FORBES: Why Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Is So Bullish on Sun Hardware
But one area where IBM won't compete with H-P is personal computers.
But it can't compete with IBM's work in progress, Blue Gene, unless it's ten times that fast.
There was one snag: The system wasn't finished but IBM's aggressive posture had essentially frozen CDC's sales (sounds like the vaporware tactics that Microsoft is often accused of).
In a recent interview, Mr. Palmisano said he didn't wish that IBM had developed the iPad because he believes it is hard to preserve the profitability of such competitive businesses.
Even though Quanta makes laptops for PC heavyweights like Dell, HP, and IBM, that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll want to implement Quanta's integration technology (to say nothing of the countless mobile device manufacturers that would have to get behind this).
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While on a valuation basis Dell is the most expensive of the three, you can't say that about IBM or HP.
Keith Bachmann, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, agrees that IBM's earnings aren't likely to slip before the end of the year.
"Microsoft and IBM tell customers 'Don't worry, we'll take care of you'--but then they try to sell them something new, " he says.
Big Blue is a rare example of corporate survival: few companies last that long, and at times it didn't look as if IBM would either.
The SEC alleged in its complaint that IBM's internal controls weren't sufficient to spot or prevent the alleged bribes.
But it's damned-if-you-do, damned-if- you-don't for them and for IBM.
In subsequent years Gerstner's IBM piled on the vision it wasn't supposed to possess.
Don't forget, however, that IBM also pays a substantial dividend, and pays out further dividend-like cash in the form of share repurchases.
David Ferrucci, the IBM scientist running the project, won't say what Watson's record was this fall but insists it is ready for Ken and Brad (and Alex Trebek).
"We have very strict confidentiality agreements with IBM about what they can and can't do" with Unix developed using SCO intellectual property, said Darl McBride , president and chief executive of SCO.
Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )'s--IBM is also telling users that it won't sift through customers' data to learn about them.
It hasn't held her back - she is now one of IBM's few senior female engineers and recently won the Cisco Women In Technology award.
Sun, now an underdog with its proprietary technology and withered market capitalization, can't mount the consulting-heavy approaches of HP or IBM nor match the marketing clout of Microsoft.
Besides, whether she would accept a membership is completely irrelevant to the question of the appropriateness of the club's all-male policy and IBM's tacit support of it, and it doesn't get the club out of its bind anyway.
Some ten bidders looked at it before IBM grabbed the firm in January, paying an undisclosed sum, changing the company's name to IBM Entity Analytics and naming Jonas, 41, who didn't graduate from high school or college, to the lofty title of IBMDistinguished Engineer.
But even if IBM does predict bad news in both hardware and services, don't expect Big Blue itself to suffer along with the rest of the tech sector.
And if IBM's financial services do begin to sputter, the fallout won't mean much near-term loss.
More importantly, Intel is already shipping the new Pentiums in volume, while Transmeta doesn't expect to have that capability until late this year. (IBM manufactures the Crusoes.) That could allow Intel to seed the market with low-power chips and prevent Transmeta from making major inroads.
So it wasn't an enormous surprise, when, back in 1991, International Business Machines (IBM) decided to get out of the printer business by spinning off Lexmark.
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