Ungermann-Bass , also known as UB and UB Networks , was a computer networking company in the 1980s to 1990s. Located in Santa Clara, California , UB was the first large networking company independent of any computer manufacturer. Along with competitors 3Com and Sytek , UB was responsible for starting the networking business in Silicon Valley in 1979. UB was founded by Ralph Ungermann and Charlie Bass . John Davidson, vice president of engineering, was one of the creators of NCP , the transport protocol of the ARPANET before TCP .
81-456: UB specialized in large enterprise networks connecting computer systems and devices from multiple vendors, which was unusual in the 1980s. At that time most network equipment came from computer manufacturers and usually used only protocols compatible with that one manufacturer's computer systems, such as IBM 's SNA or DEC 's DECnet . Many UB products initially used the XNS protocol suite, including
162-531: A Winsock compatible software/hardware bundle for the Microsoft Windows platform. With the success of these offerings and of the Internet protocol TCP/IP, both Apple and Microsoft subsequently brought the Internet technology in-house and integrated it into their core products. UB marketed a broadband (in the original technical sense) version of Ethernet known as 10BROAD36 in the mid 1980s. It
243-566: A holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems. It was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924 and soon became the leading manufacturer of punch-card tabulating systems . During the 1960s and 1970s, the IBM mainframe , exemplified by the System/360 , was the world's dominant computing platform , with the company producing 80 percent of computers in the U.S. and 70 percent of computers worldwide. IBM debuted in
324-575: A neuromorphic CMOS integrated circuit and announced a $ 3 billion investment 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. 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. In January 2019, IBM introduced its first commercial quantum computer: IBM Q System One . In March 2020, it
405-532: A provider and accessed over the Internet . The process of developing software involves several stages. The stages include software design , programming , testing , release , and maintenance . Software quality assurance and security are critical aspects of software development, as bugs and security vulnerabilities can lead to system failures and security breaches. Additionally, legal issues such as software licenses and intellectual property rights play
486-509: A vulnerability . Software patches are often released to fix identified vulnerabilities, but those that remain unknown ( zero days ) as well as those that have not been patched are still liable for exploitation. Vulnerabilities vary in their ability to be exploited by malicious actors, and the actual risk is dependent on the nature of the vulnerability as well as the value of the surrounding system. Although some vulnerabilities can only be used for denial of service attacks that compromise
567-520: A web application —had become the primary method that companies deliver applications. Software companies aim to deliver a high-quality product on time and under budget. A challenge is that software development effort estimation is often inaccurate. Software development begins by conceiving the project, evaluating its feasibility, analyzing the business requirements, and making a software design . Most software projects speed up their development by reusing or incorporating existing software, either in
648-649: A Hollerith department called Hollerith Abteilung, which had IBM machines, including calculating and sorting machines. IBM as a military contractor produced 6% of the M1 Carbine rifles used in World War II, about 346,500 of them, between August 1943 and May. IBM built the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator , an electromechanical computer, during World War II. It offered its first commercial stored-program computer,
729-457: A change request. Frequently, software is released in an incomplete state when the development team runs out of time or funding. Despite testing and quality assurance , virtually all software contains bugs where the system does not work as intended. Post-release software maintenance is necessary to remediate these bugs when they are found and keep the software working as the environment changes over time. New features are often added after
810-486: A code's correct and efficient behavior, its reusability and portability , or the ease of modification. It is usually more cost-effective to build quality into the product from the beginning rather than try to add it later in the development process. Higher quality code will reduce lifetime cost to both suppliers and customers as it is more reliable and easier to maintain . Software failures in safety-critical systems can be very serious including death. By some estimates,
891-581: A consequence, IBM quickly began losing its market dominance to emerging competitors in the PC market. In 1985, IBM collaborated with Microsoft to develop a new operating system , which was released as OS/2 . Following a dispute, Microsoft severed the collaboration and IBM continued development of OS/2 on its own but it failed in the marketplace against Microsoft's Windows during the mid-1990s. In 1991 IBM began spinning off its many divisions into autonomous subsidiaries (so-called "Baby Blues") in an attempt to make
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#1732801031236972-677: A fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) based in Endicott, New York. 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 , Canada. Collectively, the companies manufactured a wide array of 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
