The International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM ) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States , with operations in over
170 countries. The company began in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) and was renamed "International Business
Machines" in 1924.
IBM manufactures and markets computer
hardware , middleware and software, and
provides hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology . IBM is also a major research organization, holding the record for most US. patents generated by a business (as of 2018)
for 25 consecutive years. [5] Inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the PC, the floppy disk , the hard disk drive , the magnetic stripe card , the relational database, the SQL programming language , the UPC barcode, and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). The IBM mainframe, exemplified by the System/360 , was the dominant computing platform during the 1960s and 1970s. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by
commoditizing markets focusing on higher-value, more profitable markets. This includes spinning off printer manufacturer Lexmark in 1991 and
selling off its personal computer (ThinkPad /ThinkCentre ) and x86 -based server businesses to
Lenovo (2005 and 2014, respectively), and
acquiring companies such as PwC Consulting (2002), SPSS (2009), and The Weather Company (2016). Also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go "fabless", continuing to design
semiconductors , but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries.
Nicknamed Big Blue , IBM is one of 30
companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the world's largest employers, with (as of 2016) nearly 380,000 employees. Known as "IBMers", IBM employees
have been awarded five Nobel Prizes , six Turing
Awards , ten National Medals of Technology and
five National Medals of Science .
In the 1880s, technologies emerged that would
ultimately form the core of International Business
Machines (IBM). Julius E. Pitrap patented the
computing scale in 1885; [6] Alexander Dey
invented the dial recorder (1888); [7] Herman
Hollerith (1860-1929) patented the Electric
Tabulating Machine; [8] and Willard Bundy
invented a time clock to record a worker's arrival
and departure time on a paper tape in 1889. [9]
On June 16, 1911, their four companies were
amalgamated in New York State by Charles
Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR)
based in Endicott, New York . [1][10] The five
companies had 1,300 employees and offices
and plants in Endicott and Binghamton , New
York; Dayton, Ohio ; Detroit, Michigan;
Washington, D.C. ; and Toronto . They
manufactured machinery for sale and lease,
ranging from commercial scales and industrial
time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to
tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J.
Watson, Sr. , fired from the National Cash
Register Company by John Henry Patterson,
called on Flint and, in 1914, was offered
CTR. [11] Watson joined CTR as General Manager
then, 11 months later, was made President when
court cases relating to his time at NCR were
resolved. [12] Having learned Patterson's
pioneering business practices , Watson
proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTR's
companies. [13] He implemented sales
conventions, "generous sales incentives, a focus
on customer service, an insistence on well-
groomed, dark-suited salesmen and had an
evangelical fervor for instilling company pride
and loyalty in every worker". [14][15] His favorite
slogan, "THINK", became a mantra for each
company's employees. [14] During Watson's first
four years, revenues reached $9 million and the
company's operations expanded to Europe, South
America, Asia and Australia. [14] Watson had
never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the
CTR" and on February 14, 1924 chose to replace
it with the more expansive title "International
Business Machines". [16] By 1933 most of the
subsidiaries had been merged into one company,
IBM. [17]
In 1937, IBM's tabulating equipment enabled
organizations to process unprecedented amounts
of data, its clients including the U.S.
Government , during its first effort to maintain the
employment records for 26 million people
pursuant to the Social Security Act, [18] and the
tracking of persecuted groups by Hitler's Third
Reich , [19][20] largely through the German
subsidiary Dehomag.
In 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr., created IBM World
Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused
on foreign operations. [21] In 1952, he stepped
down after almost 40 years at the company
helm, and his son Thomas Watson, Jr. was
named president. In 1956, the company
demonstrated the first practical example of
artificial intelligence when Arthur L. Samuel of
IBM's Poughkeepsie, New York, laboratory
programmed an IBM 704 not merely to play
checkers but "learn" from its own experience. In
1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming
language was developed. In 1961, IBM
developed the SABRE reservation system for
American Airlines and introduced the highly
successful Selectric typewriter. In 1963, IBM
employees and computers helped NASA track
the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A
year later, it moved its corporate headquarters
from New York City to Armonk, New York. The
latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its
support of space exploration, participating in the
1965 Gemini flights, 1966 Saturn flights and
1969 lunar mission.
IBM has a large and diverse portfolio of
products and services. As of 2016, these
offerings fall into the categories of cloud
computing, cognitive computing , commerce,
data and analytics , Internet of Things (IoT), [60]
IT infrastructure , mobile, and security . [61]
IBM Cloud includes infrastructure as a service
(IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and platform
as a service (PaaS) offered through public,
private and hybrid cloud delivery models. For
instance, the IBM Bluemix PaaS enables
developers to quickly create complex websites
on a pay-as-you-go model. IBM SoftLayer is a
dedicated server , managed hosting and cloud
computing provider, which in 2011 reported
hosting more than 81,000 servers for more than
26,000 customers. [62] IBM also provides Cloud
Data Encryption Services (ICDES), using
cryptographic splitting to secure customer
data. [63]
IBM also hosts the industry-wide cloud
computing and mobile technologies conference
InterConnect each year. [64]
Hardware designed by IBM for these categories
include IBM's POWER microprocessors, which
are employed inside many console gaming
systems, including Xbox 360, [65] PlayStation 3,
and Nintendo 's Wii U . [66][67] IBM Secure Blue
is encryption hardware that can be built into
microprocessors, [68] and in 2014, the company
revealed it was investing $3 billion over the
following five years to design a neural chip that
mimics the human brain, with 10 billion neurons
and 100 trillion synapses, but that uses just 1
kilowatt of power. [69] In 2016, the company
launched all-flash arrays designed for small and
midsized companies, which includes software for
data compression, provisioning, and snapshots
across various systems. [70]
IT outsourcing also represents a major service
provided by IBM, with more than 40 data centers
worldwide. [71] alphaWorks is IBM's source for
emerging software technologies, and SPSS is a
software package used for statistical analysis .
IBM's Kenexa suite provides employment and
retention solutions, and includes the BrassRing,
an applicant tracking system used by thousands
of companies for recruiting. [72] IBM also owns
The Weather Company, which provides weather
forecasting and includes weather.com and
Weather Underground .
Smarter Planet is an initiative that seeks to
achieve economic growth , near-term efficiency,
sustainable development , and societal
progress, [73][74] targeting opportunities such as
smart grids, [75] water management systems, [76]
solutions to traffic congestion, [77] and greener
buildings. [78]
Services provisions include Redbooks, which are
publicly available online books about best
practices with IBM products, and
developerWorks , a website for software
developers and IT professionals with how-to
articles and tutorials, as well as software
downloads, code samples, discussion forums,
podcasts, blogs, wikis, and other resources for
developers and technical professionals. [79]
IBM Watson is a technology platform that uses
natural language processing and machine
learning to reveal insights from large amounts of
unstructured data . [80] Watson was debuted in
2011 on the American game-show Jeopardy! ,
where it competed against champions Ken
Jennings and Brad Rutter in a three-game
tournament and won. Watson has since been
applied to business, healthcare, developers, and
universities. For example, IBM has partnered with
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to assist
with considering treatment options for oncology
patients and for doing melanoma
screenings. [81] Also, several companies have
begun using Watson for call centers, either
replacing or assisting customer service
agents. [82]
A computer the size of a grain of rock salt is
not only the world’s smallest computer, IBM
claims, but could be cheap enough to spread AI
smarts and the blockchain ubiquitously. Shown
off for the first time at IBM Think 2018, the
company’s annual research event, the tiny
computer could have huge implications for
making sure everything from medication to luxury
goods are genuine rather than counterfeit [83]