[Info-vax] Steve Jobes [was: Apple says ...]

[Michael Kraemer]

JF Mezei schrieb:
> Michael Kraemer wrote:
> 
> 
>>There wasn't much Palmer could have done to save DEC
>>from the mess Olsen had left.
>>Almost everything was too little too late.
> 
> 
> IBM was weeks away from breaking itself up and entering bankrupcy
> protection when Gerstner took over. And he not only prevented that, but
> returned IBM to success and profitability and most importantly, managed
> to change internal corporate social values to make IBM staff more
> competitive with the rest of the IT industry.

Being a customer back then, I doubt that IBM ever was in real danger.
They had two bad years with heavy losses in 1992/93 iirc,
and had to layoff quite a few of their employees.
This was so unusual in IBM's history that the end of the
world seemed to be near. However, they had changed their
strategy long before that, i.e. deemphasizing the role
of the mainframe (and hardware altogether) as the main source
of income (the RS/6000 appeared already in 1990),
adopting open systems, building up software and services, etc.
Gerstner came much later. Sure he was instrumental for
IBM's recovery, but certainly not the Messias he probably
portrays himself.

DEC on the other hand was hit by their downturn
about the same time, but the timing was much worse
for them. They had to adopt open systems and introduce
the Alpha just about the same time they suffered from
heavy losses (I think even more than IBM, in relation
to their revenue) and had to sack a lot of people.


> It is trye to say that Palmer couldn't fix DEC. He wasn't of calibre to
> do it. But a real CEO could have fixed DEC.

We'll never know for sure what would have happened
if IBM got Palmer and DEC got Gerstner.
But I doubt that even Gerstner could have rescued DEC.