I've had the displeasure of working with IBM Global Services as a partner in several occasions. In one instance where we had a connectivity issue, it took weeks of discussions before we finally got everyone on a conference call including some of their senior engineers. We were simply trying to make a call to a web service as part of an integration with another company. IBM managed their network. We had supplied our IP addresses and the client had put through a firewall change request to the IBM support staff.

We just couldn't get our requests through. Finally on that last conference call, one of their engineers piped up. "Is this white list rule supposed to be bidirectional? All traffic going back to you is blocked.".

"No shit Sherlock, or how can a HTTP request get a response back", was my answer, or words to that effect in a more polite manner.

"But the change request form only mentioned incoming traffic" said the IBM project manger. I internally screamed.

This kind of thing has now happened several times with IBM on projects I've worked on. I know they charge amazingly large amounts of money for what they do. They appear to have an brilliant sales team, and a bunch of under qualified junior engineers that can't deliver. Over sell and under deliver. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but I don't have a high opinion of them.

Having worked at IBM on a bunch of terrible Aus Govt projects, I'm so glad they're finally catching some heat.