IBM makes 100 billion $ in revenues and 15 billion $ profit. They know how to make big money and in consequence don't care much about "peanuts" (famous quite from a former CEO of Deutsche Bank).
Suck every penny out of the installed base. Little input, maximum output.
That is why Domino currently is a dying platform but a very profitable one for IBM. It is not going away because there is no reason for IBM doing so. You would be an idiot if you stop a product line that is still selling well despite all the talks of its demise.
How many customers you know that use Rational Application Developer, Jazz, run on big IBM machines or even use DB2/Informix as a database system? Its numbers are probably low (depending on your area of expertise) but this does not mean that the products are going to disappear. IBM only needs little customers from whom they charge lots of EUR/GBP/$. That is the deal. You give IBM lots of money and in exchange you can tell everyone that you have an efficent IT.
We all know that with Domino this does not work so well. That is why IBM probably invented Workplace and now Vulcan. But as in most cases (and you can give IBM credits for this) they are not taking stuff away. They just add things.
I have no clue how this will end. I always thought that one day companies will stop buying exceptional complicated products but this day does not seem to come (at least not in the areas where IBM is big).
IBM makes 100 billion $ in revenues and 15 billion $ profit. They know how to make big money and in consequence don't care much about "peanuts" (famous quite from a former CEO of Deutsche Bank).
Suck every penny out of the installed base. Little input, maximum output.
That is why Domino currently is a dying platform but a very profitable one for IBM. It is not going away because there is no reason for IBM doing so. You would be an idiot if you stop a product line that is still selling well despite all the talks of its demise.
How many customers you know that use Rational Application Developer, Jazz, run on big IBM machines or even use DB2/Informix as a database system? Its numbers are probably low (depending on your area of expertise) but this does not mean that the products are going to disappear. IBM only needs little customers from whom they charge lots of EUR/GBP/$. That is the deal. You give IBM lots of money and in exchange you can tell everyone that you have an efficent IT.
We all know that with Domino this does not work so well. That is why IBM probably invented Workplace and now Vulcan. But as in most cases (and you can give IBM credits for this) they are not taking stuff away. They just add things.
I have no clue how this will end. I always thought that one day companies will stop buying exceptional complicated products but this day does not seem to come (at least not in the areas where IBM is big).