IBM

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International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software and services.

With its 319,000 employees worldwide and revenues of $89 billion (figures from 2003), it is the largest information technology company in the world, and one of the few with a continuous history spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. It has consultants in over 160 countries and development labs located all over the world. IBM Research has eight research labs located throughout the Northern Hemisphere, with half of those locations outside of the United States.

It has a major presence in virtually every segment of information technology, from mainframe computers (where it has had market dominance for decades) to nanotechnology. In recent years, more and more of its revenue comes from services and consulting activities rather than manufacturing. Samuel J. Palmisano was elected CEO on January 29, 2002 after having been instrumental in helping to grow that consulting activity, which has turned its Global Services unit into a business with tens of billions of dollars in backlog.

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[edit] Current business activities

(click on the
year to go to
IBM's page of
accomplishments
for that year)		 Year Patents
Granted
20033415
20023288
20013411
20002886
19992756
19982658
19971724
19961867
19951383
19941298
19931087

In 2002, IBM announced the beginning of a $10 billion program to research and implement the infrastructure technology necessary to be able to provide supercomputer-level resources "on demand" to all businesses as a metered utility.

In recent years IBM has steadily increased its patent portfolio, which is valuable for cross-licencing with other companies. In every year from 1993 until 2003, IBM has been granted significantly more U.S. patents than any other company. That eleven-year period has resulted in over 25,000 patents for which IBM is the primary assignee. [1]

The aggressive protection of the company's intellectual property has grown into a business of its own, generating over $10 billion of dollars [2] to the bottom line for the company during this period. [3], [4]


[edit] History

IBM's history dates back decades before the development of computers -- before that it developed punched card data processing equipment. It originated as the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation, which was incorporated on June 15, 1911 in Binghamton, New York. This company was a merger of the Tabulating Machine Corporation, the Computing Scale Corporation and the International Time Recording Company. The president of the Tabulating Machine Corporation at that time was Herman Hollerith. Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, became General Manager of CTR in 1914 and President in 1915. On February 14, 1924, CTR changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation.

The companies that merged to form CTR manufactured a wide range of products, including employee time keeping systems, weighing scales, automatic meat slicers, and most importantly for the development of the computer, punched card equipment. Over time CTR came to focus purely on the punched card business, and ceased its involvement in these other activities.

IBM's success in the mid-1960s led to enquiries as to IBM antitrust violations by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business. Litigation continued until 1983, and had a significant impact on the company's practices.

On January 19, 1993 IBM announced a $4.97 billion loss for 1992 which was at that time the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history. Since that loss, IBM has made major changes in its business activities, shifting its focus significantly away from components and hardware and towards software and services.


[edit] Business culture

IBM has often been described as having a sales-centric or a sales-oriented business culture. Traditionally, many of its executives and general managers would be chosen from its sales force. In addition, middle and top management would often be enlisted to give direct support to salesmen in the process of making sales to important customers.

Over time, the company has become increasing technical; in 2003 over 178,000 of its employees were considered part of its technical community, with 38,000 of them [5] working on software.

Historically, a blue suit, white shirt and dark tie was the public uniform of IBM employees in the 20th century. By the 1990s, IBM relaxed these codes, and currently the behavior and dress of IBM employees does not differ appreciably from that of their counterparts in most other large technology companies.

IBM Japan is one of the few foreign companies successful in the Japanese market.

IBM's culture has been recently influenced by the open source movement. The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux. This includes over 300 Linux kernel developers. IBM's open source involvement has not been trouble-free, however; see SCO v. IBM.

[edit] Trivia

[edit] Recent acquisitions

[edit] Spinoffs

[edit] Labor

[edit] Environmental

[edit] Social History

[edit] Intellectual Property

[edit] Activism Against

[edit] Critical Websites

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Original content for this article came from WikiPedia

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