[Ricapar]

IBM has its place, especially in the big enterprise. However, more and more I'm seeing that's not the case.

Working for a big insurance co., we're seeing a big shift toward a "devops-like culture", and a lot of the time that means less IBM.

IBM not only needs to refresh their offerings, they need to refresh their image. The common feeling around here is IBM products are slow, buggy, and pieced together quickly from a ton of other acquisitions who are then "IBM-ized" together.

They look beautiful on paper, in a way that speaks to both execs and real tech people alike. But once you build it out and start trying to support it...

[needusername]

WebSphere, calling it a bloated, buggy, outdated, overpriced pice of shit would be a compliment. I'll do PHP before I do WebSphere. I'll go jobless before I do WebSphere.

[nkohari]

> They look beautiful on paper, in a way that speaks to both execs and real tech people alike. But once you build it out and start trying to support it...

To be fair, you just described most enterprise software systems. :)

[mindcrime]

I think you mean "most software systems", period. :-)

[enraged_camel]

I don't know about that. Most software can be bad, but enterprise software tends to be a special kind of bad. The big problem with enterprise is that the buyers are not the users. Therefore, the incentives are not aligned and the result is extremely poor quality software.

[mindcrime]

I agree with most of what you just said, but that doesn't really contradict what I said. I guess I could have been more verbose, but I meant to reply to:

"But once you build it out and start trying to support it..."

which suggests that the topic is something like "systems that start out elegant, pristine and pure, and slowly accrete functionality and complexity, and become brittle, unstable, and hard to maintain and support". And I posit that this applies to pretty much all software, not just "enterprise software".

I mean, there's a reason we have aphorisms and memes like Greenspun's Tenth Rule[1], Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment[2], the Turing Tarpit[3], the Inner Platform Effect, etc.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski.27s_law...

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit

[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect

[parasubvert]

Yup. The ship can be saved (and probably will - they have many smart people), but it's not clear how yet. Currently they have a major brand problem among the young generation.

I grew up when IBM still had a cool factor with Team OS/2, etc., but other than BlueMix there's not much left.