results, and, in the later, more sophisticated models, performed any number of calculations based on those results.
Such a machine found increasing use in a society evolving rapidly into a largely urban, commercial matrix, where the ability to monitor and analyze large sums was critical to business profitability. Flint was less interested in Tabulating Machine Company than in the other two members of his new creation, which in any case got off to a slow start and threatened to stay that way.
In 1914 Flint hired a new general manager for CTR. Thomas Watson was already a well known, if not notorious, figure in U.S. business. Watson had gone to work for John Patterson at National Cash Register (NCR) in 1895 and quickly proven himself a quintessential “NCR man”: bright, aggressive, and loyal, he rose to the position of general sales manager for the entire company in 1910. At Patterson’s order, Watson then set up a company whose supposed purpose was to compete with NCR. The company’s real purpose, however was to eliminate NCR’s competitors. In 1912, along with John Patterson, his former employer at NCR, Watson was convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act on behalf of the company. Shortly after Watson and Patterson were convicted, Patterson fired Watson. Watson was then hired by Charles Flint. Watson never admitted any wrongdoing, and in 1915 the government dropped its case against NCR after the company became famous for its help during a catastrophic flood in its hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The threat of a jail sentence now past, Watson was made president of CTR.
Watson understood immediately that his company’s future lay in its tabulating division, and it was there that he committed most of his energy and resources. Scales and clocks were useful items, but the United States would soon be a nation of office workers in need of basic office tools like the tabulator. Watson hired many ex-NCR men and patterned his own well-disciplined sales force along NCR lines—intense competition was combined with equally intense corporate loyalty; salespeople were courteous, spotlessly dressed, and, above all, understood that CTR sold not a product but a service. A completed sale was just the beginning of the salesman’s job; in effect, he had to become a partner in the customer’s business, and together they designed a tabulating system for that particular organization.
As was the case at NCR, Watson’s sales force became a key factor in his company’s success. In a pattern that still holds today, many customers remained loyal because they trusted and to an extent relied upon the CTR salesman’s knowledge of their business. Numerous, well-trained, devoted, and well-paid, the CTR sales staff actually dominated the company, ensuring that new technology followed upon the needs of customers and not the reverse. Throughout IBM’s history—the company’s name was changed to International Business Machines Corporation in 1924—it has been not technological leadership but massive and talented sales energy that has kept the company ahead of competitors.
Watson pushed hard in the late 1910s to make CTR the industry leader in tabulating design. He gradually turned back all boardroom challenges to his plans, and by 1925 was both chief executive officer and chief operating officer. In the ten years since Watson’s arrival, CTR sales had shot up from $4.2 million to a temporary peak of $13 million in 1919, weathered a minor crises in the early 1920s, and now stood poised to ride the booming U.S. economy. The newly named IBM faced some formidable competitors—Remington Rand, Burroughs, and NCR, among others—but from the beginning Watson steered clear of mass-produced, low-priced office products like typewriters and simple adding machines, concentrating instead on the design of large tabulating systems for governmental and private customers. With superior products and a more dedicated salesforce, by 1928 IBM was the clear leader in its specialized field and a force in office technology as a whole.
The company was remarkably profitable. In 1928, for example, its profit of $5.3 million was nearly as great as that of giant Remington Rand, though the latter more than tripled IBM’s sales of $19.7 million. In 1939, IBM’s profit of $9.1 million exceeded that of the next four companies combined, and was an impressive 23% of sales.
IBM’s business was particularly profitable for several reasons: the company focused on large-scale, custom-built systems, an inherently less competitive segment of the business; IBM’s policy of leasing, rather than selling, its machines to customers was very profitable; IBM maintained cross-licensing agreements dating back to the mid-1910s with its chief competitor, Remington Rand, preventing the two leaders from falling into competitive squabbles. The company required its customers to buy IBM cards for their IBM tabulators. The cards could not be read by any other machine. This last condition made it almost impossible for IBM customers to try other products. With literally millions of such cards already punched, IBM’s clients tended to stay put.
The U.S. government filed a suit in 1932 alleging that the IBM-Remington Rand cross-licensing agreement and IBM’s exclusive punch card design were anticompetitive. In 1936, after learning that IBM sold nearly 85% of all keypunch, tabulating, and accounting equipment in the United States, the Supreme Court ordered IBM to release its customers from all such card restrictions. The Court’s decision had little impact on the company’s growth, however. Even the Great Depression did not check IBM’s progress, as most cash-pressed companies needed more numerical information not less. In addition President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created a vast federal bureaucracy in need of heavy-duty calculators made by IBM. In 1935, at the same time the Justice Department was pursuing its case against IBM, the newly formed Social Security Administration placed an order with the company for over 400 accounting machines and 1,200 keypunchers. The pattern was clear; modern society rested on massive organizations, which required machines capable of massive calculations, which were made by IBM. By the end of the 1930s Thomas Watson was enjoying praise for his enlightened employee relations as well as for his “thinking machines.”
During World War II both private and governmental demand for IBM tabulators increased. The machines were needed to monitor the manufacture and movement of vast resources. Sales boomed, more than tripling to $141.7 million in five years. The war offered IBM another opportunity, less immediately exciting but in the long run of far greater importance. The armed forces needed high-speed calculators to solve a number of military problems relating to ballistics and, later, the development of the atomic bomb. Partly as a result, IBM helped build what might be called the world’s first computer, the Mark I. This machine was similar to the first electromechanical calculators built a few years earlier, which used IBM punch cards to work out long arithmetic sums; the Mark I was also capable of retaining a set of rules which could be applied to any later input. Such a memory is one of the essential differences between the calculator and the computer, and the Mark I represented a great step forward. With 765,000 parts and 500 miles of wire, the Mark I still delivered less power than today’s hand-held calculator.
Computer design evolved rapidly during the war. IBM joined the partnership building the new Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was useful to the military and gave IBM the experience it needed to proceed with its own electronic machine. When the war ended in 1945, interest in ultra-highspeed calculators died down quickly; few outside the army needed a room-sized machine designed to analyze howitzer trajectories. Only a handful of scientists continued refining the advances won by ENIAC, eventually creating a more salable machine called UNIVAC around 1948. When IBM’s old rival, Remington Rand, began to market UNIVAC in 1951, it took a significant lead in the new computer business. IBM continued its typically cautious approach. IBM waited until the new product proved its lasting appeal before leaping into the fray. Since it controlled 85% of the market for which computers were targeted, and because even electronic computers then still used IBM punch cards, Watson was not especially alarmed by Rand’s success.
Thomas Watson Jr., his father’s heir apparent, strongly favored an all-out push into the computer market. By the time Watson Jr. became president in 1952 he had won the struggle with his father and led IBM into an immense research program designed to surpass Rand. The new president staked his reputation, as well as a significant portion of IBM’s assets, on the computer campaign and by 1955 IBM’s new 705 general purpose business computer was a success. By the following year Remington Rand had already lost its lead. It was no surprise that IBM came to dominate in computers so quickly, since at that time the computer business was only a small segment of the office-products market, which IBM continued to control. The 85% of offices using IBM tabulating equipment simply switched over to IBM computers.
In 1949 Thomas Watson’s younger brother, Dick Watson, was also brought into the business. The 30-year-old Dick Watson was named president of IBM World Trade Corporation, the parent company’s new subsidiary for international sales. In 1949 World Trade had sales of only $6.3 million but operated in 58 countries. In the more important of these countries World Trade set up a subsidiary to market IBM products and even do additional research and development. Thus, as the world’s industrial powers awoke to the computer age, they found themselves greeted by IBM. It was not unusual for local IBM units to achieve market domination comparable to that of the parent company in the United States. Only in Japan and the United Kingdom were local competitors able to match IBM’s presence, forcing the latter to settle for around 33% of the market. Barely on the sales map in 1949, World Trade eventually surpassed IBM domestic in total revenue.
Meanwhile, the U.S. computer business filled up with potential rivals. Some of these, like RCA, General Electric, and the newly merged Sperry Rand, were as large as or larger than IBM and should have been able to mount a serious challenge. In every case, however, competitors either lacked an adequate sales organization or were not fully committed to the commercial computer business. RCA, for example, made important contributions to computer technology, but mainly with an eye toward possible applications in its growing television business. Sperry Rand, on the other hand, still controlled the successful UNIVAC machine but was hopelessly behind IBM in sales experience and customer loyalty.
In 1952 the government filed a second, more ambitious antitrust suit against IBM. In 1956 IBM entered into a consent decree which ordered it to divest many of its card-production facilities, sell its machines as well as lease them, submit to certain cross-licensing agreements, and create a subsidiary to compete with itself in the service end of the business. None of these injunctions limited IBM’s success, but the 1957 appearance of a small company called Control Data did.
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a pioneer in niche specialization in the computer world. This tactic seemed to be the only way to compete successfully with IBM. The newcomer made very large, very fast computers for scientific and governmental users in need of maximum crunching power, and after a brief battle, IBM largely ceded the field to CDC. IBM’s bread and butter remained the medium to large business computer.
In 1958 Sperry Rand and Control Data brought out the first second-generation computers, which used transistors instead of vacuum tubes. No sooner had IBM met this challenge with its own line of transistorized machines, than it faced the arrival of the industry’s third generation—integrated circuitry. Once again IBM lagged in technological change as Honeywell and CDC brought out the first integrated circuit units in the early 1960s, but this time Big Blue’s response necessitated a companywide revolution. Integrated circuitry was clearly destined to become the industry standard, and IBM decided to bring out a complete line of such computers. After an unprecedented capital-spending program involving six new plants and many thousands of new workers, the company introduced its 360 line in April 1965. Small, fast, and accompanied by a new set of exclusive software, the 360s were an immediate and lasting success, remaining the worldwide computer leader for more than a decade.
Sperry Rand, GE, Burroughs, RCA, Honeywell, NCR, and Control Data were unable to close the gap between themselves and IBM, which now delivered 65% of all U.S. computers. Control Data filed yet another antitrust suit in 1968, charging that IBM had sold “phantom” computers to its customers to keep them from placing orders for superior CDC products. The government filed its own suit the following year, supporting CDC’s claims and alleging other monopolistic practices. Encouraged by these efforts, IBM’s competitors, big and small, filed 22 similar lawsuits in the next few years. IBM beat back every one of them, however, with one exception. The Justice Department continued its battle for 13 years, until President Ronald Reagan’s administration dropped the suit shortly before a ruling was expected.
Niche specialization was clearly the only way to survive in the face of IBM’s power. In 1960 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) brought out a relatively small, inexpensive computer designed for researchers, effectively creating the micro-computer business. Micros were only a further step in the evolution of the computer, but IBM chose not to enter the market. DEC was soon joined by a host of other micro manufacturers offering a wide range of computers for ever smaller tasks, culminating years later in Apple’s marketing of the personal computer for home use. IBM failed to join this race until 1980, at which late date it was unable to dominate the market, as it does mainframes and minicomputers.
In 1971 Tom Watson retired from IBM after suffering a heart attack. His successor, Frank Cary, remained in charge until 1981, at which time John Opel was named CEO. Under these men and IBM’s present Chairman, John Akers, the 360 line of computers grew into the 370. Sales continued to climb and corporate profit hit $3 billion by 1980. Yet many observers felt that IBM was drifting, and, in 1985, for the first time in 20 years the company’s earnings actually declined a bit.
The mid-1980s brought more steady but unspectacular growth. IBM began to lose sight of customer preferences, and the computer industry became increasingly competitive. In addition, the decade’s biggest opportunity seemed to fizzle before it got started: Integrated services data networks—or the merging of telecommunications and information technology—may result in intense competition between IBM and AT&T. IBM thus took a 16% stake in MCI, one of AT&T’s chief competitors, and in 1985 bought the California-based PBX-maker Rolm for $1.5 billion. Rolm’s PBX, or private branch exchange systems allow very large operations to process hundreds of calls at one time. Three years later, however, it had sold the MCI stock, bartered away much of its Rolm interests, and seemed to be withdrawing from integrated services. Results for the last five years of the 1980s were not encouraging: the firm reported disappointing earnings and cut 37,000 jobs.
IBM remains supreme in larger computers; its 370 mainframe holds about 70% of that market. Critics, however, note that the mainframe market is shrinking relative to other computer businesses, which will leave IBM vulnerable. New companies continue to chip away at Big Blue’s customers. Computers seem to be getting smaller, and are being tailored to customer needs, as more companies explore the advantages of distributed data networks. Furthermore, IBM’s business may be affected by the continued incursion of Japanese manufacturers.
Principal Subsidiaries
IBM Credit Corporation; Satellite Transponder Leasing Corporation; IBM World Trade Corporation.
Further Reading
Sobel, Robert, IBM: Colossus in Transition, New York, Times Books, 1981; DeLamarter, Richard Thomas, Big Blue: IBM’s Use and Abuse of Power, New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986.
—Jonathan Martin
International Business Machines Corporation
International Business Machines Corporation
New Orchard Road
Armonk, New York 10504
U.S.A.
(914) 499-1900
(800) 426-3333
Fax: (914) 765-4190
Web site: http://www.ibm.com
Public Company
Incorporated: 1910 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
Employees: 291,067
Sales: $81.7 billion (1998)
Stock Exchanges: New York Midwest Pacific Philadelphia Cincinnati Boston Paris Frankfurt Vienna Tokyo Zürich Geneva Basel Montreal Toronto Brussels London Amsterdam Lausanne
Ticker Symbol: IBM
NAIC: 334111 Electronic Computer Manufacturing; 334112 Computer Storage Device Manufacturing; 334113 Computer Terminal Manufacturing; 334119 Other Computer Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing; 334613 Magnetic and Optical Recording Media Manufacturing; 541511 Custom Computer Programming Services; 51121 Software Publishers; 541512 Computer Systems Design Services (pt); 51421 Data Processing Services; 541513 Computer Facilities Management Services; 53242 Office Machinery and Equipment Rental and Leasing (pt); 811212 Computer and Office Machine Repair and Maintenance (pt); 334418 Printed Circuit/Electronics Assembly Manufacturing; 33429 Other Communication Equipment Manufacturing; 54169 Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is the largest computer maker in the world. Because of its enormous size, power, and success, and because it sells that most modern of tools, the computer, IBM has come to symbolize modern life itself for many. The company’s nickname—Big Blue—is a phrase that may have been originally suggested by IBM’s army of uniformly dressed salesmen, whose dark suits and white shirts were required by the firm’s leader, Thomas Watson, Sr., who transformed the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) into a world leader in information technology.
Company Origins
CTR was formed in 1910 by Charles Ranlett Flint. The so-called “father of trusts” merged two of his earlier creations, International Time Recording Company and Computing Scale Company of America, with a third, unrelated entity known as Tabulating Machine Company. The latter had been founded some years before by Herman Hollerith, an engineer who invented a machine that would sort and count cards based on the pattern of holes punched in each.
