Directory:IBM

International Business Machines Corporation
Type	Public (NYSE: IBM)
Founded	1888, incorporated 1911
Headquarters	USA
Key people	Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman & CEO Mark Loughridge SVP & CFO Dan Fortin, President (Canada) Frank Kern, President (Asia Pacific) Nick Donofrio, EVP (Innovation & Technology) Colleen Arnold, President IOT Northeast Europe Dominique Cerutti, President IOT Southwest Europe
Industry	Computer hardware Computer software Consulting IT Services
Products	See complete products listing
Revenue	$US 91.1 billion (2005)
Operating income	$US12.4 billion (2005) (10.5% operating margin)
Net income	$US7.9 billion (2005) (9.3% profit margin)
Employees	329,373 (2005)
Subsidiaries	ADSTAR Informix Iris Associates Lotus Software Rational Software Sequent Computer Systems Tivoli Systems, Inc.
Contact	{{{contact}}}
Reference	{{{reference}}}

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or, colloquially, Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century; it was founded in 1888 and incorporated (as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR)) on June 15 1911, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1916. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, infrastructure services, hosting services, and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. With almost 330,000 employees worldwide and revenues of US $91 billion annually (figures from 2005), IBM is the largest information technology company in the world, and holds more patents than any other technology company.

Since 2001, services and consulting (IBM Global Services) revenues have been larger than those from manufacturing (Hardware). Significantly, IBM has also been steadily increasing its workforce in developing countries (notably, in IBM India) and retrenching in the US and Europe. Samuel J. Palmisano was elected CEO on January 29 2002 after having led IBM's Global Services, and helping it to become a business with $100 billion in backlog in 2004. Palmisano replaced Louis V. Gerstner, who held the job from 1993 to 2002, taking over from John Akers, who left during a period of financial difficulty for the company.

IBM has engineers and consultants in over 170 countries and IBM Research has eight laboratories, all located in the Northern Hemisphere, with five of those locations outside of the United States. IBM employees have earned five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, five National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.

As a chip maker IBM is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

Big Blue

There are different theories as to where IBM's nickname Big Blue originates from. One theory is that blue comes from the color of the big, room-sized, mainframes that IBM installed in the 1950s and 1960s and that the nickname was coined by business writers. A second theory is the blue comes from the colour of IBM's logo, and a third theory is that it comes from the fact that IBM executives wore blue suits.

Corporate culture

IBM has often been described as having a sales-centric or a sales-oriented business culture. Indeed, it is arguable that its most important control device is the IBM Sales Plan. Traditionally, many of its executives and general managers would be chosen from its sales force. In addition, middle and top management would often be enlisted to give direct support to salesmen in the process of making sales to important customers.

For most of the 20th century, a blue suit, white shirt, and a dark tie was the public uniform of IBM employees. But by the 1990s, IBM relaxed these codes; the dress and behavior of its employees does not differ appreciably from that of their counterparts in large technology companies.

In 2003, IBM embarked on an ambitious project to rewrite company values using its Jam technology—Intranet-based online discussions on key business issues for a limited time, involving more than 50,000 employees over 3 days in this case. Jam technology includes sophisticated text analysis software (eClassifier) to mine online comments for themes, and Jams have now been used six times internally at IBM. As a result of the 2003 Jam, the company values were updated to reflect three modern business, marketplace and employee views: "Dedication to every client's success", "Innovation that matters - for our company and for the world", "Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships."

In 2004, another Jam was conducted in which more than 52,000 employees exchanged best practices for 72 hours. This event was focused on finding actionable ideas to support implementation of the values identified previously. A new post-Jam Ratings event was developed to allow IBMers to select key ideas that support the values. (For further information, see Harvard Business Review, December, 2004, interview with IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano.) The board of directors cited this Jam when awarding Palmisano a pay rise in the spring of 2005.

