At 100, IBM Is Solid and Looking for Another 100 Years (NewsFactor)

Big Blue just turned 100. IBM was founded on June 16, 1911, and the tech giant has released a book to celebrate the milestone called Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company. IBM is also debuting a new film, Wild Ducks, and rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

No one can dispute the contributions IBM has made in business, science and society over the past century. From investing in a research lab in the depths of the Great Depression, to developing the first hard-disk drive that created the data-storage industry, to working with the U.S. government to develop the Social Security system, IBM's impact is deep.

IBM also invented the System/360 mainframe, the UPC code, the IBM Personal Computer that launched the PC revolution, and, most recently, Watson, the computer that triumphed on the TV game show Jeopardy.

Manage for the Long Term

Samuel J. Palmisano, chairman, president and CEO of IBM, identified the key lesson IBM has learned over 100 years: In order to succeed for the long term, you must manage for the long term.

"For IBMers, long-term thinking means continually moving to the future," Palmisano said. "IBM has survived and thrived for 100 years by remaining true to our core values, while being ready to change everything else. This has allowed us to transform technology, business and society through our first century, and we believe it will enable us to achieve even more in our second."

One of the oldest living IBM alumni, Luis A. Lamassonne, is 105 years old and resides in Miami, Fla. He joined IBM in 1933 and worked at the company for 38 years, rising to become an executive in Latin America. Reflecting on IBM's centennial, Lamassonne said, "IBM has always been one of the best companies. The company is special because of the people. I have faith that IBM will survive for many more years, for another century."

The Next 100 Years

The reasons for IBM's longevity and past successes seem pretty clear, but Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, suggested the tech world consider its future prospects. The company's software developments, investments and partnerships have placed it in a good competitive position, he noted, and IBM's combined hardware and software holdings are far broader and deeper than virtually any other vendor.

"The company's traditional markets are healthy and it is a serious or leading player in emerging areas like cloud computing and business intelligence and analytics," King said. "Given the increasing emphasis on x86 Intel and AMD systems in cloud-computing environments, I'm not sure how effectively IBM's multi-platform cloud strategy will play outside of its core clientele. But the evolution of the cloud market tends to favor vendors with deep data-center expertise and service provider experience, like IBM."

All in all, IBM's past contains plenty of boast-worthy achievements, but its road ahead also looks bright, King said. As he sees it, IBM's remarkable longevity puts the lie to conventional IT wisdom suggesting that innovation belongs exclusively to new companies and technologies.

"In business, even as with individuals, lessons learned, prizes won, and disasters survived provide the experience necessary to plan and pursue future success," King said. "Nothing is guaranteed, but from the vantage point of IBM's 100th birthday, its sesquicentennial, and perhaps even its bicentennial, appear eminently achievable."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enterprise/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20110616/bs_nf/78988

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