Q: Tell me about IBM?
A: What would you like to know? OMINOUS LAUGH
Q: Well, I'd like to know what's wrong with them, to start with, since that's what you want to talk about.
A: Ok. IBM is first and foremost a very slick sales organization, which was created in the image of Thomas J. Watson, a supreme despot, and very imaginative salesman who managed to create an organization with less fat in -- pardon me -- less local fat than any other corporation that ever happened.
And one that has over the years learned to devote teams to getting things done. That's the positive side. Get these things done with dispatch and with earnestness.
Now whether they're done the way one would like to see them done if one contemplated what the real nature of a problem, this is and entirely different manner. And critics of such things as IBM's 360 and 370 computers would say that they are were Brobdingnagian, clumsy and surrounded by unnecessary difficulties.
And this of course is why many people like the kids who showed me around the University of Waterloo this morning far prefer to use systems like Digital Equipment machines which are much more accessible to the sophisticated user.
Anyway, the question is why has IBM prevailed in its way, and the answer is that they have a sort of monopoly. And one which obviously has a political side and a technical side. And the problem is now that as they are swinging their new communication system into place, it seems increasingly likely that this communication system is more built to maintain the monopoly than it is built to satisfy the needs of what people ought to have.
Q: What communication system?
A: Oh there's something called Satellite Business Systems, which IBM and Aetna Life Insurance and I think a few other partners have created in a joint venture.