Hollerith had supplied the U.S. Census Bureau with these machines for use in the 1890 and 1900 censuses, and the device was quickly adopted by other organizations in need of rapid computation. As perfected, the tabulator operated in a simple three-step manner. Small cards were punched in a variety of patterns, each one representing a different category of the subject under survey; the assembled cards were run through a sorting machine, set to distribute them according to relevant categories; at the same time an accounting machine kept track of the results, and, in the later, more sophisticated models, performed any number of calculations based on those results.
Such a machine found increasing use in a society evolving rapidly into a largely urban, commercial matrix, where the ability to monitor and analyze large sums was critical to business profitability. Flint was less interested in Tabulating Machine Company than in the other two members of his new creation, which in any case got off to a slow start and threatened to stay that way.
In 1914 Flint hired a new general manager for CTR. Thomas Watson was already a well-known, if not notorious, figure in U.S. business. Watson had gone to work for John Patterson at National Cash Register (NCR) in 1895 and quickly proven himself a quintessential “NCR man”; bright, aggressive, and loyal, he rose to the position of general sales manager for the entire company in 1910. At Patterson’s order, Watson then set up a company whose supposed purpose was to compete with NCR. The company’s real purpose, however was to eliminate NCR’s competitors. In 1912, along with John Patterson, his former employer at NCR, Watson was convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act on behalf of the company. Shortly after Watson and Patterson were convicted, Patterson fired Watson. Watson was then hired by Charles Flint. Watson never admitted any wrongdoing, and in 1915 the government dropped its case against NCR after the company became famous for its help during a catastrophic flood in its hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The threat of a jail sentence now past, Watson was made president of CTR.
Watson understood immediately that his company’s future lay in its tabulating division, and it was there that he committed most of his energy and resources. Scales and clocks were useful items, but the United States would soon be a nation of office workers in need of basic office tools like the tabulator. Watson hired many ex-NCR men and patterned his own well-disciplined sales force along NCR lines—intense competition was combined with equally intense corporate loyalty, and salespeople were courteous, spotlessly dressed, and, above all, understood that CTR sold not a product but a service. A completed sale was just the beginning of the salesman’s job; in effect, he had to become a partner in the customer’s business, and together they designed a tabulating system for that particular organization.
As was the case at NCR, Watson’s sales force became a key factor in his company’s success. In a pattern that still holds today, many customers remained loyal because they trusted and to an extent relied upon the CTR salesman’s knowledge of their business. Numerous, well-trained, devoted, and well-paid, the CTR sales staff actually dominated the company, ensuring that new technology followed upon the needs of customers and not the reverse. Throughout IBM’s history (the company’s name was changed to International Business Machines Corporation in 1924) massive and talented sales energy, rather than technological leadership, has kept the company ahead of competitors.
Watson pushed hard in the late 1910s to make CTR the industry leader in tabulating design. He gradually turned back all boardroom challenges to his plans, and by 1925 was both chief executive officer and chief operating officer. In the ten years following Watson’s arrival, CTR sales shot up from $4.2 million to a temporary peak of $13 million in 1919, weathered a minor crisis in the early 1920s, and stood poised to ride the booming U.S. economy. The newly named IBM faced some formidable competitors—Remington Rand, Burroughs, and NCR, among others—but from the beginning Watson steered clear of mass-produced, low-priced office products like typewriters and simple adding machines, concentrating instead on the design of large tabulating systems for governmental and private customers. With superior products and a more dedicated sales force, by 1928 IBM was the clear leader in its specialized field and a force in office technology as a whole.
Booming Sales: 1920s–50s
The company was remarkably profitable. In 1928, for example, its profit of $5.3 million was nearly as great as that of giant Remington Rand, though the latter more than tripled IBM’s sales of $19.7 million. In 1939, IBM’s profit of $9.1 million exceeded that of the next four companies combined, and was an impressive 23 percent of sales.
IBM’s business was particularly profitable for several reasons: the company focused on large-scale, custom-built systems, an inherently less competitive segment of the business; IBM’s policy of leasing, rather than selling, its machines to customers was very profitable; and IBM maintained cross-licensing agreements dating back to the mid-1910s with its chief competitor, Remington Rand, preventing the two leaders from falling into competitive squabbles. The company required its customers to buy IBM cards for their IBM tabulators. The cards could not be read by any other machine. This last condition made it almost impossible for IBM customers to try other products. With literally millions of such cards already punched, IBM’s clients tended to stay put.
The U.S. government filed a suit in 1932 alleging that the IBM-Remington Rand cross-licensing agreement and IBM’s exclusive punch card design were anti-competitive. In 1936, after learning that IBM sold nearly 85 percent of all keypunch, tabulating, and accounting equipment in the United States, the Supreme Court ordered IBM to release its customers from all such card restrictions. The Court’s decision had little impact on the company’s growth, however. Even the Great Depression did not check IBM’s progress, as most cash-pressed companies needed more numerical information, not less.
In addition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal had created a vast federal bureaucracy in need of the very calculating machines IBM manufactured. In 1935, at the same time the Justice Department was pursuing its case against IBM, the newly formed Social Security Administration placed an order with the company for more than 400 accounting machines and 1,200 keypunchers. The pattern was clear; modern society rested on massive organizations that required machines capable of massive calculations, which were made by IBM. By the end of the 1930s Thomas Watson was enjoying praise for his enlightened employee relations as well as for his “thinking machines.”
Company Perspectives:
At IBM, we strive to lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics. We translate these advanced technologies into value for our customers through our professional solutions and services businesses worldwide.
During World War II both private and governmental demand for IBM tabulators increased. The machines were needed to monitor the manufacture and movement of vast resources. Sales boomed, more than tripling to $141.7 million in five years. The war offered IBM another opportunity, less immediately exciting but in the long run of far greater importance. The armed forces needed high-speed calculators to solve a number of military problems relating to ballistics and, later, the development of the atomic bomb. Partly as a result, IBM helped build what might be called the world’s first computer, the Mark I. This machine was similar to the first electromechanical calculators built a few years earlier, which used IBM punch cards to work out long arithmetic sums; the Mark I was also capable of retaining a set of rules which could be applied to any later input. Such a memory is one of the essential differences between the calculator and the computer, and the Mark I represented a great step forward. With 765,000 parts and 500 miles of wire, the Mark I still delivered less power than today’s hand-held calculator.
Entering the Early Computer Market
Computer design evolved rapidly during the war. IBM joined the partnership building the new Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was useful to the military and gave IBM the experience it needed to proceed with its own electronic machine. When the war ended in 1945, interest in ultra-high-speed calculators died down quickly; few outside the Army needed a room-sized machine designed to analyze howitzer trajectories. Only a handful of scientists continued refining the advances won by ENIAC, eventually creating a more saleable machine called UNIVAC around 1948. When IBM’s old rival, Remington Rand, began to market UNIVAC in 1951, it took a significant lead in the new computer business. IBM continued its typically cautious approach. IBM waited until the new product proved its lasting appeal before leaping into the fray. Since it controlled 85 percent of the market for which computers were targeted, and because even electronic computers then still used IBM punch cards, Watson was not especially alarmed by Rand’s success.
Heir apparent Thomas Watson, Jr. strongly favored an all-out push into the computer market. By the time he became president in 1952, he had won the power struggle with his father and led IBM into an immense research program designed to surpass Rand. The new president staked his reputation—as well as a significant portion of IBM’s assets—on the computer campaign, which had paid off by 1955 with the success of IBM’s new 705 general purpose business computer. By the following year Remington Rand had already lost its lead. It was no surprise that IBM came to dominate in computers so quickly, since at that time the computer business was only a small segment of the officeproducts market, which IBM continued to control. The 85 percent of offices using IBM tabulating equipment simply switched over to IBM computers.
In 1949 Thomas Watson’s younger brother, Dick Watson, was also brought into the business. The 30-year-old Dick Watson was named president of IBM World Trade Corporation, the parent company’s new subsidiary for international sales. In 1949 World Trade had sales of only $6.3 million but operated in 58 countries. In the more important of these countries World Trade set up a subsidiary to market IBM products and even do additional research and development. As the world’s industrial powers awoke to the computer age, they found themselves greeted by IBM. It was not unusual for local IBM units to achieve market domination comparable to that of the parent company in the United States. Only in Japan and the United Kingdom were local competitors able to match IBM’s presence, forcing the latter to settle for around 33 percent of the market. Barely on the sales map in 1949, World Trade eventually surpassed IBM domestic in total revenue.
Meanwhile, the U.S. computer business filled up with potential rivals. Some of these, like RCA, General Electric, and the newly merged Sperry Rand, were as large as or larger than IBM and should have been able to mount a serious challenge. In every case, however, competitors either lacked an adequate sales organization or were not fully committed to the commercial computer business. RCA, for example, made important contributions to computer technology, but mainly with an eye toward possible applications in its growing television business. Sperry Rand, on the other hand, still controlled the successful UNIVAC machine but was hopelessly behind IBM in sales experience and customer loyalty.
In 1952 the government filed a second, more ambitious antitrust suit against IBM. In 1956 IBM entered into a consent decree which ordered it to divest many of its card-production facilities, sell its machines as well as lease them, submit to certain cross-licensing agreements, and create a subsidiary to compete with itself in the service end of the business. None of these injunctions limited IBM’s success, but the 1957 appearance of a small company called Control Data did.
IBM Computer Dominance Through the 1970s
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a pioneer in niche specialization in the computer world. This tactic seemed to be the only way to compete successfully with IBM. The newcomer made very large, very fast computers for scientific and governmental users in need of maximum crunching power, and after a brief battle, IBM largely ceded the field to CDC. IBM’s bread and butter remained the medium to large business computer.
In 1958 Sperry Rand and Control Data brought out the first second-generation computers, which used transistors instead of vacuum tubes. No sooner had IBM met this challenge with its own line of transistorized machines, than it faced the arrival of the industry’s third generation—integrated circuitry. Once again IBM lagged in technological change as Honeywell and CDC brought out the first integrated circuit units in the early 1960s, but this time Big Blue’s response necessitated a companywide revolution. Integrated circuitry was clearly destined to become the industry standard, and IBM decided to bring out a complete line of such computers. After an unprecedented capital-spending program involving six new plants and many thousands of new workers, the company introduced its 360 line in April 1965. Small, fast, and accompanied by a new set of exclusive software, the 360s were an immediate and lasting success, remaining the worldwide computer leader for more than a decade.
Sperry Rand, GE, Burroughs, RCA, Honeywell, NCR, and Control Data were unable to close the gap between themselves and IBM, which now delivered 65 percent of all U.S. computers. Control Data filed yet another antitrust suit in 1968, charging that IBM had sold “phantom” computers to its customers to keep them from placing orders for superior CDC products. The government filed its own suit the following year, supporting CDC’s claims and alleging other monopolistic practices. Encouraged by these efforts, IBM’s competitors, big and small, filed 22 similar lawsuits in the next few years. IBM beat back every one of them, however, with one exception. The U.S. Justice Department continued its battle for 13 years, until President Ronald Reagan’s administration dropped the suit shortly before a ruling was expected.
Niche specialization was clearly the only way to survive in the face of IBM’s power. In 1960 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) brought out a relatively small, inexpensive computer designed for researchers, effectively creating the microcomputer business. Micros were only a further step in the evolution of the computer, but IBM chose not to enter the market. DEC was soon joined by a host of other micro manufacturers offering a wide range of computers for ever smaller tasks, culminating years later in Apple’s marketing of the personal computer for home use. IBM failed to join this race until 1980, at which late date it was unable to dominate the market, as it did mainframes and minicomputers.
In 1971 Tom Watson retired from IBM after suffering a heart attack. His successor, Frank Cary, remained in charge until 1981, at which time John Opel was named CEO. Under these men and IBM’s present chairman, John Akers, the 360 line of computers grew into the 370, sales continued to climb, and in the golden year of 1984 corporate earnings reached a staggering $6.6 billion on revenue of $46 billion. With a return on shareholders equity of 25 percent, IBM was the unchallenged favorite of Wall Street and perceived by many in Washington as the only U.S. company able to hold its own against Japanese competition. The firm was profiled in a best-selling book as a paradigm of business excellence.
Losing Ground in the 1980s
The years following were not nearly so kind to IBM. A drop in earnings for 1985 was dismissed as inevitable after the glory year of 1984, but by the end of the decade financial analysts were convinced that IBM was in need of an overhaul. Revenue growth was slow and earnings weak by IBM standards, resulting in a long decline in the company’s stock price, and its share of the worldwide computer market had fallen from 36 percent to 23 percent. Chairman Akers responded by cutting his workforce by 32,000 (from a 1985 peak of 405,000) and urged a return to IBM’s traditional strength in marketing and customer relations. After a good year in 1990, however, revenue in 1991 fell for the first time since the 1940s and Akers was widely quoted as saying that the company faced a crisis.
By historical standards, he was correct: Big Blue was losing ground. The dip in revenues could be explained as part of the severe 1990–91 recession that took its toll on the entire computer industry, but clearly IBM was no longer the juggernaut it had been during most of its history. Underlying its sluggish growth and net was a fundamental change in the nature of the computer industry, and that was change itself, the continually accelerating rate of technological breakthrough in the world of data processing. So long as computers had remained primarily large and very expensive machines designed for number crunching (mainframes), it was possible for IBM to keep its dominant position by simply building bigger and faster machines.
The increasing power of semiconductor chips changed all of that, however; computers became smaller and were applied to a greatly broadened range of tasks. The mini, micro, and work station technologies all tended to undercut the value of monolithic mains, and independent breakthroughs now tended to focus on software and the crucial problem of networks, the means by which computers communicate with each other and with other forms of data transmission such as telephone and video. Sheer computing power remained important, of course, but it became available in a far greater range of machines at prices that dropped every week.
Given these changes, IBM faced a vastly more complex marketplace both in terms of niches and in the number of its competitors around the world. A wide consensus of observers agreed that IBM’s enormous size was a drawback in the quicksilver markets of the 1990s, and in November 1991 Chairman Akers announced the dawn of a new era at the company. Each division of IBM would become a semi-detached business, responsible for its own decisions and bottom-line results. The details of this centrifugal structure transformed IBM into becoming a type of holding company with possibly dozens of discrete operating units under its loose administration. It was hoped that IBM’s PC (personal computer) division, for example, would be better able to respond to customer needs and a changing marketplace than when it was forced to take its decisions to company headquarters before acting; and similarly with IBM’s mains, minis, software, maintenance, and the many other parts of this $70 billion-per-year corporation.
New Management in the Mid-1990s
Akers had sold the copier division to Kodak in 1988 and followed up in 1991 with the sale of Lexmark, IBM’s typewriter, personal printer, keyboard, and supplies business. The divestiture plan had not progressed far, however, when Akers was fired in 1993 and replaced by Lou Gerstner, former CEO of RJR Nabisco. Gerstner scrapped the plan and set about revitalizing the company.
