“[Lou Gerstner] said I.B.M., meanwhile, had continued
introducing products, expanding services and adding production
capacity as part of a transition that began in 1993 to exploit the
$1 trillion market for e-business software, hardware and services.
Inevitably, he said, the e-business winners would be established
institutions and companies that had long been I.B.M.’s core
customers. ‘There is no new economy,’ he said of the Internet. ‘The
wars haven’t changed; it’s just that somebody’s invented gunpowder,
and the one who uses it first will win the next battle.’…”
“Most analysts agree with much of Mr. Gerstner’s assessment of
where the company is headed and the steps it must take. Some doubt
that I.B.M.’s lineup of servers for the Internet market is as
strong as I.B.M. contends, in comparison with companies like Sun
Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. But they say the challenges are
not comparable to those faced by giants like AT&T and WorldCom,
which are talking about radically transforming themselves through
divestitures and spin-offs – or by I.B.M. itself in 1993, when John
F. Akers, Mr. Gerstner’s predecessor, hired Morgan Stanley to study
similar steps….”
“There are firm skeptics, like Bob Djurdjevic of Annex Research
in Phoenix, who calls I.B.M.’s belief that customers will value its
plumbing – new hardware and software – over that of competitors a
major mistake. ‘They still think of themselves as a technology
company, but no one cares about technology today,’ Mr. Djurdjevic
said.”
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