1053-447: 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". His favorite slogan, " THINK ", became a mantra for each company's employees. During Watson's first four years, revenues reached $ 9 million ($ 158 million today) and the company's operations expanded to Europe, South America, Asia and Australia. Watson never liked
1134-443: A legal regime where liability for software products is significantly curtailed compared to other products. Source code is protected by copyright law that vests the owner with the exclusive right to copy the code. The underlying ideas or algorithms are not protected by copyright law, but are often treated as a trade secret and concealed by such methods as non-disclosure agreements . Software copyright has been recognized since
1215-626: A separate lawsuit. In 2015, IBM bought the digital part of The Weather Company , Truven Health Analytics for $ 2.6 billion in 2016, and in October 2018, IBM announced its intention to acquire Red Hat for $ 34 billion, which was completed on July 9, 2019. In February 2020, IBM's John Kelly III joined Brad Smith of Microsoft to sign a pledge with the Vatican to ensure the ethical use and practice of Artificial Intelligence (AI) . IBM announced in October 2020 that it would divest
1296-480: A sharp drop in profit margins during the second quarter of fiscal year 1992; market analysts attributed the drop to a fierce price war in the personal computer market over the summer of 1992. The corporate restructuring was one of the largest and most expensive in history up to that point. By the summer of 1993, the IBM PC Co. had divided into multiple business units itself, including Ambra Computer Corporation and
1377-495: A significant role in the distribution of software products. The first use of the word software is credited to mathematician John Wilder Tukey in 1958. The first programmable computers, which appeared at the end of the 1940s, were programmed in machine language . Machine language is difficult to debug and not portable across different computers. Initially, hardware resources were more expensive than human resources . As programs became complex, programmer productivity became
1458-458: A specific version of the software, downloaded, and run on hardware belonging to the purchaser. The rise of the Internet and cloud computing enabled a new model, software as a service (SaaS), in which the provider hosts the software (usually built on top of rented infrastructure or platforms ) and provides the use of the software to customers, often in exchange for a subscription fee . By 2023, SaaS products—which are usually delivered via
1539-415: A system's availability, others allow the attacker to inject and run their own code (called malware ), without the user being aware of it. To thwart cyberattacks, all software in the system must be designed to withstand and recover from external attack. Despite efforts to ensure security, a significant fraction of computers are infected with malware. Programming languages are the format in which software
1620-507: Is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average . IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, having held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021. IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR),
1701-402: Is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th century. Early programs were written in the machine language specific to the hardware. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 allowed for more human-readable instructions, making software development easier and more portable across different computer architectures . Software in a programming language
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#17328010312361782-414: Is run through a compiler or interpreter to execute on the architecture's hardware. Over time, software has become complex, owing to developments in networking , operating systems , and databases . Software can generally be categorized into two main types: The rise of cloud computing has introduced the new software delivery model Software as a Service (SaaS). In SaaS, applications are hosted by
1863-440: Is the largest shareholder of IBM and as of March 31, 2023, held 15.7% of total shares outstanding. In 2011, IBM became the first technology company Warren Buffett 's holding company Berkshire Hathaway invested in. Initially he bought 64 million shares costing $ 10.5 billion. Over the years, Buffett increased his IBM holdings, but by the end of 2017 had reduced them by 94.5% to 2.05 million shares; by May 2018, he
1944-453: Is written. Since the 1950s, thousands of different programming languages have been invented; some have been in use for decades, while others have fallen into disuse. Some definitions classify machine code —the exact instructions directly implemented by the hardware—and assembly language —a more human-readable alternative to machine code whose statements can be translated one-to-one into machine code—as programming languages. Programs written in
2025-574: 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 flights of the Mercury astronauts. A year later, it moved its corporate headquarters from New York City to Armonk, New York. The latter half of
2106-851: The IBM Rome Software Lab (Rome, Italy), Hursley House (Winchester, UK), 330 North Wabash (Chicago, Illinois, United States), the Cambridge Scientific Center (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States), the IBM Toronto Software Lab (Toronto, Canada), the IBM Building, Johannesburg (Johannesburg, South Africa), the IBM Building (Seattle) (Seattle, Washington, United States), the IBM Hakozaki Facility (Tokyo, Japan),