Turning IBM’s size and diversity to its advantage, Gerstner expanded the company’s small services division, making it a place customers could come for network solutions. By recommending products appropriate for each customer rather than simply pushing IBM goods, Global Services grew rapidly. By 1995 it surpassed Electronic Data Systems (EDS) to become the largest computer services business in the world.
One of the divisions slated to be sold in the divestiture plan was IBM Research, notorious for its long-term research into technologies that never were translated into saleable products. With an $8.9 billion loss in 1993, IBM was searching for costs to cut. Gerstner, however, refused to sell off the division, although he did trim the $6 billion budget by $1 billion. Researchers were also instructed to spend more time working directly with customers, focusing on solutions for real customer problems. The changes led to the resignation of many of the company’s scientists. Despite the new focus on the bottom line, the research division continued to lead the industry in patents each year through the 1990s.
By 1994 Gerstner’s turnaround strategy was already bearing fruit: The company posted a profit for the first time since 1990. IBM was helped in its recovery in the mid-1990s by the massive growth of the Internet. Although the company abandoned its browser and sold its Prodigy online service, the company benefited from the Internet boom through sales of the big servers needed to run it. IBM also began helping customers move onto the Internet by helping them create web sites and establishing e-commerce.
In the mid-1990s IBM moved into new areas of the computing industry. In 1994 it signed an agreement with Cyrix to manufacture its computer chips. The following year it purchased Lotus Development, a software company best known for its office software, for $3.5 billion. IBM saw the company’s Notes group ware, designed to help a company’s staff communicate more effectively, as helpful in its foray into networked desktop computing. Remaining at its Boston headquarters, Lotus continued as an independently run subsidiary, with very little interference from IBM. With IBM’s resources and distribution network supporting Lotus, Notes users rose from two million in 1995 to 22 million by 1998. IBM benefited by including the Lotus software in a package of applications called eSuite. In 1996 IBM gave a boost to its software planning for networks by purchasing Tivoli Systems Inc., which specialized in creating tools for network management.
By 1996 IBM’s recovery seemed solid, with a rise in its market value of $50 billion since 1993. The company’s image got a boost in 1997 when its computer Deep Blue won a six-game chess match against World Class Champion Garry Kasparov. The computer, which used huge amounts of parallel processing, could evaluate 200 million chess moves a second, a processing capability the company hoped could be used in such endeavors as weather forecasting and modeling financial data.
IBM continued to expand via new product development and acquisitions through the late 1990s. In 1997 the company bought Unison Software, which specialized in managing computer systems, and in 1998 purchased CommQuest Technologies, a designer and manufacturer of wireless communications chips. Other smaller purchases included a majority holding in site development software company NetObjects in 1998 and NUMA systems expert Sequent Computer Systems in 1999.
The company’s shift to providing services had progressed well by the late 1990s. Services accounted for 29 percent of IBM’s revenues in 1998 and 39 percent of pretax profits.
Principal Subsidiaries
CAD AM Inc.; Lotus Development Corporation; Tivoli Systems, Inc.; IBM Personal Computer Company; Resource Inc.; Compagnie IBM France, S.A.; IBM Canada Ltd.; IBM Credit Corporation; Unison Software, Inc.; WTC Insurance Corporation.
Principal Divisions
IBM Application Solutions; IBM Enterprise Systems; IBM Personal Systems; IBM Programming Systems; IBM Real Estate & Construction Division; IBM Research Division; IBM Systems Integration Division; IBM Technology Products.
Further Reading
“Blue Is the Colour,” Economist, June 6, 1998.
DeLamarter, Richard Thomas, Big Blue: IBM’s Use and Abuse of Power, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986.
Kirkpatrick, David, “IBM: From Big Blue Dinosaur to E-Business Animal,” Fortune, April 26, 1999, pp. 116–27.
“The New IBM,” Business Week, December 16, 1991.
Sobel, Robert, IBM: Colossus in Transition, New York: Times Books, 1981.
Watson, Thomas J., Jr., Father, Son, and Company: My Life at IBM and Beyond, New York: Bantam Books, 1990.
—Jonathan Martin
—updated by Susan Windisch Brown
International Business Machines Corporation
International Business Machines Corporation
Armonk, New York 10504
U.S.A.
(800) 426-3333
Fax: (914) 765-4190
Public Company
Incorporated: 1910 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
Employees: 344,000
Sales: $64.8 billion
Stock Exchanges: New York Midwest Pacific Philadelphia Cincinnati Boston Paris Frankfurt Vienna Tokyo Zürich Geneva Basel Montreal Toronto Brussels London Amsterdam Lausanne
International Business Machines (IBM) may truly be said to have attained a place of mythic importance in contemporary culture. Because of its enormous size, power, and success, and because it sells that most modern of tools, the computer, IBM has come to symbolize modern life itself for many. The company’s nickname—Big Blue—is a phrase that may have been originally suggested by IBM’s army of uniformly dressed salesmen, whose dark suits and white shirts were required by the firm’s leader, Thomas Watson, Sr., who transformed the Calculating-Tabulating-Record-ing Company into a world leader in information technology.
Calculating-Tabulating-Recording (CTR) was formed in 1910 by Charles Ranlett Flint. The so-called “father of trusts” merged two of his earlier creations, International Time Recording Company and Computing Scale Company of America, with a third, unrelated entity known as Tabulating Machine Company. The latter had been founded some years before by Herman Hollerith, an engineer who invented a machine that would sort and count cards based on the pattern of holes punched in each.
Hollerith had supplied the U.S. Census Bureau with these machines for use in the 1890 and 1900 census, and the device was quickly adopted by other organizations in need of rapid computation. As perfected, the tabulator operated in a simple three-step manner. Small cards were punched in a variety of patterns, each one representing a different category of the subject under survey; the assembled cards were run through a sorting machine, set to distribute them according to relevant categories; at the same time an accounting machine kept track of the results, and, in the later, more sophisticated models, performed any number of calculations based on those results.
Such a machine found increasing use in a society evolving rapidly into a largely urban, commercial matrix, where the ability to monitor and analyze large sums was critical to business profitability. Flint was less interested in Tabulating Machine Company than in the other two members of his new creation, which in any case got off to a slow start and threatened to stay that way.
In 1914 Flint hired a new general manager for CTR. Thomas Watson was already a well-known, if not notorious, figure in U.S. business. Watson had gone to work for John Patterson at National Cash Register (NCR) in 1895 and quickly proven himself a quintessential “NCR man”; bright, aggressive, and loyal, he rose to the position of general sales manager for the entire company in 1910. At Patterson’s order, Watson then set up a company whose supposed purpose was to compete with NCR. The company’s real purpose, however was to eliminate NCR’s competitors. In 1912, along with John Patterson, his former employer at NCR, Watson was convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act on behalf of the company. Shortly after Watson and Patterson were convicted, Patterson fired Watson. Watson was then hired by Charles Flint. Watson never admitted any wrongdoing, and in 1915 the government dropped its case against NCR after the company became famous for its help during a catastrophic flood in its hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The threat of a jail sentence now past, Watson was made president of CTR.
Watson understood immediately that his company’s future lay in its tabulating division, and it was there that he committed most of his energy and resources. Scales and clocks were useful items, but the United States would soon be a nation of office workers in need of basic office tools like the tabulator. Watson hired many ex-NCR men and patterned his own well-disciplined sales force along NCR lines—intense competition was combined with equally intense corporate loyalty, and salespeople were courteous, spotlessly dressed, and, above all, understood that CTR sold not a product but a service. A completed sale was just the beginning of the salesman’s job; in effect, he had to become a partner in the customer’s business, and together they designed a tabulating system for that particular organization.
As was the case at NCR, Watson’s sales force became a key factor in his company’s success. In a pattern that still holds today, many customers remained loyal because they trusted and to an extent relied upon the CTR salesman’s knowledge of their business. Numerous, well-trained, devoted, and well-paid, the CTR sales staff actually dominated the company, ensuring that new technology followed upon the needs of customers and not the reverse. Throughout IBM’s history—the company’s name was changed to International Business Machines Corporation in 1924—it has not been technological leadership but massive and talented sales energy that has kept the company ahead of competitors.
Watson pushed hard in the late 1910s to make CTR the industry leader in tabulating design. He gradually turned back all board room challenges to his plans, and by 1925 was both chief executive officer and chief operating officer. In the ten years following Watson’s arrival, CTR sales shot up from $4.2 million to a temporary peak of $13 million in 1919, weathered a minor crisis in the early 1920s, and stood poised to ride the booming U.S. economy. The newly named IBM faced some formidable competitors—Remington Rand, Burroughs, and NCR (National Cash Register), among others—but from the beginning Watson steered clear of mass-produced, low-priced office products like typewriters and simple adding machines, concentrating instead on the design of large tabulating systems for governmental and private customers. With superior products and a more dedicated sales force, by 1928 IBM was the clear leader in its specialized field and a force in office technology as a whole.
The company was remarkably profitable. In 1928, for example, its profit of $5.3 million was nearly as great as that of giant Remington Rand, though the latter more than tripled IBM’s sales of $19.7 million. In 1939, IBM’s profit of $9.1 million exceeded that of the next four companies combined, and was an impressive 23 percent of sales.
IBM’s business was particularly profitable for several reasons: the company focused on large-scale, custom-built systems, an inherently less competitive segment of the business; IBM’s policy of leasing, rather than selling, its machines to customers was very profitable; and IBM maintained cross-licensing agreements dating back to the mid-1910s with its chief competitor, Remington Rand, preventing the two leaders from falling into competitive squabbles. The company required its customers to buy IBM cards for their IBM tabulators. The cards could not be read by any other machine. This last condition made it almost impossible for IBM customers to try other products. With literally millions of such cards already punched, IBM’s clients tended to stay put.
The U.S. government filed a suit in 1932 alleging that the IBM-Remington Rand cross-licensing agreement and IBM’s exclusive punch card design were anti-competitive. In 1936, after learning that IBM sold nearly 85 percent of all keypunch, tabulating, and accounting equipment in the United States, the Supreme Court ordered IBM to release its customers from all such card restrictions. The Court’s decision had little impact on the company’s growth, however. Even the Great Depression did not check IBM’s progress, as most cash-pressed companies needed more numerical information, not less.
In addition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal had created a vast federal bureaucracy in need of the very calculating machines IBM manufactured. In 1935, at the same time the Justice Department was pursuing its case against IBM, the newly formed Social Security Administration placed an order with the company for more than 400 accounting machines and 1,200 keypunchers. The pattern was clear; modern society rested on massive organizations that required machines capable of massive calculations, which were made by IBM. By the end of the 1930s Thomas Watson was enjoying praise for his enlightened employee relations as well as for his “thinking machines.”
During World War II both private and governmental demand for IBM tabulators increased. The machines were needed to monitor the manufacture and movement of vast resources. Sales boomed, more than tripling to $141.7 million in five years. The war offered IBM another opportunity, less immediately exciting but in the long run of far greater importance. The armed forces needed high-speed calculators to solve a number of military problems relating to ballistics and, later, the development of the atomic bomb. Partly as a result, IBM helped build what might be called the world’s first computer, the Mark I. This machine was similar to the first electromechanical calculators built a few years earlier, which used IBM punch cards to work out long arithmetic sums; the Mark I was also capable of retaining a set of rules which could be applied to any later input. Such a memory is one of the essential differences between the calculator and the computer, and the Mark I represented a great step forward. With 765,000 parts and 500 miles of wire, the Mark I still delivered less power than today’s hand-held calculator.
Computer design evolved rapidly during the war. IBM joined the partnership building the new Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was useful to the military and gave IBM the experience it needed to proceed with its own electronic machine. When the war ended in 1945, interest in ultra-high-speed calculators died down quickly; few outside the army needed a room-sized machine designed to analyze howitzer trajectories. Only a handful of scientists continued refining the advances won by ENIAC, eventually creating a more salable machine called UNIVAC around 1948. When IBM’s old rival, Remington Rand, began to market UNIVAC in 1951, it took a significant lead in the new computer business. IBM continued its typically cautious approach. IBM waited until the new product proved its lasting appeal before leaping into the fray. Since it controlled 85 percent of the market for which computers were targeted, and because even electronic computers then still used IBM punch cards, Watson was not especially alarmed by Rand’s success.
Heir apparent Thomas Watson, Jr., strongly favored an all-out push into the computer market. By the time he became president in 1952, he had won the power struggle with his father and led IBM into an immense research program designed to surpass Rand. The new president staked his reputation—as well as a significant portion of IBM’s assets—on the computer campaign, which had paid off by 1955 with the success of IBM’s new 705 general purpose business computer. By the following year Remington Rand had already lost its lead. It was no surprise that IBM came to dominate in computers so quickly, since at that time the computer business was only a small segment of the office-products market, which IBM continued to control. The 85 percent of offices using IBM tabulating equipment simply switched over to IBM computers.
In 1949 Thomas Watson’s younger brother, Dick Watson, was also brought into the business. The 30-year-old Dick Watson was named president of IBM World Trade Corporation, the parent company’s new subsidiary for international sales. In 1949 World Trade had sales of only $6.3 million but operated in 58 countries. In the more important of these countries World Trade set up a subsidiary to market IBM products and even do additional research and development. As the world’s industrial powers awoke to the computer age, they found themselves greeted by IBM. It was not unusual for local IBM units to achieve market domination comparable to that of the parent company in the United States. Only in Japan and the United Kingdom were local competitors able to match IBM’s presence, forcing the latter to settle for around 33 percent of the market. Barely on the sales map in 1949, World Trade eventually surpassed IBM domestic in total revenue.
Meanwhile, the U.S. computer business filled up with potential rivals. Some of these, like RCA, General Electric, and the newly merged Sperry Rand, were as large as or larger than IBM and should have been able to mount a serious challenge. In every case, however, competitors either lacked an adequate sales organization or were not fully committed to the commercial computer business. RCA, for example, made important contributions to computer technology, but mainly with an eye toward possible applications in its growing television business. Sperry Rand, on the other hand, still controlled the successful UNIVAC machine but was hopelessly behind IBM in sales experience and customer loyalty.
In 1952 the government filed a second, more ambitious antitrust suit against IBM. In 1956 IBM entered into a consent decree which ordered it to divest many of its card-production facilities, sell its machines as well as lease them, submit to certain cross-licensing agreements, and create a subsidiary to compete with itself in the service end of the business. None of these injunctions limited IBM’s success, but the 1957 appearance of a small company called Control Data did.
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a pioneer in niche specialization in the computer world. This tactic seemed to be the only way to compete successfully with IBM. The newcomer made very large, very fast computers for scientific and governmental users in need of maximum crunching power, and after a brief battle, IBM largely ceded the field to CDC. IBM’s bread and butter remained the medium to large business computer.
