Reply to: No one ever got fired for buying IBM

[doodab]

Be specific... their servers are very good (Power 7 / AIX), I believe that XIV storage is excellent.

But as for the S/W I couldn't say.... but I hear grim stories (e.g. the Tivoli brand encompasses ~180 different products IIRC)

EDIT: and their services, GBS, are excellent

Some of their software is excellent. Some of their software is totally tulipe, and some of the developer tools aren't even that good.

[Platypus]

Which frankly is ridiculous. They should have their bollocks stamped on. By an elephant. A particularly fat elephant with some particularly fat people riding on it.

Be specific... their servers are very good (Power 7 / AIX), I believe that XIV storage is excellent.

But as for the S/W I couldn't say.... but I hear grim stories (e.g. the Tivoli brand encompasses ~180 different products IIRC)

EDIT: and their services, GBS, are excellent

[gingerjedi]

I once landed a gig with IBM, I started just before my 40th Birthday and after a week of turning up and doing nothing I asked if it would be ok to take the following Monday off as I was going away for my birthday. I honestly thought it would be no big deal as they clearly weren't ready for me, this was flatly refused followed by a swift termination as the PM thought I showed a lack of commitment.


This was the SouthWestOne partnership between Taunton Deane Council and IBM, a quick google reveals just how tulip they are.

Southwest One gets £10m IBM loan amid 'staggering' losses | Guardian Government Computing | Guardian Professional

Southwest One emits hot air after near-collapse - Public Sector IT

[doodab]

An unexpected token "" was found following "".

Any chance of a line number with that useful error message there?

[Freamon]

They're in court with one of my current clients.

They have caused at least one major UK charity to go bust, by delivering a poor IT system and then ending up in a legal battle which bled the charity of cash and forced it to close.

[oracleslave]

Past 3 clients have all fallen foul of IBM at one time or other. In one case IBM walked off site because the relationship was so poor.

They're in court with one of my current clients.

[NickFitz]

To be fair, that was only true up to the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981.

Anybody who bought one of those or its derivatives is probably more deserving of sick leave than sacking.

I first used an IBM PC - a proper one, with a cassette port and BASIC in ROM it was, although they were just curiosities - in 1985; I was working with it at the systems programming level, doing stuff like driving the 8250 UART directly, but I had the full Technical Manual, including the assembly language BIOS source code. I spent the first day trying to work out why it was superior to other machines of the time, such as the BBC Micro.

By the end of the day, I'd concluded that it was a crock of tulip compared to the BBC. Sadly, dumb people kept on buying them and their ilk and, in a kind of technical X Factor, garbage won out over quality

[doodab]

What do Natwest use?

I thought you wrote it?

[Spacecadet]

What do Natwest use?

ipads

[MarillionFan]

What do Natwest use?

[Freamon]

Some of their stuff is OK but an awful lot of the stuff I've come across in the last few years is tulipe, particularly with some of the eclipse based tools you wonder if they read the manual before they started developing the plugins, there is some completely random tulip in there and they seem to be optimised for use on 30" screens and useless on anything smaller.

If you think their software is bad wait until you try their "business consulting services"

[doodab]

Some of their stuff is OK but an awful lot of the stuff I've come across in the last few years is tulipe, particularly with some of the eclipse based tools you wonder if they read the manual before they started developing the plugins, there is some completely random tulip in there and they seem to be optimised for use on 30" screens and useless on anything smaller.

[Freamon]

I don't know, I only work for top 500 companies.

Unfortunately the current bunch have bought their tulipty tulip and now I have to get the rubber gloves on.

Past 3 clients have all fallen foul of IBM at one time or other. In one case IBM walked off site because the relationship was so poor.

[doodab]

I don't know, I only work for top 500 companies.

Unfortunately the current bunch have bought their tulipty tulip and now I have to get the rubber gloves on.

[AtW]

Is anybody still buying them outside of top 1000 companies?