Acronym for International Business Machines.

Known as Mama Blue or Big Blue, this is a company that makes BigIron and software. They pride themselves on having the most patents of any company in the world(?). They were the dominators of the computing industry when "computer" meant "mainframe" or even "mini computer". When they decided to step into it, their mere presence in the PersonalComputer market decimated the competition, IBM has now sold their PC arm. Young upstart Microsoft managed to play with dirtier tricks than even IBM though, and ever since, they've lost their #1 position in the IT industry. They tried to gain their own back with OS/2, but that attempt didn't as far as its potential should have allowed it to.

In recent years there seems to have been a change of mindset in their upper ranks; with a very run through the mid 90s, IBM has heavily moved into services, with over 1/2 their revenue now coming from services. As part of this drive around services, Linux has featured as a platform to build solutions on.

They've realised that Linux is both a good platform to offer solutions for as well as the only serious threat to Microsoft's monopoly. Not surprisingly, they're realigning all their business around Linux, and have dedicated huge sums of money to its promotion. Even so they're not trying to dominate the community so far; it seems like they can peacefully coexist with the idealists while making all the money they want. It seems Linux is going to become their late revenge on Microsoft.

Currently being sued by SCO over alleged breach of contract (for the officially licensed AT&T-derived Unix code) in relation to Linux.

CategoryCompany