By Because of things like this http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/01/start/big-data-cut-down-to-size
There are three letters in that article, with an “‘s” at the end. No massive marketing. No song or dance but it can change your entire view of the world. IBM do research. IBM do serious research. Research at a level unlike any of its “competitors”. They think out of the box. They are always a step ahead. Because of this even their entry level small business products benefit from all this research, knowledge and support network. It’s in their DNA.
To most of us, preference is based on personal experience or the experience of someone we know and trust. If manufacturer A has 1 in 100 products fail and manufacturer B has 1 in 1,000 products fail, you would say manufacture B is the logical choice. It’s product is more reliable. But what if you personally had 99 products from A and 1 product from B and you had the 99 that worked from A and the 1 failure from B? You would say that A was much better than B and tell all your friends. But you would be wrong. You would be recommending everyone to take the less reliable product.
I was speaking to a Datacenter Manager the other day, who’s clients run predominately a mix of HP and IBM. He has that higher level overview, he gets to look at the Datacenter level across all his clients and hence can see the bigger picture. He said that he saw an HP engineer turning up about every week to replace a failed drive, while he only saw an IBM engineer replace a failed drive about once every two or three months. Why is that the case? We all know that the drivers are manufactured by the same company. The difference is in the DNA. The small microscopic magic that you never think of but that IBM do.
It’s interesting how we make our choices. I studied as a Computer Scientist and I work in Business. A good Scientist and a successful Businessman do not rely on feelings but deal with cold hard facts and the bottom line. Everything needs to be evaluated correctly, for maximum success. For my own business and for my customers I want the most reliable system and the most bang for the buck. IBM delivers that. That’s why I recommend them. I won’t continue to do so. I will continually re-evaluate and if IBM is not the best I will not recommend them.
Very ineresting article from Forbes that mentions why IBM patent more than anyone else http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2013/01/30/one-year-later-and-ibms-social-business-is-still-superior-to-apples/
By William MacLeod at 23:17 on Jan 31, 2013