back to article IBM predicts glorious tech future made possible by $IBMmarketing

IBM's latest "five in five" predictions – five things that may happen in the next five years – ignore social and economic realities to alert us to new technology that'll be prevalent (and mostly made by IBM). The predictions were published on Tuesday, and are centered around Big Blue's major product push of "cognitive …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. xperroni

    "Distant memory" indeed

    I am reminded of a piece from not long ago, which congratulated IBM on its successful history of "fighting off" upstart competitors such as (I shit you not) Microsoft. The pundit went on to explain how Big Blue would totally blow Amazon out of the water cloud, any moment now, just you wait...

    I am, of course, being unfair. It must be hard for IBM, a company that once had the whole computing industry in its claws, to be reduced to just another IT company. Barely does it remember, I bet, what it feels to set off in some direction and have the world follow...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Distant memory" indeed

      Let's be real - "IBM" doesn't remember that at all. The bean-counters and the suits took over the asylum a decade or more ago, understand nothing beyond squeezing every last penny out of the company and its customers, and move on anyway as soon as they've secured their stock options. True corporate memory of the past is close to zero at the upper management level. The only people within the company who DO remember are almost entirely an increasingly sparse band of ageing techies at way too low a level to actually influence which way the company goes. The old IBM is dead and gone; the corpse simply hasn't stopped twitching yet.

    2. BennyJ

      Re: "Distant memory" indeed

      You do realise that Amazon only makes a few billion dollars from IT and the whole company can barely turn a profit. It's very easy to dominate a market if you aren't worried about actually making money for your shareholders. IBM makes over $100B in revenue and $17B in profit. It's the second largest IT company in terms of revenue behind HP and second behind MS in profit. Hardly what I would call "just another" IT company

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "Distant memory" indeed @BennyJ

        Just give it time. Same for HP.

        The difference between like Amazon and Google on one hand and IBM and HP on the other is that all the new technologies seem to be in the Amazon/Google (and the like) camp.

        IBM and HP are just service companies, doing well on massive contracts, mostly government probably. No one sees them as innovators, because they are not anymore.

        That is why I am saying to give it time. Once a new tech wave or two come upon us, like this move to the "cloud", IBM and HP will become increasingly irrelevant.

        They many not follow Kodak, but will not bring anything exciting. This in case the new technologies are not disrupting, otherwise their services may become too expensive even for governments.

  2. Steve Wysham

    Remember forgetting?

    Oyxmoron warning! "We will no longer remember when we could forget." What?

  3. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Happy

    Hilarious stuff.

    Proving that nothing dates faster than "The future."

  4. Herby

    So, what happens next??

    Will IBM merge with another company that uses its ideas anyway? Google??

    One never knows, but you heard it here first!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Watson In the Cloud with Diamonds

    Watson has a lot of potential, especially as a cloud based product since current personal products are underpowered for the application. But the only way to meet that potential is to spend resources. Now, Google would do that, and maybe a few others like Apple, but IBM won't, nor would HP. The rumor is that the brain drain is becoming alarming with people fleeing for better pay and more interesting jobs, but that isn't stopping the cost cutters... I don't know how they expect to leverage Watson without spending resource and with only the drone personnel that barely squeaked University attempting to direct flocks of the cheapest available Indian job hoppers.

    Further, the story is that the upper management pulled a demotivational HP by giving pay raises to middle performers and below, leaving high performers with nothing. Maybe the 5 year miracle event would be: still a relevant company.

    Too bad, Watson has a lot of potential but lets face it, the grand entrance was years ago and the lack of investment is showing as the competition poaches the brains and the fruit dies on the vine with only smoke and mirrors to show since.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like