A 100 Years Without IBM

In its current campaign, which has now been on for a couple of years, IBM talks about a ‘Smarter Planet’. That gets me thinking – would this planet be any less smarter without IBM?

What if we were to just remove the 100 years of IBM from the world history as if it never existed, and then what is it that we are left with? Still a lot, I argue. And, I wouldn’t have been any less richer in what I have gained from the world without it. I, and I bet, most of us would have still lived had the first disk drive from IBM would never have been there. Or for that matter, we would have still survived had IBM not invented the relational database. I mean, I could have done without being able to manage and access large amounts of data faster and more easily. Ditto, had FORTRAN (reportedly one of the first widely used computer programming language from IBM) and bar code never come from IBM.

But, would the world have been the same? No. And, I do not mean this in the same sense as ‘The world would not have been the same without Microsoft or Google or Apple’. And, by saying that, I’m in no way trying to draw a comparison that states that the Big Blue’s contributions to the world have been any less than theirs. Rather it’s the other way round. IBM has contributed in a way that none of the tech giants have or could have.

Inventions apart, IBM’s biggest contribution to the world has been its big lesson in staying relevant, even across a time span that would see generations go by. From making cheese slicers and typewriters to supercomputers to On-demand, and of course, a lot in between - it is hard to come by many companies (both tech and non-tech) that have managed to stay as relevant over an entire century and still going strong.

So, what’s been the key to this relevancy? It’s nearly impossible to sum up the essence of a 100 years of a behemoth like IBM. And the often over-used and misused term ‘Innovation’ may not really sound clichéd in IBM’s context cause ‘Innovation’ is the only word that seems to come as close as possible to defining IBM. And, by ‘Innovation’ I don’t mean just technology inventions and patents, cause IBM’s brand of innovation goes well beyond these.

I’m in no way discounting IBM’s inventions though, and they have undoubtedly left an indelible mark and contribution to computing. But, what amazes even more is the way the company has constantly re-invented itself. Interestingly, this is not just about what you have created and added along the way but also about what you have let go. And, many a times the latter is even more critical than the former as getting it wrong can be fatalistic.

It takes more than just sheer guts to let go off a $ 10 billion PC business that was once hugely profitable. IBM’s decision to sell off its PC business to Lenovo in 2004 was a shocker to many. Agreed, it made business sense. But, then you need to have that ability to put at stake billions and do something that’s veering more towards the ‘unthinkable’. Its not that billions of dollars worth of business had not been sold before. But, its one thing to sell a company, make bucks and you are out of it, and yet another to sell a major part of your company, make bucks but then being right there to live the consequences. It needs foresight and courage of conviction besides the incredible business sense to take that leap of faith. Letting go of the PC business sure did change IBM forever and the IBM of today wouldn’t have been the same but for that decision.

Closer home, in India, when IBM signed the landmark deal with Bharti, it was rather a leap of faith for latter as there was no such precedence in the country to fall upon or refer to for comfort. But, it does need an IBM to convince a Bharti to get them to sign the first of its kind deal in India and continue delivering on that successfully till date and expanding the scope further. And, in the process create a revolutionary business model that was unheard of before for enterprises in India. The landmark outsourcing deal with Bharti in 2004 was not only about managing the telecom major’s IT but about partnership and revenue sharing, lending a whole new dynamics to the outsourcing industry, both in India and globally.

Its willingness to re-invent itself globally as well as locally, keeps IBM alive and thriving. I’m no expert to predict whether it will be software, or services, or hardware that will drive the next phase of growth for IBM, whether it’s Artificial Intelligence, some unheard of computing model, or some revolutionary business model that will be the next big thing for IBM, whether it is ‘Smarter Planet’ or something else that will define IBM in the next 100 years. But, what I know is that the IBM of tomorrow will not be the same as IBM of today, just like the IBM of today is so unlike the IBM of yesterday.

The adage ‘Change is the only constant’ are not just words at IBM but a reality. A lesson that we can’t do without. The world would have indeed been different without the 100 years of IBM.