In 2006, Palmisano launched another jam, called InnovationJam. Its most innovative aspect was that members of IBM employees' families, together with employees from IBM's customers—i.e. most of the world's largest corporations—could join in and discuss future products. Thus in September 2006, the openness of IBM—through its use of executive blogs and its active encouragement for its staff to discuss in open forum the future direction of IBM products—formed a stark contrast with that of HP, which had been caught using unethical methods to prevent executives from talking to the press.

IBM has, since March 1998 when it announced support for Linux, been influenced by the open source movement. The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux through the IBM Linux Technology Center, which includes over 300 Linux kernel developers. IBM has also released code under different open-source licenses, for example the platform-independent software framework Eclipse (worth circa $US40 million at the time of the donation) and the java-based relational database management system (RDBMS) Apache Derby. IBM's open source involvement has not been trouble-free, however; see SCO v. IBM.

Project Management Center of Excellence

The mission of IBM Project Management Center of Excellence (PM COE) is to define and execute the steps that IBM needs to take to strengthen its project management capabilities. As IBM’s project management "development team" or "think tank" the PM COE combines external industry trends and directions with IBM business, organizational, and geographic requirements and insight. With this as a foundation, it develops deliverables such as project management policy, practices, methods, and tools.

Its mandatory for all IBM PMs on Project Management track (dimension) to go through either the accredition or IBM certification. Junior PMs (Associate PM and Advisory PM) are accredited after self-assessment and authorization from their manager. Senior PMs (Senior PM and Executive PM) have to go through an IBM certification process with stringent criteria. By validating professionals’ expertise and skills against consistent worldwide standards of excellence for the project management community, certification helps maintain customer confidence in the high quality of IBM professionals and it recognizes IBM professionals for their skills and experience.

Becoming certified is public recognition of achieving a significant career milestone and demonstrating expertise in the profession. Prior to applying for IBM certification the individual must have-

1. successfully passed PMI exam (i.e. be a certified PMP)
2. verifiable documentation and approval for mastery/expertise in a well-defined set of PM skills
3. certain number of years of PM experience spanning at least 3 verifiable projects within the immediate 5 years with specific role, team size, budget and specialty requirements
4. verifiable documentation and proof of at least one area of specialty
5. demonstrated the use of IBM's Worldwide Project Management Method (WWPMM)
6. completed extensive classroom and online education including passing the class-end exam

IBM PM Certification is a well-defined review and verification process with many intricate details. In it's most simplified form, it broadly involves-

1. Candidate preparing a detailed package with proof of above requirements
2. Package review, approval, and support by at least two levels of Senior Management
3. Package review and re-verification by PM COE expert
4. Personal interviews with the PM COE Certification board comprising of IBM Executives and selected Senior Managers
5. Candidates whose experience, skills, knowledge and education are deemed valid, verifiable and accurate, are certified by the board as either Certified Senior Project Manager (CSPM) or Certified Executive Project Manager (CEPM).

IBM PM Certification is a significant achievement for any IBMer. It is a deliberately long process with multiple checkpoints designed to ensure the integrity, fairness and validity of the certification.

Logos

• IBM original logo.jpg

  The logo that was used from 1924 to 1946. The logo is in a form intended to suggest a globe, girdled by the word "International."

• Older IBM Logo.png

  The logo that was used from 1947 to 1956. The familiar "globe" was replaced with the simple letters "IBM" in a typeface called "Beton Bold."

• Old IBM Logo.png

  The logo that was used from 1956 to 1972. The letters "IBM" took on a more solid, grounded and balanced appearance.

• 

  In 1972, the horizontal stripes now replaced the solid letters to suggest "speed and dynamism." The logo was designed by legendary graphic designer Paul Rand.

Business data

• IBM Corp. at Google Finance
• IBM Corp. at Yahoo Finance
• IBM Corp. at Hoover's
• IBM Corp. at Reuters
• IBM Corp. SEC filings at EDGAR Online
• IBM Corp. SEC filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission