Tristan Yates writes about how IBM conned his execs out of millions.
This was my second experience with IBM, and I knew how they operated. I raised as many warnings as I could, but ultimately because IBM was the vendor with the strongest capabilities, at least on paper, they were seen by the execs as the lowest risk choice. This led IBM to be chosen even when their product was unproven or even demonstrably inferior.
IBM sells itself as a provider of business solutions. That puts them in a position to make architecture and product recommendations. It is no surprise whose hardware, software, and services they typically recommend. After all, IBM invented FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - to deal with their competitors in the 1970s.
The story is pretty sobering because I'm going to have to use unproven technology in one of my projects (guess which one). Hope it goes well.
I found this comment funny:
I worked for IBM once, for about a week. I was actually a contractor in my current position (before I was hired permanently). My contracting company somehow convinced my primary employer to let IBM borrow me for a week. So off I went to Iowa to help some company "identify" their problems. I have no clue what IBM charged for me, but it was a lot. I got there and met the guy that originally developed SCSI. Let's just say their tech crew was quite sharp. Turns out they knew all along what their problems were (token ring, coax and 10baseT ethernet, twinax, appletalk, unix, mainframe, novell, nt server, nt workstation, win95, dos and mac machines-- you just KNOW something's wrong with all that under one roof) but management refused to believe them until they had paid some IBM guy a lot of money to confirm it. Funny thing is, I didn't even know I was the IBM guy until I got there and they said "you must be the IBM guy."