[jusonchan]

Seems like a baseless article that is pulling fake facts out of thin air to supplement a couple of real ones like the cost basis and failures of large government projects.

It's not uncommon for large government projects to fail with all the bureaucracy and politics that is in play. I am not saying IBM is great, but this article is just not worth it.

[Shoothe]

I've used two services from IBM: Notes and node DB2 package. Both of them were pretty low quality, the db2 package was so unstable that it constantly segfaulted the entire node process. It's not fixed for years since the issue was reported with reproducible code. Needless to say I wouldn't recommend IBM even to my enemies.

Can anyone share a good IBM experience? I'm honestly interested.

[eitland]

> Can anyone share a good IBM experience? I'm honestly interested.

The IBM pc we bought in the 90ies was fantastic.

It had working suspend resume many years ahead of other computers and came with 365/24 free phone support for a year (and the next years was about 50USD). This being was very useful since I didn't have Internet access.

The support team had unlimited time, patience and knowledge and would walk me (15-16 y.o) through any procedure including if necessary: backup, reconfigure disk with fdisk, restore os from backup etc etc. I learned a whole lot from them both technical stuff as well as how to deal with customers ;-)

(And yes, old IBM ThinkPads were very popular IIRC.)

Edit: details.

[blakesterz]

They bought SoftLayer a few years ago and haven't ruined it. Not sure if that really counts or not, but I was really worried. I've been there for quite a few years, and nothing went downhill after they got bought.

[ksk]

Those appear to be products - which is different than hiring IBM to develop something for you. IBM has had a storied history in tech from developing/popularizing the PC to OS/2 to their thinkpad laptops, to designing systems for the space shuttle, and natural language projects like the Watson. I don't think IBM lacks talent.

Its almost seems like when you can get away with milking the system, nobody seems to have any moral qualms in selling the government a $200 screwdriver.

[raesene9]

Unfortunately IBMs history doesn't really provide any evidence of their current competency.

You really don't have to go far to find stories of IBMs cost cutting, moving staff to the lowest possible cost locations, poor treatment of staff etc.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/06/ibm_retracts_agreed... is one recent example.

[ksk]

>Unfortunately IBMs history doesn't really provide any evidence of their current competency.

I gave current examples of competency. Its trivial to find others. In any case, my point was merely to differenciate services from products, so I'm not sure what you were replying to anyway.

[eesmith]

I'll share another bad experience. AstraZeneca pulled out of a $1.4 billion/7-year deal with IBM a couple of years early, because of dissatisfaction with IBM's service.

I remember hearing about it then, but I cannot now find details of the problems.

[Consultant32452]

Model M keyboard ftw.

[eesmith]

The argument from the linked-to piece is that "IBM is a hollow shell of what it once was".

The Model M keyboard is from IBM 40+ years ago.

[RobLach]

GPFS (Called spectrum scale now).