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Can you please offer these articles as just text or PDF downloads as well? The slideshows are extremely annoying with all the scrolling and clicking. Maybe I just want to print it and read it during lunch.
You forgot about one of the worst mergers of all time. The year before the merger Sperry had revenue of $5.2 Billion and Burroughs had revenue of $4.8 Billion. The year after the merger their combined revenue was only $4.2 Billion. That's a bad merger when you lose 58% of your revenue in the first 12 months!
If they hadn't merged, the revenue drop would have been even greater. Many folks felt that they (rightfully so) should deal with the more successful. As two of the "seven" dwarfs, they were doomed either way.
The reason they lost 58% of their revenue was because of the bad decisions made after the merger. They eliminated the competitive product lines and retained the obsolete high margin product lines. They actually thought that if they didn't innovate that their customers would continue to buy the same expensive stuff. Guess what, other companies didn't stop innovating.
If I had to bet I would bet the author has never heard of Sperry, Burroughs, or their merger.
That merger took place in 1986, several years after the Osborne and original IBM PC decisions. Maybe it's because most people don't know that Unisys once had about a 12 percent share of all computing revenue (hardware, software, and services). That's a larger percentage than Apple has today.
I though that merger was much further back. I suspect anthemwebs@ may be right they would have lost revenue anyway.
I actually worked in the engineering group in Sperry during the merger. We had several products that would have increased revenue. Burroughs immediately killed those projects after the merger. One in particular would have brought in many new customers. If the merger hadn't taken place, Sperry alone would have had more revenue than the two combined.
There should be an entire section devoted to Novell's all-time worst tech industry executive decisions!
I often scan a page, see it's a slide show, and quit- it's just not worth the extra time.
...scan the page; it's an obnoxious slideshow. To avoid them, just stop getting "PhotoGallery at TechRepublic". Plenty-cool space photos is about the only slideshow topic I'll wade through 10-30 screens to see/read.
Apotheker came from SAP and it appears he is trying to turn HP into another SAP, not that SAP is anything to aspire to.
This is what he knows. He doesn't know to sell manufactured goods, but BS on paper. So, he eliminates everything he doesn't understand and keeps only what his clients don't understand: the huge services contracts covering systems implementation such as SAP. Eventually, HP will become only another name for EDS.
I agree that slide shows are passe and should be replaced by a video, PowerPoint, or PDF as Bob B recommends.
Our bandwidth usage is monitored fairly closely so I almost never watch videos at work. If they switch to videos I won't ever see another one, but then maybe that is a good thing.
Why didn't IBM acquire Microsoft? They lacked lateral vision. I was working for IBM when they, very reluctantly, agreed to venture into the personal computer arena. The project was assigned its own business unit precisely because IBM had no real faith in it, fully expecting they would have to spin it off. After all, Henry Ford didn't make his fortune marketing a flying car, right? With no serious R&D appropriated, only off-the-shelf parts and 3rd-party software were allowed. Acquiring Microsoft was a ludicrous notion. Locked into their vertical "mainframe" mentality, no one at the helm envisioned that this could ever develop into a serious industry that, as it turned out, actually relegated the mainframe to a mere supporting role.
All I remember is the difficult choice between the IBMs and the IBM-compatibles. It looked like a serious effort from the user side.
Your information helps explain how quickly it changed after that, when competition became more real. If they had wanted to, I guess they would have owned the market for a lot longer.
Your information helps explain how quickly it changed after that, when competition became more real. If they had wanted to, I guess they would have owned the market for a lot longer.
I was working as a COBOL programmer when I began to develop PC databases and networks. My supervisor told me that I really needed to focus on the mainframe end of the business because these PCs were never going to amount to anything. I'm glad I ignored her advice. But it just shows you that IBM's lack of vision was shared by many others in the computer oriented world.
Ha. I don't think so. The majority of large companies still do most of their business critical processing on Mainframes.
No they don't. Our company supports 50 of the US Fortune 100 companies and very few have mainframes at the center of their computing strategy. The exception is oil companies that still use them to crunch geological data.
For most companies their ERP system is their most critical system. That is usually SAP running on Windows or UNIX hosts (I don't consider most UNIX hosts to be mainframes).
The second most critical application at most companies is their email system. For the vast majority of companies that is Microsoft Exchange which of course only runs on Windows servers.
For most companies their ERP system is their most critical system. That is usually SAP running on Windows or UNIX hosts (I don't consider most UNIX hosts to be mainframes).
The second most critical application at most companies is their email system. For the vast majority of companies that is Microsoft Exchange which of course only runs on Windows servers.
Dont forget the banking sector. They use mainframes for processing. Fiserv(ITI) Uses Unisys and IBMs mostly.
A catastrophe by IBM trying to reclaim the PC market that arguably started the process whereby it eventually gave up with the PC altogether
Both were a series of decisions (and non-decisions) culminating in failure.