In 1958 Sperry Rand and Control Data brought out the first second-generation computers, which used transistors instead of vacuum tubes. No sooner had IBM met this challenge with its own line of transistorized machines, than it faced the arrival of the industry’s third generation—integrated circuitry. Once again IBM lagged in technological change as Honeywell and CDC brought out the first integrated circuit units in the early 1960s, but this time Big Blue’s response necessitated a company-wide revolution. Integrated circuitry was clearly destined to become the industry standard, and IBM decided to bring out a complete line of such computers. After an unprecedented capital-spending program involving six new plants and many thousands of new workers, the company introduced its 360 line in April 1965. Small, fast, and accompanied by a new set of exclusive software, the 360s were an immediate and lasting success, remaining the worldwide computer leader for more than a decade.
Sperry Rand, GE, Burroughs, RCA, Honeywell, NCR, and Control Data were unable to close the gap between themselves and IBM, which now delivered 65 percent of all U.S. computers. Control Data filed yet another antitrust suit in 1968, charging that IBM had sold “phantom” computers to its customers to keep them from placing orders for superior CDC products. The government filed its own suit the following year, supporting CDC’s claims and alleging other monopolistic practices. Encouraged by these efforts, IBM’s competitors, big and small, filed 22 similar lawsuits in the next few years. IBM beat back every one of them, however, with one exception. The U.S. Justice Department continued its battle for 13 years, until President Ronald Reagan’s administration dropped the suit shortly before a ruling was expected.
Niche specialization was clearly the only way to survive in the face of IBM’s power. In 1960 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) brought out a relatively small, inexpensive computer designed for researchers, effectively creating the microcomputer business. Micros were only a further step in the evolution of the computer, but IBM chose not to enter the market. DEC was soon joined by a host of other micro manufacturers offering a wide range of computers for ever smaller tasks, culminating years later in Apple’s marketing of the personal computer for home use. IBM failed to join this race until 1980, at which late date it was unable to dominate the market, as it does mainframes and minicomputers.
In 1971 Tom Watson retired from IBM after suffering a heart attack. His successor, Frank Cary, remained in charge until 1981, at which time John Opel was named CEO. Under these men and IBM’s present chairman, John Akers, the 360 line of computers grew into the 370, sales continued to climb, and in the golden year of 1984 corporate earnings reached a staggering $6.6 billion on revenue of $46 billion. With a return on shareholders equity of 25 percent, IBM was the unchallenged favorite of Wall Street and perceived by many in Washington as the only American company able to hold its own against Japanese competition. The firm was profiled in a best-selling book as a paradigm of business excellence.
The years following were not nearly so kind to IBM. A drop in earnings for 1985 was dismissed as inevitable after the glory year of 1984, but by the end of the decade financial analysts were convinced that IBM was in need of an overhaul. Revenue growth was slow and earnings weak by IBM standards, resulting in a long decline in the company’s stock price, and its share of the worldwide computer market had fallen from 36 percent to 23 percent. Chairman Akers responded by cutting his work force by 32,000 (from a 1985 peak of 405,000) and urged a return to IBM’s traditional strength in marketing and customer relations. After a good year in 1990, however, revenue in 1991 fell for the first time since the 1940s and Akers was widely quoted as saying that the company faced a crisis.
By historical standards, he was correct: Big Blue was losing ground. The dip in revenues could be explained as part of the severe 1990-91 recession that took its toll on the entire computer industry, but clearly IBM was no longer the juggernaut it had been during most of its history. Underlying its sluggish growth and net was a fundamental change in the nature of the computer industry, and that was change itself, the continually accelerating rate of technological breakthrough in the world of data processing. So long as computers had remained primarily large and very expensive machines designed for number crunching (mainframes), it was possible for IBM to keep its dominant position by simply building bigger and faster machines.
The increasing power of semiconductor chips changed all of that, however; computers became smaller and were applied to a greatly broadened range of tasks. The mini, micro, and work station technologies have all tended to undercut the value of monolithic mains, and independent breakthroughs now tend to focus on software and the crucial problem of networks, the means by which computers communicate with each other and with other forms of data transmission such as telephone and video. Sheer computing power remains important, of course, but it is available in a far greater range of machines at prices that drop every week.
Given these changes, IBM faced a vastly more complex marketplace both in terms of niches and in the number of its competitors around the world. A wide consensus of observers agreed that IBM’s enormous size was a drawback in the quicksilver markets of the 1990s, and in November of 1991 Chairman Akers announced the dawn of a new era at the company. Each division of IBM would become a semidetached business all its own, responsible for its own decisions and bottom-line results. The details of this centrifugal structure transformed IBM into becoming a type of holding company with possibly dozens of discrete operating units under its loose administration. It was hoped that IBM’s PC (personal computer) division, for example, would be better able to respond to customer needs and a changing marketplace than when it was forced to take its decisions to company headquarters before acting; and similarly with IBM’s mains, minis, software, maintenance, and the many other parts of this $70 billion-per-year corporation.
Principal Subsidiaries
IBM Credit Corporation; Satellite Transponder Leasing Corporation; IBM World Trade Corporation.
Further Reading
Sobel, Robert, IBM: Colossus in Transition, New York, Times Books, 1981; DeLamarter, Richard Thomas, Big Blue: IBM’s Use and Abuse of Power, New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986; Watson, Thomas J., Jr., Father, Son, and Company: My Life at IBM and Beyond, Bantam Books, 1990; “The New IBM,” Business Week, December 16, 1991.
—Jonathan Martin
International Business Machines Corporation
International Business Machines Corporation
New Orchard Road
Armonk, New York 10504
U.S.A.
Telephone: (914) 499-1900
Toll Free: (800) 426-3333
Fax: (914) 765-4190
Web site: http://www.ibm.com
Public Company
Incorporated: 1911 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
Employees: 316,303
Sales: $89.1 billion (2003)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol: IBM
NAIC: 334111 Electronic Computer Manufacturing; 334112 Computer Storage Device; 334113 Computer Terminal Manufacturing; 334119 Other Computer Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing; 333313 Office Machinery Manufacturing; 334210 Telephone Apparatus Manufacturing; 334290 Other Communications Equipment Manufacturing; 334613 Magnetic and Optical Recording Media Manufacturing; 333315 Photographic and Photocopying Equipment Manufacturing; 339944 Carbon Paper and Inked Ribbon Manufacturing; 541511 Custom Computer Programming Services; 511210 Software Publishers; 541512 Computer Systems Design Services; 518210 Data Processing and Related Services; 518111 Internet Service Providers; 541513 Computer Facilities Management Services; 532420 Office Equipment Rental and Leasing; 811212 Computer and Office Machine Repair; 541519 Other Computer Related Services; 541613 Marketing Consulting Services; 541612 Human Resource Consulting Services
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is the largest computer maker in the world. Because of its enormous size, power, and success, and because it sells that most modern of tools, the computer, IBM has come to symbolize modern life itself for many. The company's nickname—Big Blue—is a phrase that may have been originally suggested by IBM's army of uniformly dressed salesmen, whose dark suits and white shirts were required by the firm's leader, Thomas Watson, Sr., who transformed the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) into a world leader in information technology.
Company Origins
CTR was formed in 1911 by Charles Runlet Flint. The so-called "father of trusts" merged two of his earlier creations, International Time Recording Company and Computing Scale Company of America, with a third, unrelated entity known as Tabulating Machine Company. The latter had been founded some years before by Herman Hollered, an engineer who invented a machine that would sort and count cards based on the pattern of holes punched in each.
Hollered had supplied the U.S. Census Bureau with these machines for use in the 1890 and 1900 censuses, and the device was quickly adopted by other organizations in need of rapid computation. As perfected, the tabulator operated in a simple three-step manner. Small cards were punched in a variety of patterns, each one representing a different category of the subject under survey; the assembled cards were run through a sorting machine, set to distribute them according to relevant categories; at the same time an accounting machine kept track of the results, and, in the later, more sophisticated models, performed any number of calculations based on those results.
Such a machine found increasing use in a society evolving rapidly into a largely urban, commercial matrix, where the ability to monitor and analyze large sums was critical to business profitability. Flint was less interested in Tabulating Machine Company than in the other two members of his new creation, which in any case got off to a slow start and threatened to stay that way.
In 1914 Flint hired a new general manager for CTR. Thomas Watson was already a well-known, if not notorious, figure in U.S. business. Watson had gone to work for John Patterson at National Cash Register (NCR) in 1895 and quickly proven himself a quintessential "NCR man"; bright, aggressive, and loyal, he rose to the position of general sales manager for the entire company in 1910. At Patterson's order, Watson then set up a company whose supposed purpose was to compete with NCR. The company's real purpose, however, was to eliminate NCR's competitors. In 1912, along with John Patterson, his former employer at NCR, Watson was convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act on behalf of the company. Shortly after Watson and Patterson were convicted, Patterson fired Watson. Watson was then hired by Charles Flint. Watson never admitted any wrongdoing, and in 1915 the government dropped its case against NCR after the company became famous for its help during a catastrophic flood in its hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The threat of a jail sentence now past, Watson was made president of CTR.
Watson understood immediately that his company's future lay in its tabulating division, and it was there that he committed most of his energy and resources. Scales and clocks were useful items, but the United States would soon be a nation of office workers in need of basic office tools like the tabulator. Watson hired many ex-NCR men and patterned his own well-disciplined sales force along NCR lines—intense competition was combined with equally intense corporate loyalty, and salespeople were courteous, spotlessly dressed, and, above all, understood that CTR sold not a product but a service. A completed sale was just the beginning of the salesman's job; in effect, he had to become a partner in the customer's business, and together they designed a tabulating system for that particular organization.
As was the case at NCR, Watson's sales force became a key factor in his company's success. In a pattern that still holds today, many customers remained loyal because they trusted and to an extent relied upon the CTR salesman's knowledge of their business. Numerous, well-trained, devoted, and well-paid, the CTR sales staff actually dominated the company, ensuring that new technology followed upon the needs of customers and not the reverse. Throughout IBM's history (the company's name was changed to International Business Machines Corporation in 1924) massive and talented sales energy, rather than technological leadership, kept the company ahead of competitors.
Watson pushed hard in the late 1910s to make CTR the industry leader in tabulating design. He gradually turned back all boardroom challenges to his plans, and by 1925, was both chief executive officer and chief operating officer. In the ten years following Watson's arrival, CTR sales shot up from $4.2 million to a temporary peak of $13 million in 1919, weathered a minor crisis in the early 1920s, and stood poised to ride the booming U.S. economy. The newly named IBM faced some formidable competitors—Remington Rand, Burroughs, and NCR, among others—but from the beginning Watson steered clear of mass-produced, low-priced office products like typewriters and simple adding machines, concentrating instead on the design of large tabulating systems for governmental and private customers. With superior products and a more dedicated sales force, by 1928 IBM was the clear leader in its specialized field and a force in office technology as a whole.
Booming Sales: 1920s–50s
The company was remarkably profitable. In 1928, for example, its profit of $5.3 million was nearly as great as that of giant Remington Rand, though the latter more than tripled IBM's sales of $19.7 million. In 1939, IBM's profit of $9.1 million exceeded that of the next four companies combined, and held an impressive 23 percent of sales.
IBM's business was particularly profitable for several reasons: the company focused on large-scale, custom-built systems, an inherently less competitive segment of the business; IBM's policy of leasing, rather than selling, its machines to customers was very profitable; and IBM maintained cross-licensing agreements dating back to the mid-1910s with its chief competitor, Remington Rand, preventing the two leaders from falling into competitive squabbles. The company required its customers to buy IBM cards for their IBM tabulators. The cards could not be read by any other machine. This last condition made it almost impossible for IBM customers to try other products. With literally millions of such cards already punched, IBM's clients tended to stay put.
The U.S. government filed a suit in 1932 alleging that the IBM-Remington Rand cross-licensing agreement and IBM's exclusive punch card design were anti-competitive. In 1936, after learning that IBM sold nearly 85 percent of all keypunch, tabulating, and accounting equipment in the United States, the Supreme Court ordered IBM to release its customers from all such card restrictions. The Court's decision had little impact on the company's growth, however. Even the Great Depression did not check IBM's progress, as most cash-pressed companies needed more numerical information, not less.
Company Perspectives:
At IBM, we strive to lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry's most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics. We translate these advanced technologies into value for our customers through our professional solutions and services businesses worldwide.
In addition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal had created a large federal bureaucracy in need of the very calculating machines IBM manufactured. In 1935, at the same time the Justice Department was pursuing its case against IBM, the newly formed Social Security Administration placed an order with the company for more than 400 accounting machines and 1,200 keypunchers. The pattern was clear; modern society rested on massive organizations that required machines capable of massive calculations, which were made by IBM. By the end of the 1930s Thomas Watson was enjoying praise for his enlightened employee relations as well as for his "thinking machines."
During World War II both private and governmental demand for IBM tabulators increased. The machines were needed to monitor the manufacture and movement of vast resources. Sales boomed, more than tripling to $141.7 million in five years. The war offered IBM another opportunity, less immediately exciting but in the long run of far greater importance. The armed forces needed high-speed calculators to solve a number of military problems relating to ballistics and, later, the development of the atomic bomb. Partly as a result, IBM helped build what might be called the world's first computer, the Mark I. This machine was similar to the first electromechanical calculators built a few years earlier, which used IBM punch cards to work out long arithmetic sums; the Mark I was also capable of retaining a set of rules which could be applied to any later input. Such a memory is one of the essential differences between the calculator and the computer, and the Mark I represented a great step forward. With 765,000 parts and 500 miles of wire, the Mark I still delivered less power than today's hand-held calculator.
Entering the Early Computer Market
Computer design evolved rapidly during the war. IBM joined the partnership building the new Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was useful to the military and gave IBM the experience it needed to precede with its own electronic machine. When the war ended in 1945, interest in ultra-high-speed calculators died down quickly; few outside the Army needed a room-sized machine designed to analyze howitzer trajectories. Only a handful of scientists continued refining the advances won by ENIAC, eventually creating a more saleable machine called UNIVAC around 1948. When IBM's old rival, Remington Rand, began to market UNIVAC in 1951, it took a significant lead in the new computer business. IBM continued its typically cautious approach. IBM waited until the new product proved its lasting appeal before leaping into the fray. Since it controlled 85 percent of the market for which computers were targeted, and because even electronic computers then still used IBM punch cards, Watson was not especially alarmed by Rand's success.
Heir apparent Thomas Watson, Jr., strongly favored an allout push into the computer market. By the time he became president in 1952, he had won the power struggle with his father and led IBM into an immense research program designed to surpass Rand. The new president staked his reputation—as well as a significant portion of IBM's assets—on the computer campaign, which had paid off by 1955 with the success of IBM's new 705 general purpose business computer. By the following year Remington Rand had already lost its lead. It was no surprise that IBM came to dominate in computers so quickly, since at that time the computer business was only a small segment of the office products market, which IBM continued to control. The 85 percent of offices using IBM tabulating equipment simply switched over to IBM computers.
