Sunzi Assignment- Ibm

IBM Global Services, the technology services and consulting division of International Business Machines (IBM), is the world’s largest provider of systems integration and technology consulting. It offers services in areas such as application development, data storage, infrastructure management, networking, and technical support (Datamonitor Plc., 2007, p.4). IBM Global Services is also among the world leaders in providing business consulting and outsourcing services. IBM Global Services’ headquarter locates in Armonk, New York. The company has more than 190,000 employees around the world.

In the seven years (since 1994), that Lou Gerstner reigned over IBM, the company’s earnings per

Innovation is what gives businesses the competitive advantage the company will need to be profitable in the market. Innovation impacts the strategy, process, products and services that a company has to offer. Three organizations that have greatly used innovation are Discover Financial Services, Apple Inc, and McDonalds.

IBM is among the oldest of the Fortune 500 companies with operations all over the world. The company is renowned for its capacity to transform careers and deliver innovative technologies and business solutions. Over the past decade IBM has undergone a transformation of its own as it shifts from hardware development to cloud computing and business consulting. The company sees this niche market as having huge potential to carry it forward into the ensuing decades.

Innovation is not a single activity; it is a process. For businesses, innovation means fresh ideas, developing new products or services and its effective processes. Innovation can be key to any business or company in the future. Bringing innovation into your business can help you save time and money and gives you the competitive advantage needed to grow your business.

In this day and age, a business continuity plan is essential to an organizations risk management. A large organization like Sunshine Machine Works understand that time is critical when it comes to natural disasters or man made interruptions to their network systems. When a system is offline for excessive amounts of time, could mean a loss to the organization. That’s why having an effective business continuity plan is vital to keeping operations for being disturbed during a time of crisis whether it is an attack or natural disaster that could potentially affect Sunshine Machine Works operations, data and networks.

IBM needs to grow revenue and stay competitive in the dynamically changing computer marketplace of the 1990’s by maintaining technological leadership and accepting the organizational transformation which needs to be undertaken for them to excel. IBM needs to recapture their previously held powerful position in the personal computer and microprocessor markets and regain value in the company which will increase its stock value and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

IBM Market Leader in Mainframe –market share 61%, starts PC business in ’81, in 2 yrs market share is 42%

Personal computer business naturally can be classified as a sub component of business solutions provider that IBM’s positioned for. The tagline indeed shows that for every transactions made, IBM has something to deal with it to make things easier, meaningful and on advantages. The decision to relinquish interest in the above mentioned sector doesn’t put IBM in any advantage if it decided to discontinue advertise in mass media. On the contrary, by resuming the current practices it helps maintains and restore the brand name that could probably enhance the brand loyalty.

As Albert Einstein said, “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” This quote is applicable for organisation and fully underpins the value of having a culture of innovation in order to meet short, medium and long term objectives.

Prior to their cultural change that took place in the early 1990’s, many would have said that IBM was on a fatal downhill slide. At this point they were beginning to become obsolete. IBM at one point was among the leaders within the world for hardware/software development and information technology services, but all divisions within the organization were run independently from one another. They were not a unified enterprise. To solidify this even further, “rather than working together as a team, divisions competed against each other both internally and in the field” (DiCarlo, L., 2002).

Founded in June 1911, IBM has always been a leading company in the technology industry and at the forefront of innovation. It is a manufacturer of computer hardware and software, and also provides infrastructure, hosting and consulting services. Before the 2000s, IBM was the largest PC vendor in the world. However, the hardware sales have continually declined since 2000, and IBM sold its PC group to Lenovo in 2004, as well as its x86 Server Business in 2014. In the new era of the technology industry, IBM has faced the challenge to transit from a hardware manufacturer to a service company.

Over the past five years, IBM has quietly transformed itself into a "software, solution and services" company. With the transformation from a hardware vendor to a solution provider, it has entered the area of consulting services.

Innovation offers the companies a competitive advantage. Presently and within the future, more than any time in history, the key to competitive advantage is innovation. However innovation will facilitate businesses meet all of their strategic challenges, not simply competition; to illustrate, in confronting accelerating rates of change, globalization, apace advancing technology, a additional numerous workforce, associated a modification from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy. Meeting all of those challenges helps the firm attain competitiveness, and meeting these challenges suitably depends on innovation. Innovation allows a firm to workout its challenges in distinctive ways in which build competitive advantage either through relative differentiation, a relative low-priced position, or few acceptable level of each. Innovation cannot assure success, however success cannot be achieved within the end of the day without it.

IBM’s mainframe thinking- in terms of pricing and cost structure IBM tried to launch it in the middle market-and it bombed. It also blinded IBM to the much faster evolutionary path of the PC.