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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

As Cringely himself admits, he's had something of an obsession with IBM; not sure of the history. And IBM has actually done pretty decently the past few years post-Rometty.

HP, by contrast, has been somewhat adrift even after all the boardroom drama.

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Isn’t IBM still operating through a pattern of selling service contracts for sub-par products that do everything in their power to lock their customers in? I feel like they embedded themselves so deeply in some of these public sector orgs that they can’t really orient themselves in any other way than through a predatory business model that lacks innovation.

They did buy Red Hat (for a lot of money) and seem to have generally gotten their AI act together although not as visibly as the high profile SV players. Mainframe business seems to hum along. There's also quantum though not a big revenue source yet.

So, overall, seems a pretty decent business at this point although not something that is on a lot of HN readers' radars. Yes, it's oriented towards large companies and public sector.

Yes, but they've made some notable mis-steps:

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/09/ibm-paid-pa-33m-to-set...

(apparently there were enough states with this problem that there was talk of a class-action lawsuit?)

Buying Red Hat is exactly the behavior John Walker is describing. You don't spend money on R&D, or infrastructure. You acquire a business line and starve it.

Up until a few years ago, they were buying products, signing labor-intensive contracts, laying off people, burning out the ones that remain, and not investing in its products

In 2021 they spun off the consultancy business and now seem to just sell software and hardware.

The spin off, Kyndryl, is burdened with unprofitable contacts and is still slashing and burning its workforce.

IBM doesn’t seem to be making a comeback in SaaS or whatnot, they seem to just have split their problems down the middle but not solved them.

I like that HP is putting out new products like the little roomba floor plan printer robot. Even if it’s not original (neither was the printer), they’ve got divisions that are ideating, improving, designing and manufacturing products. I haven’t seen the full scope of their offerings to be fair.

Fiorina had this vague-ish better together vision. But, even now that I'm sort of back in the industry analyst thing again, HP isn't really on my radar. Obviously they have customers but haven't been following them especially closely and pretty much all my connections there are long gone.

Seems like a very niche market for a company at HP's scale. I don't really see them as a consumer printer company any longer. And Roomba-type things are very dependent on floor plans. My brother has a near-ideal layout (single level with no transitions) and it just works so-so for them. Wouldn't work for me pretty much at all even with some changes that eliminate level transitions.

Does your brother often plot floor plans on his house floor?

No. He has a floor plan and it is what it is.

A few years ago I got a broom vac and that seems to make the most sense.

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