Key Dates:
- 1900:
- The International Time Recording Company (ITR) is formed.
- 1901:
- Computing Scale Company of America is incorporated.
- 1910:
- Charles R. Flint organizes the merger of ITR, Computing Scale Company, and Tabulating Machine Company to form Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), IBM's predecessor.
- 1914:
- Thomas J. Watson is hired as CTR's general manager; within a year, he is promoted to president.
- 1920:
- CTR introduces the first complete school time control system, the lock autograph recorder.
- 1924:
- Company develops Carroll Rotary Press to produce cards at high speed, doubling punched card capacity; CTR's name is officially changed to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
- 1944:
- IBM completes the Automatic Sequenced Control Calculator, also called the Mark I; it is the first machine to automatically complete long computations.
- 1949:
- Company introduces the 604 Electronic Calculating Punch, the first IBM product designed specifically for computation centers.
- 1952:
- Company introduces the IBM 701, the first vacuumtube based large computer; Thomas J. Watson retires as IBM's president, allowing his son, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., to take over (he becomes CEO upon his father's death in 1956).
- 1957:
- Company introduces the IBM 305 Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC), the first computer disk storage system.
- 1965:
- IBM introduces the System/360, the first large grouping of computers to use interchangeable software.
- 1971:
- Thomas J. Watson, Jr., steps down as CEO; T. Vincent Learson takes over temporarily, until Frank T. Cary steps in (1973); IBM introduces the floppy disk.
- 1973:
- Company sells a laser device to supermarkets, which is used to automatically read product prices at checkout stands; company introduces the IBM 3614 Consumer Transaction Facility, an early form of the Automatic Teller Machine.
- 1981:
- The IBM personal computer (PC) is introduced; John R. Opel becomes CEO.
- 1985:
- John F. Akers takes over as CEO, leading IBM to four Nobel Prizes in physics.
- 1993:
- After struggling with changes in the PC world, IBM's net losses exceed $8 billion; Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., becomes IBM's CEO, the first to be hired outside of the company's ranks.
- 2002:
- Samuel J. Palmisano becomes IBM's CEO.
In 1949 Thomas Watson's younger brother, Dick Watson, was also brought into the business. The 30-year-old Dick Watson was named president of IBM World Trade Corporation, the parent company's new subsidiary for international sales. In 1949 World Trade had sales of only $6.3 million but operated in 58 countries. In the more prominent of these countries World Trade set up a subsidiary to market IBM products and even do additional research and development. As the world's industrial powers awoke to the computer age, they found themselves greeted by IBM. It was not unusual for local IBM units to achieve market domination comparable to that of the parent company in the United States. Only in Japan and the United Kingdom were local competitors able to match IBM's presence, forcing the latter to settle for around 33 percent of the market. Barely on the sales map in 1949, World Trade eventually surpassed IBM domestic in total revenue.
Meanwhile, the U.S. computer business filled up with potential rivals. Some of these, like RCA, General Electric, and the newly merged Sperry Rand, were as large as or larger than IBM and should have been able to mount a serious challenge. In every case, however, competitors either lacked an adequate sales organization or were not fully committed to the commercial computer business. RCA, for example, made important contributions to computer technology, but mainly with an eye toward possible applications in its growing television business. Sperry Rand, on the other hand, still controlled the successful UNIVAC machine but was hopelessly behind IBM in sales experience and customer loyalty.
In 1952 the government filed a second, more ambitious antitrust suit against IBM. In 1956 IBM entered into a consent decree, which ordered it to divest many of its card-production facilities, sell its machines as well as lease them, submit to certain cross-licensing agreements, and create a subsidiary to compete with itself in the service end of the business. None of these injunctions limited IBM's success, but the 1957 appearance of a small company called Control Data did.
IBM Computer Dominance Through the 1970s
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a pioneer in niche specialization in the computer world. This tactic seemed to be the only way to compete successfully with IBM. The newcomer made very large, very fast computers for scientific and governmental users in need of maximum crunching power, and after a brief battle, IBM largely ceded the field to CDC. IBM's bread and butter remained the medium to large business computer.
In 1958 Sperry Rand and Control Data brought out the first second generation computers, which used transistors instead of vacuum tubes. No sooner had IBM met this challenge with its own line of transistorized machines, than it faced the arrival of the industry's third generation—integrated circuitry. Once again IBM lagged in technological change as Honeywell and CDC brought out the first integrated circuit units in the early 1960s, but this time Big Blue's response necessitated a companywide revolution. Integrated circuitry was clearly destined to become the industry standard, and IBM decided to bring out a complete line of such computers. After an unprecedented capital-spending program involving six new plants and many thousands of new workers, the company introduced its 360 line in April 1965. Small, fast, and accompanied by a new set of exclusive software, the 360s were an immediate and lasting success, remaining the worldwide computer leader for more than a decade.
Sperry Rand, GE, Burroughs, RCA, Honeywell, NCR, and Control Data were unable to close the gap between themselves and IBM, which now delivered 65 percent of all U.S. computers. Control Data filed yet another antitrust suit in 1968, charging that IBM had sold "phantom" computers to its customers to keep them from placing orders for superior CDC products. The government filed its own suit the following year, supporting CDC's claims and alleging other monopolistic practices. Encouraged by these efforts, IBM's competitors, big and small, filed 22 similar lawsuits in the next few years. IBM beat back every one of them, however, with one exception. The U.S. Justice Department continued its battle for 13 years, until President Ronald Reagan's administration dropped the suit shortly before a ruling was expected.
Niche specialization was clearly the only way to survive in the face of IBM's power. In 1960 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) brought out a relatively small, inexpensive computer designed for researchers, effectively creating the micro-computer business. Micros were only a further step in the evolution of the computer, but IBM chose not to enter the market. DEC was soon joined by a host of other micro manufacturers offering a wide range of computers for ever smaller tasks, culminating years later in Apple's marketing of the personal computer for home use. IBM failed to join this race until 1980, at which late date it was unable to dominate the market, as it did mainframes and minicomputers.
In 1971 Tom Watson retired from IBM after suffering a heart attack. His successor, Frank Cary, remained in charge until 1981, at which time John Opel was named CEO. Under these men and IBM's present chairman, John Akers, the 360 line of computers grew into the 370, sales continued to climb, and in the golden year of 1984 corporate earnings reached a staggering $6.6 billion on revenue of $46 billion. With a return on shareholders' equity of 25 percent, IBM was the unchallenged favorite of Wall Street and perceived by many in Washington as the only U.S. company able to hold its own against Japanese competition. The firm was profiled in a best-selling book as a paradigm of business excellence.
Losing Ground in the 1980s
The years following were not nearly so kind to IBM. A drop in earnings for 1985 was dismissed as inevitable after the glory year of 1984, but by the end of the decade financial analysts were convinced that IBM was in need of an overhaul. Revenue growth was slow and earnings weak by IBM standards, resulting in a long decline in the company's stock price, and its share of the worldwide computer market had fallen from 36 percent to 23 percent. Chairman Akers responded by cutting his workforce by 32,000 (from a 1985 peak of 405,000) and urged a return to IBM's traditional strength in marketing and customer relations. After a good year in 1990, however, revenue in 1991 fell for the first time since the 1940s and Akers was widely quoted as saying that the company faced a crisis.
By historical standards, he was correct: Big Blue was losing ground. The dip in revenues could be explained as part of the severe 1990–91 recession that took its toll on the entire computer industry, but clearly IBM was no longer the juggernaut it had been during most of its history. Underlying its sluggish growth was a fundamental change in the nature of the computer industry, and that was change itself—the continually accelerating rate of technological breakthrough in the world of data processing. So long as computers had remained primarily large and very expensive machines designed for number crunching (mainframes), it was possible for IBM to keep its dominant position by simply building bigger and faster machines.
The increasing power of semiconductor chips changed all of that, however; computers became smaller and were applied to a greatly broadened range of tasks. The mini, micro, and workstation technologies all tended to undercut the value of monolithic mains, and independent breakthroughs now tended to focus on software and the crucial problem of networks, the means by which computers communicate with each other and with other forms of data transmission such as telephone and video. Sheer computing power remained important, of course, but it became available in a far greater range of machines at prices that dropped every week.
Given these changes, IBM faced a vastly more complex marketplace both in terms of niches and in the number of its competitors around the world. A wide consensus of observers agreed that IBM's enormous size was a drawback in the quicksilver markets of the 1990s, and in November 1991 Chairman Akers announced the dawn of a new era at the company. Each division of IBM would become a semi-detached business, responsible for its own decisions and bottom-line results. The details of this centrifugal structure transformed IBM into becoming a type of holding company with possibly dozens of discrete operating units under its loose administration. It was hoped that IBM's PC (personal computer) division, for example, would be better able to respond to customer needs and a changing marketplace than when it was forced to take its decisions to company headquarters before acting; and similarly with IBM's mains, minis, software, maintenance, and the many other parts of this $70 billion-per-year corporation.
New Management in the Mid-1990s
Akers had sold the copier division to Kodak in 1988 and followed up in 1991 with the sale of Lexmark, IBM's typewriter, personal printer, keyboard, and supplies business. The divestiture plan had not progressed far, however, when Akers was fired in 1993 and replaced by Lou Gerstner, former CEO of RJR Nabisco. Gerstner scrapped the plan and set about revitalizing the company.
Turning IBM's size and diversity to its advantage, Gerstner expanded the company's small services division, making it a place customers could come for network solutions. By recommending products appropriate for each customer rather than simply pushing IBM goods, Global Services grew rapidly. By 1995 it surpassed Electronic Data Systems (EDS) to become the largest computer services business in the world.
One of the divisions slated to be sold in the divestiture plan was IBM Research, notorious for its long-term research into technologies that never were translated into saleable products. With an $8.9 billion loss in 1993, IBM was searching for costs to cut. Gerstner, however, refused to sell off the division, although he did trim the $6 billion budget by $1 billion. Researchers were also instructed to spend more time working directly with customers, focusing on solutions for real customer problems. The changes led to the resignation of many of the company's scientists. Despite the new focus on the bottom line, the research division continued to lead the industry in patents each year through the 1990s.
By 1994 Gerstner's turnaround strategy was already bearing fruit: The company posted a profit for the first time since 1990. IBM was helped in its recovery in the mid-1990s by the massive growth of the Internet. Although the company abandoned its browser and sold its Prodigy online service, the company benefited from the Internet boom through sales of the big servers needed to run it. IBM also began helping customers move onto the Internet by creating web sites and establishing e-commerce.
In the mid-1990s IBM moved into new areas of the computing industry. In 1994 it signed an agreement with Cyrix to manufacture its computer chips. The following year it purchased Lotus Development, a software company best known for its office software, for $3.5 billion. IBM saw the company's Notes groupware, designed to help a company's staff communicate more effectively, as helpful in its foray into networked desktop computing. Remaining at its Boston headquarters, Lotus continued as an independently run subsidiary, with very little interference from IBM. With IBM's resources and distribution network supporting Lotus, Notes users rose from two million in 1995 to 22 million by 1998. IBM benefited by including the Lotus software in a package of applications called eSuite. In 1996 IBM gave a boost to its software planning for networks by purchasing Tivoli Systems Inc., which specialized in creating tools for network management.
By 1996 IBM's recovery seemed solid, with a $50 billion rise in its market value since 1993. The company's image got a boost in 1997 when its computer Deep Blue won a six-game chess match against World Class Champion Garry Kasparov. The computer, which used huge amounts of parallel processing, could evaluate 200 million chess moves a second, a processing capability the company hoped could be used in such endeavors as weather forecasting and modeling financial data.
Difficult Times in Late 1990s Leading to Prosperity in 2000s
IBM continued to expand via new product development and acquisitions through the late 1990s. In 1997 the company bought Unison Software, which specialized in managing computer systems, and in 1998 purchased CommQuest Technologies, a designer and manufacturer of wireless communications chips. Other smaller purchases included a majority holding in site development software company NetObjects in 1998 and NUMA systems expert Sequent Computer Systems in 1999.
The company's shift to providing services had progressed well by the late 1990s. Services accounted for 29 percent of IBM's revenues in 1998 and 39 percent of pretax profits. By 1999, e-business service revenue alone exceeded $3 billion, a 60 percent increase from 1998. Also in 1999, IBM acquired two new technology companies—Sequence Computer Systems and Whistle Communications—and signed contracts exceeding $15 billion with several other technology companies: Dell Computer Corporation, Acer Incorporated, Cisco Systems, Inc., and Nintendo Company, Ltd.
Y2K, the fear that all computer-related systems would malfunction upon entering the year 2000, caused financial difficulties for IBM in 1999, decreasing server revenue 17.9 percent from 1998. In 2000, with financial distress lingering, IBM focused on strict management of costs and expenses. It also continued to concentrate on service. In the year, demand for services and products dramatically increased (as fears of Y2K subsided), so much that IBM could not always meet customer needs. But by 2000's end, while IBM's earnings rose 16 percent, the value of stock decreased 21 percent, from $108 to $85. This decline partly reflected the state of the stock market, as 2000 watched nearly all information technology stocks decrease in value.
In 2001 the financial situation for IBM turned gloomy, as the company lost nearly $3 billion in overall revenue, decreasing net income from $8 billion to $7.7 billion. IBM's CEO V. Gerstner, Jr., attributed the losses to a sluggish technology economy and a decline in personal computers and hard disk drives. Still, IBM continued to perform relatively well in the areas of services, software, zSeries servers, and high-end storage. The company continued its focus on cutting costs, but 2002 did not fare any better for IBM.
Gerstner was replaced as CEO by the company's president, Samuel. J. Palmisano, but the new CEO would not immediately improve IBM's finances. Under new leadership, the company invested heavily in the areas of research and development, capital expenditures, and acquisitions. For one, IBM acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers' global business consulting and technology services unit, PwC consulting, for $3.5 billion in cash and stock. As a result, IBM created a new global business unit, IBM Business Consulting Services, which became part of IBM Global Services. In the same year, IBM introduced a number of new products, including the eServer z800, an entry-class mainframe and eServer p650, which immediately became the world's most powerful eight-way UNIX server. Innovation aside, IBM ended 2002 with an earnings decrease of 35 percent, to $5.3 billion.
Palmisano turned focus on an on-demand business management technique, a strategy IBM pegged "e-business on demand." The strategy, according to IBM, would help to further meet customer demands, as well as to take better advantage of market opportunities and to ward off external threats. The strategy proved sound, as 2003 total revenue improved by 10 percent, or nearly $8 billion, from 2002, with global services contributing close to $6 billion of this. In addition, gross profits rose almost $3 billion from 2002.
