• Mad Dog 21/21: In Memory of Hesh Wiener

  April 29, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  “Stop complaining. The only thing worse than writing so many obituaries is having one written about you. Let me assure you.”

  If my friend and mentor, Hesh Wiener, were alive today, that is what he would say to me with a laugh. And of course, as always, Hesh, who had no intention of leaving this world quite yet, would have been right.

  We have suffered our share of losses in the IBM midrange in recent years, and here at The Four Hundred, the publication that Hesh created in the wake of the inaugural June 21, 1988, AS/400 announcements. Hesh …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: The Fake, The Take, But In The End Jake

  December 3, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  IBM, at times, looks like a pair of fraternal twins. One is based on long-established activities with roots in two proprietary system architectures: mainframe and Power. This part of IBM also includes the large legacy services segments. The other twin embodies IBM’s hopes and dreams — it is what the company calls strategic imperatives — it includes most software, artificial intelligence technologies such as Watson, cloud computing, and more. This year, the strategic twin became as big as the legacy twin, and, with the Red Hat acquisition, it is expected to become permanently larger.

  Properly managed and effectively marketed, …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Where Icarus Is Bliss

  November 26, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  IBM got a lot of public attention in 2011 when its Watson system beat two outstanding human competitors at the widely televised quiz game Jeopardy. Since then IBM’s revenue has declined by about 25 percent and its profits have fallen even more dramatically, although intake did improve during three of the most recent four quarters. Regardless, IBM’s Watson project didn’t translate into a big boost to its financial returns, neither in new activities nor by reinvigorating legacy businesses. Seven years after the event, the company’s Jeopardy coup, however memorable, has failed to add significant value. What went wrong?

  IBM …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Phoenix Envy

  November 12, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  IBM is understandably concerned that its annual revenue, likely to be about $80 billion this year, is 25 percent less than it was in 2011, when it reached nearly $107 billion. The company’s revenue increased during the first two quarters of 2018 after falling every quarter for five and a half years, but its falling fortunes have discouraged customers, employees, and investors. Apple, the largest technology company in the world, boasts revenue that is three times that of IBM. It nearly failed in 1997, but Microsoft helped it rise from its own ashes like the Phoenix.

  The …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Boiling Points

  August 27, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  A three-minute egg cooks consistently most anywhere near sea level; boiling that egg will take longer up in the Himalayas. Water, like just about every other pure liquid, has at any particular atmospheric pressure a consistent boiling point. At sea level, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius; it can get no hotter. Similarly, IBM apparently cannot grow beyond $100 billion in annual revenue. Lately, its business vaporizes at a somewhat lower point, about $80 billion, like water on Mount Everest. Whenever the company adds revenue here it manages to lose it there.

  The boiling point of water is a …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Sacred Families

  July 30, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  Catalonia is an autonomous region in the northeast corner of Spain. Its people prefer the Catalan language to Spanish or Occitan. During the past two centuries, Catalonia has been beloved home to many artists and, notably, architects. In Barcelona, Catalonia’s largest city, the magnificent cathedral Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) is finally approaching completion nearly 100 years after the death of its inspiring architect, Antoni Gaudi. Sagrada Familia is one reason Catalonia is a mainstay of Iberian culture comparable in stature and influence to the position in information technology held by IBM.

  Although IBM no longer has the …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Wounding Watson

  June 18, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  CEO Ginni Rometty is highly regarded inside and outside IBM. For instance, the Forbes ranking of female executives puts Rometty in the top ten. Moreover, gender and other qualifiers aside, Rometty is one of the world’s prominent business leaders. When she does well, the results are widely broadcast; when she slips up, however, so is criticism. In the spring of 2018, media reported big layoffs in the health related activities within IBM’s Watson collection of technologies. The buck stopped with Rometty, who was undoubtedly rattled; she will recover. Watson was wounded; the prognosis is uncertain.

  The Watson problem, an …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: About Face

  February 26, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  There was a time when a typeface was made of metal and its characters, called glyphs, physically transferred ink to paper. Today, a typeface is a set of symbols that may be used to transfer ink to paper or to paint text on a screen or to inform a heads-up display. Beginning in November 2017, IBM put its corporate clout behind a signature family of typefaces called Plex. Plex will also be a signature for Ginny Rometty and IBM’s paean to Johannes Gutenberg.

  Gutenberg, born about 1400, developed technology that enabled the industrial production of printed matter, including …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: The Old Man Of The Sea

  February 19, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  Proteus, said Homer in The Odyssey, was the formidable old man of the sea, capable of shapeshifting and empowered by the gift of prophecy. IBM, observed a commentator in Tully, a dozen miles north of Homer, is the venerated patriarch of information technology, infinitely adaptable and proficient at discerning what lies ahead. Both employ their ability to change their form both as a defense and as a way to achieve goals unattainable in their original shape. However, this transformative power makes it difficult for others to rely on them, for shapeshifting and constancy are in conflict. …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Bubbling Over

  December 11, 2017 Hesh Wiener

  The Turks may have started it, shipping tulips to Vienna around 1554, but during the next century the Dutch finished it. Hollanders dominated a booming market in cultivated tulips and a bumper crop of financial instruments based on the trade. Then, in 1637, tulip prices collapsed, breaking speculators and triggering a financial tsunami. With FANG stocks – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google – and other tech shares sky high, worriers say a comparable collapse is imminent. Now there’s even a movie, Tulip Fever, built around the old story. Will tech companies get whacked? Will IBM be among them? …

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