(Gerstner steps down) IBM Names Palmisano as New CEO

Yahoo News ^ | Tuesday January 29 2:02 PM ET | Caroline Humer

[Straight Vermonter]

Damn, time to start sucking up to a new boos. LOL

[Senator_Blutarski]

Yup.

[gnarledmaw]

Why was the first question that jumped into my head,"I wonder if Arthur Anderson does their bookkeeping too?"

[ken5050]

Watch for the calls to start for Lou to take over at Enron.....

[Mixer]

Indexing!

[1L]

I have to say that I thought Gerstner would cause IBM to fall even further. However, I think the lesson here is that solid leadership and management skills are preferable to a CEO who has the tech edge (i.e. Larry Ellison) but no business management skills. Bill Gates, OTOH, is smart enough to surround himself with the talent he needs. Either that, or he is the most gifted human being ever.

[newzjunkey]

Bump for Big Blue

[desertcry]

I loved IBM of the 60s, but the world of the high tech business changed in the late 80s. Even Big Blue had to adopt to the new business environment, successfully. Keep it going guys, I need my retirement check coming.

[eno_]

My latte almost came spewing out my nose: Ellison has a "tech edge?" Larry never wrote a lick of code in his life. Larry is a salesman. IBM still is, for all its troubles, a far more productive creator of actual technology innovations. (Which is not to say they have a clue about turning them into money.)

IBM's problem is that mainframes are dead, have been for years, and anyone believing news to the contrary has never seen a corpse twitch. IBM has a chance to become The Linux Company before mainframe revenues dry up. I give them a one in five chance of success.

Gerstner did a great job of stopping IBM's collapse. But on what basis is IBM going to grow? Can you name one? Like I said, maybe they can replace Sun by becoming the Linux Company. Maybe.

[1L]

Ellison has a "tech edge?" Larry never wrote a lick of code in his life. Larry is a salesman.

'cuse me. Bad example. Perhaps I was thinking of the SGI guy -- or is he a marketer too? How about the Yahoo guys?

But on what basis is IBM going to grow? Can you name one? Like I said, maybe they can replace Sun by becoming the Linux Company. Maybe.

I don't know. My only point was that when Louie took over in '92, I debated with my boss at the time as to whether this was a good move. I argued someone who knows nothing (or little) about technology should not be running a high tech company. He said if they guy was a good manager, he would make things happen. I guess he was right.

[1L]

Ellison has a "tech edge?" Larry never wrote a lick of code in his life. Larry is a salesman.

'cuse me. Bad example. Perhaps I was thinking of the SGI guy -- or is he a marketer too? How about the Yahoo guys?

But on what basis is IBM going to grow? Can you name one? Like I said, maybe they can replace Sun by becoming the Linux Company. Maybe.

I don't know. My only point was that when Louie took over in '92, I debated with my boss at the time as to whether this was a good move. I argued someone who knows nothing (or little) about technology should not be running a high tech company. He said if they guy was a good manager, he would make things happen. I guess he was right.

[Interesting Times]

IBM's problem is that mainframes are dead, have been for years, and anyone believing news to the contrary has never seen a corpse twitch.

Without disrespect, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Mainframe sales are the core of IBM's business, and remain quite profitable.

[vin-one]

Lou, has done a good job, I don't expect to many changes, To bad I'm so low on
on the totem pole will never get a chance to meet them or suck up to them.
Let's keep those, contracts coming in.

[B Knotts]

IBM's problem is that mainframes are dead

Hardly.

[WL-law]

Arthur Anderson does their bookkeeping too?"

No, PriceWaterhouse does the accounting audit.

[taxbreak2]

Interesting to see if Linux on mainframes will sell? I saw the ad dollars invested on TV during football NFC conference game. I remember when MSFT gave away netbeui w/ WFW3.11 and Artisoft was shoved out of the game.

Now

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/incremental/netware.asp

Much of novell comes free with MSFT.

I wonder if buying "big iron" in a handheld world w/out paying for the OS will be the norm in 10 years?

[oc-flyfish]

There iSeries (formally AS/400) are also very profitable as well. Damn things are absolutely amazing!

[oc-flyfish]

There=Their - ...need more coffee... grammer fading fast... :-)

[Jack Black]

Yes and the RS/6000 is the number3 Unix server behind Sun and HP having dethroned pretenders like SGI, Pyramid, Sequent (which IBM bought for a song).

And the ThinkPad is one of the top five laptops I'd guess.

They also have some pretty solid software business in WebSphere and DB2 database.

Lou has a whole lot to be very proud of. Best wishes to him in his next adventure.

[eno_]

I've seen that. Yawn. The big-system future looks like Google: a zillion commodity boxen running free software. Someone will become the Dell of Linux. Could be IBM. But any company, including HP, Compaq, and IBM that thinks they add value with their technology is only making their cost structure bigger than Dell's, and is setting themselves up to have Dell take their customers.