The year 2003 also witnessed further innovation at IBM, including the introduction of the world's most advanced server, the eServer z Series 990; the eServer p690 system, offering 65 percent more speed than its predecessor; and two new high-end iSeries servers: iSeries 825 and 870. IBM concluded 2003 with the sale of the 20 millionth ThinkPad since introducing the ThinkPad line of laptops in 1992.
Success followed IBM into 2004. To begin the year, IBM and Unica Corporation signed a lucrative contract with BJ's Wholesale Club for a new marketing platform that would personalize interactions with BJ's members. At the same time, IBM broke the record for patents received in a single year, with 3,415 for new products. One such product, introduced in 2004, was the IBM eServer Blade Center HS40, the most powerful and flexible (and smallest) 4-way blade server available.
With continually increasing revenues and a recovering economy, IBM looked toward growth, including plans to acquire Candle Corporation, which specialized in infrastructure management information. Further innovation was anticipated, specifically concerning IBM's semiconductor manufacturing facility, for which IBM accepted a $325 million investment from Sony Group for the use of chip production.
Principal Subsidiaries
IBM Credit LLC.; IBM International Foundation; IBM International Services Corp.; IBM Business Transformation Center, SRL; Tivoli Systems, Inc., IBM World Trade Corp.; IBM Plans Management Corp; IBM Foreign Sales Corp.; WTC Insurance Corporation, Ltd. (Bermuda); IBM Canada Credit Services Co.; IBM Canada Limited-IBM; IBM Argentina Sociedad Anonima (99.99%); IBM de Bolivia SA (99.98%).; IBM Brasil-Industria, Maquinas E Servicos Limitada (Brazil; 99.99%); IBM de Chile SA (99.99%); IBM de Columbia SA (90%); IBM Del Ecuador; Grupo IBM Mexico S.A. de C.V. (99.99%); IBM del Peru SA (99.99%); IBM Del Uraguay SA; IBM de Venezuela SA; IBM A/NZ Holdings Pty, Ltd. (Australia); IBM Australia Ltd.; IBM New Zealand Ltd; IBM India Ltd (99.99%); PT IBM Indonesia (99%); YK IBM AP Holdings; IBM Japan, Ltd; IBM Korea, Inc.; IBM Malaysia SDN BHD; IBM Philippines, Inc. (99.99%); IBM Thailand Company Ltd (99.99%); IBM Israel Ltd (99.99%); IBM Turk Limited (Turkey; 98%); IBM South Africa Group Ltd.; IBM China Company Ltd.; IBM Central Holding GMBH (Germany); IBM Ireland Ltd.; IBM Nederland NV (Netherlands); IBM United Kingdom Holdings Ltd; IBM United Kingdom Ltd.; IBM Europe Holding BV (Netherlands); Compagnie IBM France SA; International Business Machines SA (Spain; 99.99%); IBM Danmark As (Denmark).
Principal Divisions
Global Services; Hardware Systems Group; Personal Systems Group; Technology Group; Software; Global Financing; Enterprise Investments.
Principal Competitors
Accenture; Dell Computer Corporation; Hewlett-Packard Company; Microsoft Corporation; Toshiba Corporation; Xerox Corporation.
Further Reading
"Blue Is the Colour," Economist, June 6, 1998.
DeLamarter, Richard Thomas, Big Blue: IBM's Use and Abuse of Power, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986.
Henriques, Diana B., "Off the Shelf: The Insecurities and Iron Fist That Built I.B.M.," New York Times, May 11, 2003, section 3, p. 5.
Kirkpatrick, David, "IBM: From Big Blue Dinosaur to E-Business Animal," Fortune, April 26, 1999, pp. 116–27.
Lohr, Steve, "Technology: IBM Will Collaborate Somewhat More on Chip Design," New York Times, April 1, 2004, section C, p. 8.
Maney, Kevin, The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.
"The New IBM," Business Week, December 16, 1991.
Sobel, Robert, IBM: Colossus in Transition, New York: Times Books, 1981.
Watson, Thomas J., Jr., Father, Son, and Company: My Life at IBM and Beyond, New York: Bantam Books, 1990.
—Jonathan Martin
—updates: Susan Windisch Brown, Candice Mancini
IBM
IBM
founded: 1910 also known as: international business machinescorporation
Contact Information:
headquarters: new orchard rd.
armonk, ny 10504
phone: (914)499-1900
toll free: (800)426-3333
url: http://www.ibm.com
OVERVIEW
IBM is the world's largest computer company, with annual sales rapidly approaching 12 figures, about 60 percent of which comes from outside of the United States. In addition to manufacturing hardware and software, IBM has diversified into the areas of Internet service and computer consulting—in 1997 alone, 15,000 new employees joined IBM's services arms. The early 1990s were a time of crisis at IBM, but after a major revamping that began in 1993 and included some downsizing and a reevaluation of the company's strong points and mission, IBM managed to get back into the driver's seat and into the fast lane.
In 1997 the company was awarded the most U.S. patents for the fifth straight year—1,724, 300 more than the second-place applicant and almost 500 more than it received in 1996. Among the most significant was its breakthrough in using copper wiring in place of aluminum in chips, which greatly boosts both the speed and capacity of semiconductors. IBM often licenses its proprietary technology to communications and computer companies, a venture that earns it more than $1 billion per year.
COMPANY FINANCES
From a financial standpoint, 1997 was a record year for IBM, and a crucial one for nurturing the company's improving health. Revenues for 1997 reached $78.5 billion, with $19.3 billion representing the company's services businesses. Net earnings were $6.1 billion, up from $5.9 billion in 1996. After the effects of foreign currency fluctuation, earnings improved by 8 percent. During the year, the company invested $5.5 billion in research and development, $300 million more than in 1996, and laid plans for a $700-million microchip development facility that will utilize the newly patented copper technology.
Stockholders' equity in 1997 measured almost $20 billion, and earnings per share were $6.18, up from 1996 earning of $5.53. Since 1996, the quarterly dividend has increased by 76 percent. In April 1997 directors raised the amount by 14 percent and, in April 1998 they increased it by another 10 percent, along with approval to step up the stock-buyback plan by $3.5 billion. Between 1995 and 1998, the company bought back about $20-billion worth of its common stock. At the close of 1997, there were 623,537 holders of common stock, which split two-for-one in the second quarter. IBM's market valuation, which CEO Louis Gerstner called "the ultimate measure of our performance,"grew by $23 billion. The company ended 1997 with $7.6 billion in cash.
The first quarter of 1998, however, saw IBM's first earnings decline in two years; the trend continued into the second quarter. But on July 30, 1998, IBM stock hit what Reuters described as "a lifetime intraday high" of $133.75, up 6, adding that "virtually all of Wall Street has turned bullish on IBM."
ANALYSTS' OPINIONS
A 1998 report by Salomon analyst John Jones stated, "We believe that IBM's software, PC servers and UNIX RS/6000 servers businesses are doing well." Gerstner would seem to agree. In the 1997 annual report he wrote, "IBM's comeback is on track and doesn't require a major course correction."
HISTORY
In 1910 Charles Ranlett Flint started the earliest ancestor of IBM under the name Calculating-Tabulating-Recording, or CTR, by merging three firms: International Time Recording Co., Computing Scale Co. of America, and Tabulating Machine Co. The last was founded by an engineer, Herman Hollerith, who had invented a tabulating machine—an apparatus that sorted and counted punch cards. This machine was first sold to the U.S. Census Bureau, and later to businesses that needed to organize large amounts of data economically. In 1915 Thomas Watson was hired as CTR's general manager and, by 1920, had built CTR into the leader in tabulating design.
CTR changed its name to International Business Machines—or IBM—in 1924. By focusing on large, custom systems for businesses, the company found that it had fewer competitors than those that made smaller, mass-produced systems. The company leased its products, instead of selling them, and reported profits throughout the 1920s. Initially, IBM held onto its market and customers by making punch cards that only worked with its own machines. By 1932, this policy had led to a U.S. government antitrust suit filed against IBM. At the time, IBM controlled 85 percent of the U.S. market for tabulating, keypunch, and accounting equipment.
The New Deal programs of the Depression years expanded government bureaucracy, which led to a need for large calculators; IBM supplied this equipment. World War II bolstered IBM's sales as well, and increased public and private-sector demand for tabulators helping to triple IBM's sales.
In 1956 IBM took the lead in the computer business by introducing its 705 general-purpose business computer. Institutional customers appreciated the way IBM's computers utilized the equipment that they had already leased or bought. The recognizable blue-suited sales force was instrumental in placing IBM's computers into businesses. In 1961 IBM released the Stretch computer system, which used a magnetic memory core and transistors instead of the more primitive vacuum tube technology. With the capability of performing up to three quarters of a million additions per second, the Stretch was the most powerful computer on the market.
In 1970 IBM introduced the first "floppy" (5 1/4 inch) disks, which were made by forming thin wafers of silicon and then cutting them into chips, thus setting the stage for much smaller systems. IBM subsequently released a new system, the 370 family. It was faster and could do more simultaneous tasks than prior systems. In 1973, IBM doubled the storage space on floppy disks with the 3340 disk storage unit, which functioned like main memory but at a much lower cost.
In 1975 IBM attempted to release its first personal computer, the 5100, weighing 50 pounds and costing about $5,000. Sales were disappointing. Realizing that demand for personal computers was minimal at the time, IBM focused on building mainframes. It was not until 1980 that IBM tried again to crack the personal computer market. By then, many other companies were already making the machines, and IBM was not able to gain immediate control of the market. That same year, it rolled out the IBM 3687 Holographic Scanner, which was used with the IBM 3683 supermarket terminal to read bar codes. Throughout the 1990s, IBM continued to grow by producing many new systems and personal computers, and by providing various consulting services. It expanded its overseas operations and, in the late 1990s, continued to dominate the mainframe and computer-related service markets.
STRATEGY
Bold letters on IBM's rich web site declare, "IBM is about TWO things: 1. Creating the industry's most advanced information technologies; 2. Helping customers apply that technology to improve what they do—and how they do it." Keen insight into the issues facing today's industries allows IBM to design products that deliver maximum impact and long-lasting value. In a December 1997 interview in U.S. News and World Report, CEO Gerstner explained IBM's developing view of itself as a provider of solutions to the customer's needs, "Our ability to integrate is a unique advantage of this company. So we said: All right, now let's go build a strategy around integrating the technology into solutions for customers. That was the fundamental decision we made."
Aside from the company's strategy as a vendor, Gerstner writes in his annual statement that IBM is "committed to maximizing shareholder value and to making productive use of our cash." Since 1995 IBM has made 45 strategic acquisitions. Its acquisition of Lotus Development Corp., the maker of the popular Lotus Notes messaging software, was significant and highly publicized; but each of the other corporate deals has been just as calculated to contribute to IBM's long-term success, as have been the decisions to decline certain takeover opportunities.
INFLUENCES
The hard times of the early 1990s were a great motivator for IBM, which many analysts had written off even before the stock price had fallen into the $40 range. Earnings lagged, and dividends were cut. The departure of CEO John Akers, and the accession of Gerstner (formerly the chairman of RJR Holdings Corp.) marked the start of IBM's slow climb back to viability. The 1997 annual report proudly states, "Our people have worked hard in recent years to reinvent not just the mechanics of their work, but also the soul of their company." However, Gerstner's statement identified one lofty ambition, still unfulfilled: "a return to industry leadership."
CURRENT TRENDS
One current, emerging growth area for IBM is "deep computing," which links high-speed computers and analytical software. A major customer for this technology is the U.S. Department of Energy, for whom IBM is building a supercomputer for use in nuclear-weapons simulation testing. IBM envisions the technology as being useful to the pharmaceutical industry in simulating chemical reactions, and to the business world in providing financial modeling. In the mid-1990s, two celebrated face-offs pitted Russian chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov against "Deep Blue," an IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer that utilizes deep computing technology. NASA's 1997 Pathfinder mission to Mars included an IBM RS/6000 as its onboard flight computer. Also in space that year were several IBM ThinkPad laptop computers missions.
FAST FACTS: About IBM
Ownership: IBM is a publicly held company traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Ticker symbol: IBM
Officers: Louis V. Gerstner, Chmn. & CEO, 56, 1997 base salary $1,500,000; Douglas L. Maine, Sr. VP & CFO
Employees: 269,465 (1998)
Chief Competitors: Some primary competitors include: Acer Corp; AST Computer; Hewlett-Packard; Gateway 2000; and Microsoft.
CHRONOLOGY: Key Dates for IBM
- 1910:
Charles Ranlett Flint starts the Calculating-Tabulating-Recording (CTR) firm
- 1924:
CTR changes its name to International Business Machines or IBM
- 1932:
A U.S. Government antitrust suit is filed against IBM
- 1956:
IBM introduces its 705 general-purpose business computer
- 1961:
The company releases the Stretch computer system
- 1970:
The company introduces the first "floppy" disk
- 1975:
IBM releases its first personal computer
- 1980:
The 3687 Holographic scanner is released
- 1990:
IBM researchers move individual atoms
- 1992:
The Think Pad is introduced
- 1997:
Deep Blue, an IBM Supercomputer, defeats the World Chess Champion
- 1998:
IBM announces its "E-business Tools" line
In April of 1998 IBM announced its new "E-business Tools" line, comprised of servers, work stations, PCs, and notebooks for the purpose of facilitating business transactions over the Internet. The products include the Netfinity 3000 and 5500 servers, hard-disk and tape-drive storage devices, the IntelliStation M Pro workstation, the PC 300 PL personal computer, and an enhanced palm-sized computer, all available through IBM's web site. In a Wired News interview, IBM's vice president of Internet technologies, John Patrick, said of the development, "This concept that we are on, e-business, is not just e-commerce. It's about making a company into an electronic business where all the transactions become network-centric. When you do this, the transactions go up dramatically. And when the transactions go up, you need more disk space, and processing power, and infrastructure, and systems integration skills, and strategic planning. Well, those happen to be things we are really good at." An extensive marketing campaign in 1997 demonstrated the value of a "networked world."
In May of 1998, IBM announced its plans to support IDT Corp's Net2phone Internet-phone service, which allows long-distance telephone calls to be placed via computer. The software will be included with IBM's Internet access materials.
PRODUCTS
IBM makes leading computer hardware and software, and provides consulting services through its IBM Global Services unit. Hardware products include mainframes, servers, midrange, and desktop machines. Recent introductions include the Thinkpad 560, which weighs only 4.1 pounds and has one of the sharpest and largest screens in its class, and the enlarged Aptiva line of personal computers, which allows the monitor and media drives to be placed on the desktop, with the tower located elsewhere. The IBM Network Station allows businesses to access the Internet on a large scale. IBM's 1996 investment of $4.7 billion in research and development toward embedded microelectronics for digital devices—a method for bringing clear video to desktop computers—yielded the Voice Type Simply Speaking software, which allows the user access to applications by way of voice control. Lotus Notes, dubbed in the 1996 annual report "a human transaction system," allows team members across an organization to integrate their collective work more efficiently. IBM Global Services, a $19-billion business that experienced double-digit growth for more than 20 straight quarters in the mid- and late 1990s, assists customers with installation and implementation of their IBM machinery. In 1998, IBM's Internet service had about 750,000 subscribers.
CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP
IBM is the largest corporate contributor in the world. A $35-million grant program called "Reinventing Education" uses technology to improve education—for adults and children alike—all over the world. In South Africa, the program has provided computers to schools and helped to train teachers to use them. Plans are in place to do the same in Vietnam, Ireland, and India. Annually, IBM donates millions of dollars worth of new technology to more than 1,600 domestic nonprofit health and human services entities via the United Way. During 1997 IBM employees donated $30 million in matching grants to local nonprofit organizations and schools. That same year the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized the company's efforts to eliminate the use of ozone-depleting chemicals (more than 15 million pounds since 1983). In 1998 President Clinton presented IBM with the Ron Brown Award for Corporate Leadership, which recognizes organizations for excellence in employee and community relations.
KNIGHT TAKES PAWN
It's a common enough theme in science-fiction—a machine that is more intelligent than the person who created it (think of the supercomputer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Human beings have a vested interest in believing that they are smarter than their machines, and that is why chess matches between computers and grand-masters of chess have always elicited considerable comment and media coverage. The best human chess players have always been able to beat the best computer programs, but that all changed in May 1997, when IBM's Deep Blue took on the reigning world champion of chess, Garry Kasparov. Six games later it was official, Deep Blue had defeated Kasparov, and the supremacy of human beings (in chess at least) was at an end. Deep Blue, an IBM RS/6000 SP super-computer, was able to calculate 200,000,000 chess positions per second. And Kasparov? He grumbled that he wanted a rematch.
GLOBAL PRESENCE
IBM has a presence in more than 160 countries. It works with more than 1,000 businesses in central Europe and Russia alone, and is the leading vendor of personal computers in China. IBM's Global Campus Solution serves universities in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and Europe. Even in its research, IBM expands globally, with labs in Beijing working on Java, a programming language for use on the Internet.
EMPLOYMENT
IBM aims to be an employee-friendly institution. A survey by the National Society of Black Engineers found IBM to be its members' preferred employer. The company and its subsidiaries offer defined benefit and contribution plans to employees and a supplemental retirement plan to certain executives. In 1995, with Gerstner's endorsement, the company sent its long-famous dress code the way of the abacus, no longer requiring suits, hoping to foster comfort at all levels.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Bibliography
behr, peter, and brett d. fromson. "the monumental task of rebuilding big blue." washington post, 26 march 1993.
berger, joseph. "black jeans invade big blue." new york times, 6 february 1995.
cook, william j. "interview with ibm ceo louis gerstner." u.s. news online, 19 december 1997.
faiola, anthony. "big blue—jeans, that is." washington post, 4 february 1995.
"ibm." hoover's online, june 1998. available at http://www.hoovers.com.
ibm home page. june 1998. available at http://www.ibm.com.
"ibm leads in u.s. patents for fifth year in a row." ibm press release, 12 january 1998. available at http://www.ibm.com.
"ibm names chief financial officer." ibm press release, 14 april 1998. available at http://www.ibm.com.
"ibm receives ron brown award for corporate leadership." ibm press release, 12 february 1998. available at http://www.ibm.com.
"ibm stock hits high as wall st. is solidly bullish." reuters, 30 july 1998.
"ibm unveils new computer products." ap, 15 april 1998.
jorgensen, janice, ed. encyclopedia of consumer brands. vol. 3. detroit: st. james press, 1994.
martin, jonathan. international directory of company histories. vol. 3. detroit, mi: st. james press, 1994.
melville, richard. "focus—ibm says it earned $1 billion in first quarter." reuters, 20 april 1998.
——. "gerstner: 1997 'a great year' for ibm technology." reuters, 28 april 1998.
schiesel, seth. "ibm teams up with internet phone service." new york times, 18 may 1998.
For an annual report:
on the internet at: http://www.ibm.comor telephone: (800)426-3333
For additional industry research:
investigate companies by their standard industrial classification codes, also known as sics. ibm's primary sics are:
3571 electronic computers
3572 computer storage
3575 computer terminals
3577 computer peripheral equipment
7371 computer programming services
7372 prepackaged software
7373 computer integrated systems design
7374 data processing and preparation
7375 information retrieval services
7377 computer rental and leasing
7378 computer maintenance and repair
7379 computer related systems
IBM
IBM
founded: 1910 variant name: international business machinescorporation
Contact Information:
headquarters: one new orchard rd.armonk, ny 10504 phone: (914)499-1900 fax: (914)765-6021 url: http://www.ibm.com
OVERVIEW
IBM is the world's largest computer company, and throughout its history it has been a bulwark in the American economy. But in 2002, as IBM stock drop dramatically in June during a particularly horrendous economic time for computer hardware and software manufacturers, analysts were divided on whether "Big Blue" has seen its best days, or has merely run into a hurdle it will eventually clear. With clear indications that its sales expectations won't be met in 2002 and no real reason to trumpet a return to prosperity in 2003 or 2004, IBM management has prepared its shareholders and employees for widespread belt tightening, worker layoffs, and the peddling of its disk-drive operation to a rival company. In April 2002, IBM disclosed that it had endured its most dramatic earnings decline since 1993. Chief Financial Officer John Joyce projected a disappointing revenue prediction of $83 billion for 2002.
In addition to manufacturing hardware and software, IBM has diversified into the areas of Internet service and computer consulting. The company's struggles in 2002 were reminiscent of a similar crisis for IBM in the early 1990s that was met only after a major revamping, employee downsizing of 60,000 workers, and a reevaluation of the company's strong points and mission. Thousands—perhaps as many as 17,000 employees—will be axed by the end of 2002.
COMPANY FINANCES
From a financial standpoint, 2002 stands to be the worst year for IBM since 1993, and a crucial measure of the company's declining health was missing profit projections for the first quarter of 2002 by about $1 billion. The company also was badly hurt by a Wall Street Journal article in 2002 that blasted the company for being too fast-and-creative with earnings reports. Revenues for 2002 reached $ 88.4 billion with about half that coming from IBM's services. IBM jettisoned its most troubled hard disk drive division, unloading it to Hitachi for $2 billion.
ANALYSTS' OPINIONS
Analyst David Robertson of Allied Investment Advisors in Maryland told a Business Week reporter that IBM's short-term problems have not dampened his belief that the company eventually will find a way back to its traditional high profits. Analysts are divided as to whether or not IBM should sell off its poorly performing PC division; other analysts criticize poorer returns for shareholders because of slumping earnings in the semiconductor area.
HISTORY
In 1910 Charles Ranlett Flint started the earliest ancestor of IBM under the name Calculating-Tabulating-Recording, or CTR, by merging three firms: International Time Recording Co., Computing Scale Co. of America, and Tabulating Machine Co. The last was founded by an engineer, Herman Hollerith, who had invented a tabulating machine—an apparatus that sorted and counted punch cards. This machine was first sold to the U.S. Census Bureau, and later to businesses that needed to organize large amounts of data economically. In 1915 Thomas Watson was hired as CTR's general manager and, by 1920, had built CTR into the leader in tabulating design.
CTR changed its name to International Business Machines—or IBM—in 1924. By focusing on large, custom systems for businesses, the company found that it had fewer competitors than those that made smaller, mass-produced systems. The company leased its products, instead of selling them, and reported profits throughout the 1920s. Initially, IBM held onto its market and customers by making punch cards that only worked with its own machines. By 1932, this policy had led to a U.S. government antitrust suit filed against IBM. At the time, IBM controlled 85 percent of the U.S. market for tabulating, keypunch, and accounting equipment.
The New Deal programs of the Depression years expanded government bureaucracy, which led to a need for large calculators; IBM supplied this equipment. World War II bolstered IBM's sales as well, and increased public- and private-sector demand for tabulators helping to triple IBM's sales.
In 1956 IBM took the lead in the computer business by introducing its 705 general-purpose business computer. Institutional customers appreciated the way IBM's computers utilized the equipment that they had already leased or bought. The recognizable blue-suited sales force was instrumental in placing IBM's computers into businesses. In 1961 IBM released the Stretch computer system, which used a magnetic memory core and transistors instead of the more primitive vacuum tube technology. With the capability of performing up to three quarters of a million additions per second, the Stretch was the most powerful computer on the market.
In 1970 IBM introduced the first "floppy" (5 1/4 inch) disks, which were made by forming thin wafers of silicon and then cutting them into chips, thus setting the stage for much smaller systems. IBM subsequently released a new system, the 370 family. It was faster and could do more simultaneous tasks than prior systems. In 1973, IBM doubled the storage space on floppy disks with the 3340 disk storage unit, which functioned like main memory but at a much lower cost.
FAST FACTS: About IBM
Ownership: IBM is a publicly held company traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Ticker symbol: IBM
Officers: Louis V. Gerstner, Chmn., 60, 2002 base salary $12.6 million; Samuel Palmisano, 50, Pres. and CEO; John Joyce, 48, CFO, $2 million
Employees: 319,876
Chief Competitors: Some primary competitors include Acer Corp, AST Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway 2000, and Microsoft.
In 1975 IBM attempted to release its first personal computer, the 5100, weighing 50 pounds and costing about $5,000. Sales were disappointing. Realizing that demand for personal computers was minimal at the time, IBM focused on building mainframes. It was not until 1980 that IBM tried again to crack the personal computer market. By then, many other companies were already making the machines, and IBM was not able to gain immediate control of the market. That same year, it rolled out the IBM 3687 Holographic Scanner, which was used with the IBM 3683 supermarket terminal to read bar codes. Throughout the 1990s, IBM continued to grow by producing many new systems and personal computers, and by providing various consulting services. It expanded its overseas operations and, in the late 1990s, continued to dominate the mainframe and computer-related service markets.
In 2001 and 2002, the faltering of IBM has been major news on the business pages of the nation's newspaper, although other companies such as Apple and Hewlett Packard also have been seeing plummeting stroke prices by June of 2002.
STRATEGY
In a 2002 New York Times interview, Louis V. Gerstner said that three specific strategies were "the fundamental underpinnings" for IBM in recent years. IBM built up its computer management services "that sold bundles of hardware, software, consulting and maintenance to manage business processes like manufacturing, purchasing or marketing." As a services unit, IBM Global Services began to , "look at technology through the eyes of the customer," he told the Times, not merely selling IBM products but working closely with the customer even if it meant sharing profits by using the products of Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and Oracle. "The customer would not accept a services company if all it did was flog I.B.M. products," he told the New York Times. Closely linked to the number one strategy, IBM decided its software would need to be made compatible with major competitive hardware, and vise versa with IBM hardware and competitor software. Third, and this strategy was adopted late but fully in 1995, was to gain mastery of the Internet and use its powerful computers, talented personnel and the best minds in technology to become competitive with what Gerstner termed the "ënetworked world' model of computing." Said Gerstner, "We were able to articulate a role for I.B.M. in the networked world that spoke of the value of all we did."
CEO Gerstner explained IBM's developing view of itself as a provider of solutions to the customer's needs, "Our ability to integrate is a unique advantage of this company. So we said: All right, now let's go build a strategy around integrating the technology into solutions for customers. That was the fundamental decision we made."
Aside from the company's strategy as a vendor, Gerstner once said in an annual company statement that IBM is "committed to maximizing shareholder value and to making productive use of our cash." IBM has made dozens of strategic acquisitions of companies, including Lotus Development Corp., the maker of the popular Lotus Notes messaging software.
INFLUENCES
Unquestionably, IBM is looking for leadership in 2002 to newly named CEO Samuel Palmisano. In an apparent gesture intended to motivate, Palmisano sent a message to all IBM employees to warn them that some cutbacks and layoffs would be inevitable as the company fought back in mid-2002 to stop losses and return to at least modest profitability by 2004.
CHRONOLOGY: Key Dates for IBM
- 1910:
Charles Ranlett Flint starts the Calculating-Tabulating-Recording (CTR) firm
- 1924:
CTR changes its name to International Business Machines or IBM
- 1932:
A U.S. Government antitrust suit is filed against IBM
- 1956:
IBM introduces its 705 general-purpose business computer
- 1961:
The company releases the Stretch computer system
- 1970:
The company introduces the first "floppy" disk
- 1975:
IBM releases its first personal computer
- 1980:
The 3687 Holographic scanner is released
- 1990:
IBM researchers move individual atoms
- 1992:
The Think Pad is introduced
- 1997:
Deep Blue, an IBM Supercomputer, defeats the World Chess Champion
- 1998:
IBM announces its "E-business Tools" line
- 2002:
Longtime IBM CEO, President and chairman Louis V. Gerstner Jr. becomes chair only until December 31, 2002, when his retirement took effect; Samuel J. Palmisano becomes president and chief executive officer of IBM; IBM announced demonstrated self-diagnostic security protection against hackers with the Distributed Wireless Security Auditor (DWSA) that monitors wireless networks and report security problems to back-end servers instantly
CURRENT TRENDS
To restate an old cliché, much at IBM is broken, but the big question is whether management can do anything to fix the problem. Nearly the first thing new IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano did after taking his position in 2002 was sell off the troubled hard-disk drive business. The second was to save costs by announcing some immediate layoffs with thousands more to follow by the end of 2002. Analysts wondered how Palmisano would try to solve two additional pressing problems, plunging sales of personal computers and semiconductor chips, a part of the microelectronics group at IBM. Early indications have been that Palmisano believes both personal computers and chips are crucial to IBM's services component and overall company strategy for long-term success. The company has spent well over $5 billion on chip development since October 2000.
PRODUCTS
IBM makes leading computer hardware and software, and provides consulting services through its IBM Global Services unit. Hardware products include mainframes, servers, midrange, and desktop machines. Recent introductions are impressive though IBM emphasis seems to be more on marketing existing products in 2000s, note analysts.
Nonetheless, IBM has added clout in 2002 to its Web services group with an upgraded version of its Unix-based operating system called AIX version. The upgrade adds speed and versatility. The company also launched an upgrade of WebSphere Studio Application Developer for Linux and WebSphere Studio Site Developer, a business Web site building and maintenance package with wireless, portal and voice applications.
CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP
IBM is the largest corporate contributor in the world and is well known for matching the charitable gifts of its employees. The company has been extremely involved in philanthropic attempts to get computers into classrooms through its Reinventing Education program. Essentially, IBM works with school districts and worldwide governments to help raise student achievement and computer literacy. In addition, IBM employees long have been devoted to giving their time to school districts and to serve students through the IBM Mentor-Place.