The PS/2 and the MicroChannel Architecture were an attempt by IBM to undo their open licensing of the x86 architecture and regain control of the PC market. As with all such attempts, it was the equivalent of closing the barn door after the stock was in the pasture, and was doomed to failure.
OS/2 fell prey to the same IBM groupthink that hobbled the development of the 5150: PCs are just a fad and will never replace big iron, therefore we don't need to pay much attention to them. This same mindset helped create the business conditions that ultimately resulted in the spin-off of their PC division to Lenovo.
The PS/2 and the MicroChannel Architecture were an attempt by IBM to undo their open licensing of the x86 architecture and regain control of the PC market. As with all such attempts, it was the equivalent of closing the barn door after the stock was in the pasture, and was doomed to failure.
OS/2 fell prey to the same IBM groupthink that hobbled the development of the 5150: PCs are just a fad and will never replace big iron, therefore we don't need to pay much attention to them. This same mindset helped create the business conditions that ultimately resulted in the spin-off of their PC division to Lenovo.
CP/M didn't really run on the Apple ][, it ran on a plugin card you could buy for the machine.
AT&T's decision to spinoff Lucent. AT&T lost Bells Labs in this one. CEO Henry Schacht was quickly replaced by Rich McGinn
There is so much wrong with that simplistic analysis it's difficult to know where to start. MicroSoft wasn't some unknown software company. Gates had borrowed several hundred thousand dollars from his parents to buy a used VAX, and they had figured out how to write hardware emulators on it to develop boot OS's for mini-computers at a fraction of the cost for a hardware manufacturer to develop one. Microsoft did a lot of business with Japanese manufacturers. Gates had also gone to Harvard, his parents knew people. IBM decided to deal with Microsoft because Microsoft moved in that world. Gary Kildall was a great programmer and became a multi-millionaire thru his business savvy, but he was no where near that level.
And no one knew the IBM PC was going to be so successful. Everyone was testing the market, and not making much. The fact of the matter is, Joe Blow consumer didn't know anything about mainframe manufacturers. The surprising success of the IBM PC was due entirely to the IBM Selectric, which every office in the world knew about. If someone went to their boss and said they wanted to buy a DEC Rainbow, hell, the boss wouldn't know anything about DEC. But if he goes to the boss and says "I'd like to add an IBM PC to the 20 IBM Selectrics we're ordering", that's almost a slam dunk.
And everyone talks about how IBM should have grabbed the PC market. Well, what happened to all the other companies, like Compaq, who did go after that market? IBM had like 60,000 employees in the 80's, Compaq during it's heyday had a few thousand. Right now IBM makes a mint selling mainframes, if it had gone after the PC market it would probably belong to a Chinese company now.
And no one knew the IBM PC was going to be so successful. Everyone was testing the market, and not making much. The fact of the matter is, Joe Blow consumer didn't know anything about mainframe manufacturers. The surprising success of the IBM PC was due entirely to the IBM Selectric, which every office in the world knew about. If someone went to their boss and said they wanted to buy a DEC Rainbow, hell, the boss wouldn't know anything about DEC. But if he goes to the boss and says "I'd like to add an IBM PC to the 20 IBM Selectrics we're ordering", that's almost a slam dunk.
And everyone talks about how IBM should have grabbed the PC market. Well, what happened to all the other companies, like Compaq, who did go after that market? IBM had like 60,000 employees in the 80's, Compaq during it's heyday had a few thousand. Right now IBM makes a mint selling mainframes, if it had gone after the PC market it would probably belong to a Chinese company now.
Another missing/incorrect piece of that story is that IBM didn't actually go to Microsoft and ask for an OS, they asked for and got a BASIC language compiler and mentioned during those discussions that they also were looking for an OS. Gates then talked to the folks with the OS and bought half interest, showed it to IBM and they liked it so he then went and bought outright. The rest as they say is history.
Eric Schmidt.... Just for being an idiot. His companies [past and present] buys other companies only to drop their products.
Look at Google recently. Dropped over 10 products - some were from purchases.
Look at Google recently. Dropped over 10 products - some were from purchases.
I don't know how selling to MS can be a good decision for Yahoo - that is suicide. only one company has ever escaped after being engulfed by MS. Would it have been a good monetary decision for Yahoo shareholders? Maybe, but that isn't a tech issue, and the shareholders are free to go elsewhere.
Look at the list of other bad decisions, and see how many of them are caused by the idiocy of the "growth by acquisition" mindset. This destroys jobs, destroys companies (sometimes both), and usually does no good, and the consumer is left with fewer choices among poorer products and services.
Look at the list of other bad decisions, and see how many of them are caused by the idiocy of the "growth by acquisition" mindset. This destroys jobs, destroys companies (sometimes both), and usually does no good, and the consumer is left with fewer choices among poorer products and services.
