IBM Eye

Irving Wladawsky-Berger wrote a fascinating entry in his blog about the early days of IBM’s moves into internet based technology - The IBM Internet Division

In my long career at IBM I have held a number of interesting positions, perhaps none more interesting than general manager of the Internet Division. The Internet Division was created ten years ago right around this time, so I have been reflecting on what those times were like for me personally, and more generally, what their impact was on me and IBM as a whole.

What is more significant to me is Irving’s comments on the fundamental changes that happened internally around this time:

IBM, like many large businesses, used to be very inward-looking, preferring to do everything by ourselves if at all possible. Embracing the Internet, its open standards and overall outside-in approach turned out to be much more than a technology change for us. I think it had a very big impact on the overall culture in IBM, as it did in many other companies. It truly made us much more open — e.g., embracing new technology ideas from external communities, as we did with Apache, Linux and Grid.

One of the things I really appreciate about IBM these days, is the stong commitment to open standards, and more importantly, the commitment to community. It’s the community beyond IBM that develops a lot of the strategy and technology directions - and while IBM is still a leader providing innovation and direction, it also is part of the community, listening to what others have to say, and innovating together.

As a follow up to Irving’s post, David Singer wrote: Remembering the Internet Division, another interesting reflection on what standards meant and the decisions that had to be made.

Looking back to the end of 1995 myself, I had just finished university and was out in the workforce and really starting to understand how technology was used in the corporate world. I had exposure to the internet while at uni, and thought it was a neat idea, but it wasn’t until the next couple of years that I really began to appreciate how it could be made useful in a business context. Of course now I pretty much couldn’t live without the internet - and indeed I tend to face withdrawal symptoms if I am disconnected for any great length of time.

But the internet has always been a business tool for me - even in writing blogs - when I first started it wasn’t so much a fun thing to do, as a useful tool that achieved a goal (in the case of my first blog - it was to keep my family and friends updated on where I was and what I was doing).