Mainframes Remain Relevant IBM remains committed to developing the channel for eServer zSeries and continues to see growth at the low end of the line, where partners play a major role. There's a respect in the industry for mainframe skills. We still need the high priests. (Feb. 2005 Compuer Reseller News)

CEO Says Mainframe SP Acquisition Completes IBM Portfolio What is the opportunity for IBM Business Partners in the zSeries mainframe market? Any solution provider that's marketing iSeries, pSeries and xSeries has problems with margins, because there are tons of partners marketing those systems. There are 12 partners in North America that market the zSeries. Being one out of 12 is better than being one out of 480. (Jun. 2004 Computer Reseller news)

Q&A: IBM's Steve Mills on CA, the Sun/Microsoft pact, outsourcing CA does enough on their own, independent of what the government is doing, to create opportunities for us. We don't need the Department of Justice to help us build that business. CA has a very mixed reputation with customers. CA tends not to make new investments in any of these mainframe-based products. (Apr. 2004 ComputerWorld)

Tech vendors: End users don't trust you Just 15%of IT professionals said they thought that most IT companies can be trusted completely and two-thirds didn't believe that firms were honest in describing their product. Multi-service providers – think Microsoft, IBM and their ilk – gain buyers' trust more than IT service providers, such as consultants and outsourcers. (Mar. 2004 Silicon.com)

Big Blue does the software shuffle IBM Software, once considered an industry laggard bound to its proprietary hardware systems, has become a vital component of the company's strategy and IBM's most profitable group. Revenue for IBM software grew seven per cent in 2003. IBM plans to focus on content management, business integration, business intelligence, data-centric automation, development tools, security, storage, pervasive computing, portals, Linux, storage, IBM's zSeries mainframes and "competitive win back" scenarios. (Feb. 2004 Silicon.com)

Getting the Best from Your Vendors Although 94 percent of the 118 IT executives make the effort to negotiate lower fees, that kind of lowballing generates precious little business benefit. In many cases, it boomeranged into poor service and support. When it comes to relationships with vendors, the old adage still applies: You get what you pay for. (Nov. 2003 CIO)

IBM program aimed at datacenters IBM will focus on five areas of the datacenter including security, operations, change management, software management, and services management. The services can help users decide on how to standardize their overall computing environments and so prepare to integrate more state-of-the-art technologies including automated provisioning and autonomic computing. (Oct. 2003 InfoWorld)

Big Blue reinvents itself again Sam Palmisano laid out his vision for computer systems that are self-healing or "autonomic", linked in giant "grids" and available "on demand", like water or electric utilities. IBM sees itself as competing not only for the $1,000bn a year that companies spend each year on IT but also for the billions spent on processes. The scope of Big Blue's ambition is breathtaking. (Oct. 2003 Financial Times)

Inside Computer Associates: A vendor dossier CA's diverse software offering mirrors its patchwork of staff. Such diversity may lead to confusion but it has also made CA recession proof to an extent. While some areas have taken a real kicking in the past three years there have invariably been others acting as a crutch upon which CA could hobble through the downturn. (Jul. 2003 Silicon.com)

Demonstration Post-Mortem: Why Vendors Lose Deals Users spot immediately when a presenter is unfamiliar with the product. The effect of inexperienced presenters on users is dramatic: most users become extremely angry that the "best and brightest" were not assigned to their account and lower their scores in response. (Jul. 2003 Technology Evaluation)

Size Matters: Large Competitors Make Moves to Gain Market Share Of course, in large-scale software, acquistions are often self-limiting: functional sprawl can slow down the evolution of new releases (it's harder to engineer change as you get bigger). The integration of another code line can take a great deal of an organization's programming resources, slowing other innovations. (Jun. 2003 CIO)

Users work on IBM to listen to its customers IBM's understanding of corporate IT users and their issues is cyclical, swinging from high to low. We don't want IBM to say how good it is, but to explain how it works, how it sits in different environments and what it will reside with. (May 2003 ComputerWeekly)

The Reinvention of Software Vendors and End-User Value In a new account culture, sales, marketing, support and implementation teams are oriented towards selling and installing new accounts. In a customer culture, the skill sets and attitudes can be very different. Can the vendor change? If not, the customer must suffer the consequences of less experienced, less knowledgeable people. (May 2003 Technology Evaluation)

Tech's Slower March to Market After three years in the doldrums, more and more technology companies are starting to wrestle with two options: Should they risk lower returns by pushing new products out the door at the same frenetic speed as when demand was hot? Or should they take it slow to be sure of recouping investments and saving on R&D costs? (Apr. 2003 BusinessWeek)

The New Blue From the days of tabulating machines all the way to the Space Age, when its mainframes helped chart the path to the moon, IBM was a paragon of power, prestige, and farsightedness. But while Gerstner ruled IBM regally, Palmisano is egalitarian. "Creativity in any large organization does not come from one individual, the celebrity CEO," Palmisano says. "That stuff's B.S." (Mar. 2003 BusinessWeek)

The year of living dangerously Over the past 12 months IBM issued a Linux-only mainframe; oversaw the transition of CEOs from Lou Gerstner to Sam Palmisano; signed a US$4B services pact with American Express; launched new Regatta Unix servers; upgraded its Tivoli security suite; released a new Power PC networking chip; inked a deal with Palm to help PDA users access IBM business applications; announced new blade servers; and upgraded its AIX Unix platform. It also axed 15,600 jobs. (Jan. 2003 IT World)

The Enterprise Software Buyers Club Anyone who thinks that career enhancement doesn't play a role in software acquisition doesn't have a career in the software industry. This career-motivated reasoning is behind seemingly contradictory software acquisition approaches: maverick CIOs taking unnecessary chances to look good at their next job and more conservative CIOs sticking with proven (safe) products so that they can keep their jobs one more year. (Feb. 2003 Intelligent Enterprise)

Study: Most IT Customers Feel No Vendor Loyalty Less than half of all IT customers are pleased enough with their vendors to remain loyal to them and 29% feel trapped in the relationship. Only a third believe that high-tech companies care about the community and society (29%), are highly ethical (36%), and treat employees well (30%). (Oct. 2002 Datamation)

50% Of Software Firms Soon Will Vanish Not only will the small and weak disappear but major players will merge or be acquired to cause even well-known and substantial brands to vanish. Half of today's software vendors will have gone under within the next two years. (Oct. 2002 Datamation)

Quality Counts Buyers may be getting tougher on quality, but they've also helped create this problem. The market has rewarded vendors for new features, not for quality and reliability. In the fiercely competitive software business, that creates a race in which vendors feel pressured to deliver new functions and work out the bugs later. (Aug. 2002 InformationWeek)

The enemy of my enemy is IBM When it comes to power politics, Machiavelli was an amateur compared to IBM. In the computer industry, the prevailing wisdom is that my enemy's enemy must be my friend and IBM is now friend to everyone. But with friends like IBM, none of these vendors need enemies. (Jul. 2002 InfoWorld)

Smaller Vendors Make Gains In Mainframe Software Old mainframe-software pricing and service may be on the way out. A few smaller vendors are winning new customers by providing quick installations, lower prices, easy-to-understand pricing structures, and solid customer service. (May 2002 InformationWeek)

The Hardest Job in IT A person could get shot for saying this, but chief information officer is not the hardest job in information technology. Technology sales is harder. (May 2002 CIO)