In 2002, New York Governor George Pataki gave two IBM operations the state's Governor's Award for environmental awareness. Since 1971, IBM has embraced a global Environmental management system committed to protecting the environment worldwide. In 2000 IBM started its popular recycling program to charge a small fee ($29.95) to take used personal computers and find a match with charitable organizations that can use them.
GLOBAL PRESENCE
IBM has a presence in more than 160 countries. It works with more than 1,000 businesses in central Europe and Russia alone, and is the leading vendor of personal computers in China. IBM's Global Campus Solution serves universities in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and Europe. Even in its research, IBM expands globally, with labs in Beijing working on Java, a programming language for use on the Internet. However, IBM rivals have done much better in China because Chinese businesses have shied away from multi-million dollar data management systems in favor of less expensive alternatives. IBM has positioned itself to serve not only international e-businesses, but also whole countries, according to Dr Michael Loh, Asia-Pacific leader of IBM Global Services Institute for Business Value.
SECURITY: THE EYES MAY HAVE IT
One of the keys to jumpstarting a world economy that first came to a complete stop on September 11, 2001, and has yet to reach pre-September 11 levels of prosperity by mid-2002, is to assure business travelers that it is safe to assume traveling. The team of International Business Machines Corp. and Schiphol Group hopes its security check technology to scan irises in passenger eyes, already employed successfully at Amsterdam airport, will some day see wide use at airports worldwide. IBM hardware and software is used in the technology end of the scanning, while Schiphol provides the security and airport expertise. Essentially, a traveler's iris specs are put ahead of time into a computer system and each time that person gets to an airport, the iris identification system helps security personnel whether to admit or deny entry.
EMPLOYMENT
IBM aims to be an employee-friendly institution. Working Mother magazine in 2001 found IBM to be in the top ten among all employers in providing a welcoming climate for females with children. IBM received Working Mother's number one ranking for childcare services in 2001. The company and its subsidiaries offer defined benefit and contribution plans to employees and a supplemental retirement plan to certain executives. Long considered a company with major security for employees, that image was shaken somewhat in 2002 as IBM began laying off the greatest number of employees it had turned loose since the early 1990s.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Bibliography
cook, william j. "interview with ibm ceo louis gerstner." u.s. news online, 19 december 1997.
foremski, tom. "palmisano faces tough questions on ibm plans." financial times e, 15 may 2002.
hamid, hamisah. "ibm sees online deals between markets." business times, 15 may 2002.
"ibm, schiphol to market iris-scan security check to airports, airlines." afx european focus, 25 april 2002.
"ibm." hoover's online, june 2002. available at http://www.hoovers.com.
ibm home page, june 2002. available at http://www.ibm.com.
horvitz, paul. " ibm's gerstner rides services profit." bloomberg news, 16 october 2001.
lohr, steve. " he loves to win. at i.b.m., he did.." the new york times, 10 march 2002.
martin, jonathan. international directory of company histories. vol. 3. detroit, mi: st. james press, 1994.
morgan timothy prickett." palmisano dodges ibm layoffs, revenue growth questions." computerwire, 16 may 2002.
"100 best companies for working mothers." working woman magazine, june 2002. available at http://www.workingwoman.com.
tsao, amy. "can ibm shake its big blues." business week online, 13 june 2002.
For an annual report:
on the internet at: http://www.ibm.comor telephone: (800)426-3333
For additional industry research:
investigate companies by their standard industrial classification codes, also known as sics. ibm's primary sics are:
3571 electronic computers
3572 computer storage
3575 computer terminals
3577 computer peripheral equipment
7371 computer programming services
7372 prepackaged software
7373 computer integrated systems design
7374 data processing and preparation
7375 information retrieval services
7377 computer rental and leasing
7378 computer maintenance and repair
7379 computer related systems
also investigate companies by their north american industry classification system codes, also known as naics codes. ibm's primary naics codes are:
334111 electronic computer manufacturing
334119 other computer peripheral equipment manufacturing
454110 electronic shopping and mail-order houses
511210 software publishers
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION (IBM)
Around the year 1911 Charles Ranlett Flint (1850–1934) founded the Calculating-Tabulating-Recording (CTR) company. He merged two companies he had previously managed, International Time Recording Company and Computing Scale Company of America, with an unrelated firm called Tabulating Machine Company. A man named Herman Hollerith (1860–1929) had founded the Tabulating Machine Company. Hollerith was an engineer who invented a tabulator to punch, sort, and count cards. This merger was the beginning of IBM. It would eventually become the world's largest computer company.
The tabulator served the needs of the U.S. Census Bureau in the 1890 and 1900 censuses. It was used for processing large amounts of data. Other organizations with similar needs adopted the machine for their own use. In the early twentieth century society was becoming more urban and commercialized. Consequently the ability to process financial and other data became an important factor in running a profitable business.
CTR did not become focused on the tabulator as its primary product until John Watson (1874–1956) was hired as the company's general manager in 1914. Watson had worked at National Cash Register (NCR) for about 20 years. Although he rose to become the company's general sales manager, he was under a cloud when he came to CTR. He had been convicted along with his boss, John Patterson, of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act on behalf of NCR. When the government dropped its case against NCR in 1915, Watson was made president of CTR.
Watson understood that CTR's future lay in its tabulating division. The tabulator was a basic office tool that would be in ever-increasing demand as the number of office workers grew. He quickly established a well disciplined sales force. He hired many former NCR salespeople. They were courteous, well-dressed, and trained in selling a service, not just a product.
The nation's economy boomed in the 1920s. In 1924 CTR became IBM. By the end of the decade it was a dominant leader in providing large tabulating systems for public and private customers. The company was very profitable in the 1920s and 1930s. It operated in the less competitive business segment of large custom–designed systems. IBM's practice of leasing rather than selling its machines increased its profits. Its cross–licensing agreements with its chief competitor, Remington Rand, kept the two companies from antagonizing each other.
IBM also required its customers to use IBM cards for its tabulating machines. There were literally millions of such cards already in use. IBM was selling nearly 85 percent of all keypunch, tabulating, and accounting equipment in the United States. The company's growth remained unchecked despite a 1936 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ordered IBM to lift its restriction that customers use only IBM cards.
Demand for IBM's products increased when President Franklin Roosevelt's administration (1933–45) inaugurated the New Deal during the mid–1930s. The newly created federal bureaucracy needed IBM's calculating machines. The newly formed Social Security Administration placed an order for more than four hundred accounting machines and 1,200 keypunchers. IBM had successfully carved out a market niche that addressed the need of large–scale organizations that required machines capable of massive amounts of calculations.
World War II (1939–1945) saw IBM's sales more than triple. They reached $141.7 million by the end of the war. Demand was high in both governmental and private sectors. The company's machines were used to monitor the manufacture and movement of numerous products used in the war effort. The military had a need for high–speed calculators. This resulted in IBM creating the Mark I, a machine that is considered by many to be the world's first computer. It used IBM punch cards for large calculations. It also retained a set of rules to apply to future input. Practically, it was the first calculator with memory. The Mark I had 765,000 parts and 500 miles of wire, yet it was still less powerful than the kind of hand–held calculators which were common in the latter half of the twentieth century.
IBM was involved in other computer–related projects during World War II and after. But in 1951 its old rival Remington Rand took the lead by marketing the UNIVAC. IBM remained cautious about entering the computer market. At the time IBN punch cards were used even by electronic computers and the company still controlled 85 percent of their market.
In 1952 Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993), succeeded his father as president of IBM. The new president led IBM into the computer market; IBM's first business computer, the 701, was introduced in 1951. As IBM marketed new models its customers began switching from IBM tabulating equipment to IBM computers.
IBM also began to expand internationally. In 1949 it established a new subsidiary for international sales, IBM World Trade Corporation. Thomas Watson's younger brother, Dick Watson, headed the subsidiary. While World Trade had sales of only $6.3 million in 1949, it operated in 58 countries, giving the company a base for future expansion. In many countries IBM set up local subsidiaries to sell IBM products and conduct further research and development. As those countries adopted computers IBM was able to achieve dominance on those markets. Only Japan and the United Kingdom produced local competitors for IBM. This left IBM with a 33 percent market share in those two nations. World Trade eventually surpassed the domestic IBM in sales.
Computers began developing more rapidly in the late 1950s. In 1958 Sperry Rand and Control Data Corporation (CDC) introduced the second generation of computers. The new machines featured transistors instead of vacuum tubes. Then a third generation of machines using integrated circuitry was quickly introduced. IBM responded with a large capital–spending program. Six new plants were built and thousands of workers were hired. In 1965 IBM introduced its 360 line of small, fast computers with their own exclusive software. The 360s were immediately successful and resulted in IBM's dominance over the computer market for more than a decade. From 1965 to 1975 IBM sold 65 percent of all U.S. computers.
IBM's competitors challenged the company by specializing in different niches of the computer market. When the first microcomputers were introduced in 1960 IBM chose not to enter the market. IBM did not enter the personal computer market until 1980. By that time it was unable to achieve the dominance it had with its mainframes and minicomputers. Nonetheless sales of the 360 line and the subsequent 370 line continued to grow. In 1984 IBM achieved peak earnings of $6.6 billion on sales of $46 billion.
During the 1980s IBM was held up as a model of business excellence. But by the end of the decade the company needed an overhaul. Revenues and earnings were weak, and the company's stock price was in decline. Its worldwide market share had fallen from 36 percent to 23 percent. IBM could no longer keep its dominant position in the fast–changing world of computers simply by building bigger and faster machines. The corporation had to find other ways to compete.
IBM's turnaround began in 1993 when Louis Gerstner, former chair of RJR Holdings Corporation, took over as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The measures he took to revive the company included de–emphasizing research and development, refocusing on services and systems, and cutting the work force. He also revived the company's faltering mainframe business.
IBM also embarked on a more aggressive acquisitions program. In 1995 it acquired the software company, Lotus, for $3.5 billion. Other software firms were bought. IBM also invested $1.2 billion in Prodigy with Sears, Roebuck, and Company before selling it at a loss to the company's management and other investors.
With computer networking becoming more predominant in the business world IBM began to make all of its products network-ready. Corporate use of the Internet also became more widespread. IBM sought to provide products for corporate intranets and new Web technologies. In 1997 it introduced a new line of lower–cost mainframe computers that promised the same speed as traditional mainframes. In 1998 it introduced a new line of so–called "e–business tools." These included servers, work stations, PCs, and notebooks. They were meant to facilitate business transactions over the Internet.
"Deep computing" was another area of emerging growth for IBM. It linked high–speed computers with analytical software. The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) were two major customers for this type of supercomputer.
As the 1990s drew to a close IBM was in a much stronger position. Despite it's poor market position in the computing industry at the beginning of the decade, IBM was being held up once again as a model of business excellence.
See also: Computer Industry, Herman Hollerith, Microsoft
FURTHER READING
Fisher, Franklin M. et al. IBM and the U.S. Data Processing Industry: An Economic History. New York: Praeger, 1983.
"IBM History," available from the World Wide Web @ www.ibm.com/ibm/history/.
Pugh, Emerson W. Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Simmons, William W., and Richard B. Elsberry. Inside IBM: The Watson Years, a Personal Memoir. Bryn Mawyr, PA: Dorrance, 1988.
Watson, Thomas J., Jr., and Peter Petre. Father, Son & Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond. New York: Bantam Books, 1990.
IBM
IBM
Founded by Charles Ranlett Flint (1850–1934) as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1911, the company known in 2001 as International Business Machines (IBM) started out making shopkeepers' scales and counting machines for the U.S. Census Bureau. IBM became famous for its mainframe computers in the 1950s and 1960s when it was one of America's largest and most powerful corporations. Some say the blue suits worn by the sales staff inspired the press to nickname the company "Big Blue"; others say it was the color of the "big blue boxes," the large mainframe computers of the 1960s. Always seen as one of the safe bets of American commerce, when IBM collapsed in the late 1980s, it sent shock-waves through the world of computing. By the late 1990s, however, Big Blue had managed to revive its reputation as a major computer manufacturer.
In the early days under chief executive Thomas Watson Jr. (1914–1993), IBM concentrated on sales. Although it was later to gain a reputation for a bullying approach to business, IBM was actually very good to its employees in the 1920s. In the 1930s IBM was among the first companies to offer insurance and paid vacations; it even had a fund for widows of IBM workers killed in World War II (1939–45). Less commendably, the company has been linked with aiding the Nazi government in Germany during the war years.
With the invention of electronic computing after World War II, IBM entered the mainframe computer market. The sharp-suited sales force enjoyed a lifetime employment policy and sold some of the most technically advanced machines of the time. IBM's domination of the computer market lasted until the 1970s, when smaller companies like Apple Computer (see entry under 1970s—The Way We Lived in volume 4) proved quicker to exploit the new personal computer (PC; see entry under 1970s—The Way We Lived in volume 4) market. Although the company made record profits of $6.6 billion in 1984—the year it was portrayed as an evil "Big Brother" in a famous advertisement aired by Apple Computer—its dominance was beginning to fade. Barely a decade later, it took a loss of $8.5 billion.
Over the years, IBM's image has swung from gentle giant to evil empire and back again. For most of the twentieth century, however, it was a symbol of powerful and efficient American enterprise. At the turn of the twenty-first century, IBM remains one of the giants among several large computing firms competing for dominance in a global market.
—Chris Routledge
For More Information
Black, Edwin. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance BetweenNazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.
Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Asprey. Computer: A History of theInformation Machine. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Carroll, Paul. Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM. New York: Crown Publishers, 1993.
IBM.http://www.ibm.com (accessed April 1, 2002).
IBM
IBM occupied a dominating position in the computer industry from the mid-1950s to the 1980s. It was the largest computer manufacturer in the world, by any measure, and produced a wide range of processors, peripherals, software, and associated products, as well as related services. It operated all over the world. It owed its dominance primarily to its marketing strength. The architecture of its 360 range of computers, introduced in the early 1960s, became a de facto standard for mainframes.
The incorporation of the microprocessor into desktop computers of sufficient power to run useful business applications changed the emphasis from low volumes of mainframe computers, IBM's traditional strength, to very large numbers of smaller systems. It was IBM's version of the personal computer, the IBM PC, that set the standard, but paradoxically it was during the 1980s that IBM gradually lost its dominance. The very success of the PC series led competitors to introduce compatible machines (IBM had put the PC architecture in the public domain). These IBM-compatible machines sold at generally lower prices. In addition the growth of independent software producers meant that customers were no longer constrained to buy from IBM. IBM's subsequent ranges of personal computers, including the PS/2 series, have not achieved the same success.
IBM has recovered from the setbacks of the 1980s. It is still the largest IT company in the world and it continues to produce computer hardware, particularly servers, but the major part of its revenue now comes from software and services.
IBM
• intercontinental ballistic missile
• International Business Machines (Corporation; computer manufacturer)