Tech isn't the only industry failed by this mentality. As my personal experiences of the tanning industry for one show. Renault and Nissan bought out GST Autoleather in Md. Then closed it to consolidate operations in Mexico. They lost a lot of talent, threw-way or trashed good equipment and moved into the middle of a drug war in Nuavo Laredo, Mexico. The Idea was to save the company but now GST and Seton are only paper companies with no one from the old companies still employed.
IBM declining purchase of Haloid Corporation (that became Xerox) ranks up near the top in lack of foresight...
DISAGREE OF COURSE. maybe in retrospect it was a bad decision for IBM not to buy MS-DOS or PC-DOS, but at the time this was a great decision and the ONLY decision any respectable company would take, with regards to buying those two primitive systems/jokes. The only reason for the success of the company having them later was NOT their technical merits, but Microsoft's marketing ploys and it's stealing the innovative "Windows" concept/system from APPLE.
I think it's funny how people point to Microsoft and say they stole the GUI from Apple. Apple lost their lawsuit against Microsoft. Part of the reason was because Apple could not prove they created the interface. They actually licensed it from Xerox. The courts also stated that the Windows interface did not violate the Xerox copyrights.
Since when were micros... OSs not slow and guggy?!!
Apple never needed a Vista to attract users to it's systems. It's innovations that were blantly stolen by micros... Since the early eighties were enough to eventualy lead to what we see nowadays. It would surely have come much earlier if it weren't for Apple's high-pricing and controling/restrictive attitude.
Apple never needed a Vista to attract users to it's systems. It's innovations that were blantly stolen by micros... Since the early eighties were enough to eventualy lead to what we see nowadays. It would surely have come much earlier if it weren't for Apple's high-pricing and controling/restrictive attitude.
Steve Jobs' story. The most honerable story, not only in the technology field, but certainly in the history of business as we humans know it 
It reads like you're pitching a TV mini-series ("Tonight, Steve Jobs gets caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse....."). Please elaborate; your comment seems laudatory, but out of place.
I assume it's a conflation of horrific-onerous-deplorable.
Well you forget to mention Microsoft Windows ME, the worst virus never designed as an O.S...
Sergi
Sergi
And is definitely still very successful. Maybe not as much as it used to be, but imagine if the dummies at micros... were running it. Mr. Yang was really smart to refuse micros...'s offer. The life of corporations is stages, some are up and some are down. Look at Apple.
HP was pretty greegy and did not do a good evaluation of the market when they priced their wonderful tablet near the Apple iPad. That was unrealistic. When HP reduced the price (of course unreasonably), Touchpad became the number one best-seller in the tablet market, to be discontinued?! Bad Bad pricing strategy from the start until now! Pitty and sad. Palm had the best mobile platform for searching, productivity, and browsing. SAD!
A very sad and classic example of when too much politics/too many scandals bring a company down. Sad for Palm though. Was a very smart company and mobile platform.
No mention of Ken Olson (Digital Equipment Corp.'s) CEO who decided there was no market for small computers instead focusing the company on mid-range and mainframe class systems in the early-to-mid 80s? Had he decided otherwise, everyone might be running with VAX-inside instead of Intel-inside.
...the history of technology started in 1980 and is identical to the history of personal computing in the US?
started closer to the time of the invention of such hall-of-fame tech marvels as the 'sharp stick', the 'wheel', and the 'inclined plane'; the operative word in this article's title is 'industry'. The tech 'industry' (as we know it) kind of DID begin around the time you suggest, especially the consumer end of it. Prior to that time, a 'high-tech gadget' was something like a Minox camera or a Texas Instruments (or fledgeling HP) 'scientific' calculator. In even earlier times, tech innovations such as the sextant, the guilliotine, the catapult et al were not indicative of a 'tech industry' such as exists today. Technology: as old as imagination; 'tech industry' (as in, "Mom, I want to pursue a career in hi-tech!") might predate 1980, but not by much, historically speaking. I'd call Archimedes' workshop/lab a 'high-tech facility' of its day, but I'd not infer that it was part of a tech 'industry'....
...but mainframes and fridge-sized "minicomputers" were widespread, and even microprocessors were indutrialized before 1980. If we limit the discussion to tech industry "as we know it", we'll probably find that, by definition, it started in our/my/your lifetime.
Putting personal perspectives aside and looking backwards in time, we can list several industries that precede modern computing and pushed the limits of technology: arms, aircraft, cars, fertilizers, light bulbs, railways, spinning machines, printing, various forms of energy production, just to mention a few.
Putting personal perspectives aside and looking backwards in time, we can list several industries that precede modern computing and pushed the limits of technology: arms, aircraft, cars, fertilizers, light bulbs, railways, spinning machines, printing, various forms of energy production, just to mention a few.
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