With its 319,000 employees worldwide and revenues of $89 billion (figures from 2003), it is the largest information technology company in the world, and one of the few with a continuous history spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. It has consultants in over 160 countries and development labs located all over the world. IBM Research has eight research labs located throughout the Northern Hemisphere, with half of those locations outside of the United States.
It has a major presence in virtually every segment of information technology, from mainframe computers (where it has had market dominance for decades) to nanotechnology. In recent years, more and more of its revenue comes from services and consulting activities rather than manufacturing. Samuel J. Palmisano was elected CEO on January 29, 2002 after having been instrumental in helping to grow that consulting activity, which has turned its Global Services unit into a business with tens of billions of dollars in backlog.
In 2002, IBM announced the beginning of a $10 billion program to research and implement the infrastructure technology necessary to be able to provide supercomputer-level resources "on demand" to all businesses as a metered utility.
In recent years IBM has steadily increased its patent portfolio, which is valuable for cross-licensing with other companies. In every year from 1993 until 2003, IBM has been granted significantly more U.S. patents than any other company. That eleven-year period has resulted in over 25,000 patents for which IBM is the primary assignee.
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The aggressive protection of the company's intellectual property has grown into a business of its own, generating over $10 billion of dollars [1] to the bottom line for the company during this period. [1], [1]
The companies that merged to form CTR manufactured a wide range of products, including employee time keeping systems, weighing scales, automatic meat slicers, and most importantly for the development of the computer, punched card equipment. Over time CTR came to focus purely on the punched card business, and ceased its involvement in these other activities.
IBM's success in the mid-1960s led to enquiries as to IBM antitrust violations by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business. Litigation continued until 1983, and had a significant impact on the company's practices.
On January 19, 1993 IBM announced a $4.97 billion loss for 1992 which was at that time the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history. Since that loss, IBM has made major changes in its business activities, shifting its focus significantly away from components and hardware and towards software and services.
Historically, a blue suit, white shirt and dark tie was the public uniform of IBM employees in the 20th century. By the 1990s, IBM relaxed these codes, and currently the behavior and dress of IBM employees does not differ appreciably from that of their counterparts in most other large technology companies.
IBM Japan is one of the few foreign companies successful in the Japanese market.
IBM's culture has been recently influenced by the open source movement. The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux. This includes over 300 Linux kernel developers. IBM's open source involvement has not been trouble-free, however; see SCO v. IBM.
IBM invented many of the core technologies used in all forms of computing, including the first hard disk drive and the Winchester hard disk drive, the cursor (on computer screens), Dynamic RAM (DRAM), the Relational database, Thin Film recording heads, RISC architecture, the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, and the floppy disk. While the floppy disk is rapidly falling into disuse, the infamous Control Alt Delete keystroke, also invented at IBM, is still frequently used on PCs running Windows operating systems.
The first black employee was hired in 1899 by the Computing Scale Corporation (as it was known at the time).
IBM began hiring women to work as professional systems service staff in 1935. Thomas J. Watson Sr. wrote: "Men and women will do the same kind of work for equal pay. They will have the same treatment, the same responsibilities and the same opportunities for advancement."
From 1933 to 1944, IBM punch card machines were installed at various Germanconcentration camps. It has been alleged by the journalist Edwin Black that IBM president Thomas J. Watson, Sr., willingly turned a blind eye to their usage. [1]
In 1953, IBM published the first US corporate mandate on equal employment opportunity, stating that the company would hire people based on their ability, "regardless of race, color or creed". Sexual orientation was not added to the nondiscrimination policy until 1984.
Whilst IBM did not invent the personal computer, architectures cloned from its design (which relied on third-party componentry) became the industry standard, now simply called the PC, introduced August 12th1981; Microsoft and Intel became monopoly suppliers of two of the key components of PC-compatible systems
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies now provides many of the hardware storage solutions formerly provided by IBM, including IBM Harddrives & The Microdrive. IBM continues to develop storage solutions, including Tape Backup, Storage software, etc.
ScanSoft now sell and support IBM's speech technology products under the ViaVoice brand.