2187-888: The IBM Yamato Facility (Yamato, Japan), the IBM Canada Head Office Building (Ontario, Canada) and the Watson IoT Headquarters (Munich, Germany). Defunct IBM campuses include the IBM Somers Office Complex (Somers, New York), Spango Valley (Greenock, Scotland), and Tour Descartes (Paris, France). The company's contributions to industrial architecture and design include works by Marcel Breuer , Eero Saarinen , Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , I.M. Pei and Ricardo Legorreta . Van der Rohe's building in Chicago
2268-544: The National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson , called on Flint and, in 1914, was offered a position at CTR. Watson joined CTR as general manager and then, 11 months later, was made President when antitrust cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Patterson's pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTR's companies. He implemented sales conventions, "generous sales incentives,
2349-448: The UPC barcode . The company has made inroads in advanced computer chips , quantum computing , artificial intelligence , and data infrastructure . IBM employees and alumni have won various recognitions for their scientific research and inventions, including six Nobel Prizes and six Turing Awards . IBM originated with several technological innovations developed and commercialized in
2430-681: The Universal Product Code . IBM and the World Bank first introduced financial swaps to the public in 1981, when they entered into a swap agreement. IBM entered the microcomputer market in the 1980s with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM 5150), which soon became known as the PC , one of IBM's best selling products. Due to a lack of foresight by IBM, the PC was not well protected by intellectual property laws. As
2511-438: The high-level programming languages used to create software share a few main characteristics: knowledge of machine code is not necessary to write them, they can be ported to other computer systems, and they are more concise and human-readable than machine code. They must be both human-readable and capable of being translated into unambiguous instructions for computer hardware. The invention of high-level programming languages
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2592-410: The magnetic stripe card that would become ubiquitous for credit/debit/ATM cards, driver's licenses, rapid transit cards and a multitude of other identity and access control applications. IBM pioneered the manufacture of these cards, and for most of the 1970s, the data processing systems and software for such applications ran exclusively on IBM computers. In 1974, IBM engineer George J. Laurer developed
2673-606: The microcomputer market in 1981 with the IBM Personal Computer , — its DOS software provided by Microsoft , — which became the basis for the majority of personal computers to the present day. The company later also found success in the portable space with the ThinkPad . Since the 1990s, IBM has concentrated on computer services , software , supercomputers , and scientific research ; it sold its microcomputer division to Lenovo in 2005. IBM continues to develop mainframes, and its supercomputers have consistently ranked among
2754-577: The 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, participating in the 1965 Gemini flights, 1966 Saturn flights, and 1969 lunar mission. IBM also developed and manufactured the Saturn V's Instrument Unit and Apollo spacecraft guidance computers. On April 7, 1964, IBM launched the first computer system family, the IBM System/360 . It spanned the complete range of commercial and scientific applications from large to small, allowing companies for
2835-490: The IBM PC Co. was dissolved and merged into IBM Personal Systems Group. In 2002 IBM acquired PwC Consulting, the consulting arm of PwC which was merged into its IBM Global Services . On September 14, 2004, LG and IBM announced that their business alliance in the South Korean market would end at the end of that year. Both companies stated that it was unrelated to the charges of bribery earlier that year. Xnote
2916-506: The IBM Power Personal Systems Group, the former an attempt to design and market " clone " computers of IBM's own architecture and the latter responsible for IBM's PowerPC -based workstations . IBM PC Co. introduced the ThinkPad clone computers, which IBM would heavily market and would eventually become one of the best-selling series of notebook computers . In 1993, IBM posted an $ 8 billion loss – at
2997-789: The IBM website. On June 7, Krishna announced that IBM would carry out an "orderly wind-down" of its operations in Russia. In late 2022, IBM started a collaboration with new Japanese manufacturer Rapidus , which led GlobalFoundries to file a lawsuit against IBM the following year. In 2023, IBM acquired Manta Software Inc. to complement its data and A.I. governance capabilities for an undisclosed amount. On November 16, 2023, IBM suspended ads on Twitter after ads were found next to pro-Nazi content. In December 2023, IBM announced it would acquire Software AG 's StreamSets and webMethods platforms for €2.13 billion ($ 2.33 billion). IBM's market capitalization
3078-551: The Managed Infrastructure Services unit of its Global Technology Services division into a new public company. The new company, Kyndryl , will have 90,000 employees, 4,600 clients in 115 countries, with a backlog of $ 60 billion. IBM's spin off was greater than any of its previous divestitures, and welcomed by investors. IBM appointed Martin Schroeter, who had been IBM's CFO from 2014 through
3159-516: The Weather Channel mobile app. Also that year, IBM employees created the film A Boy and His Atom , which was the first molecule movie to tell a story. In 2016, IBM acquired video conferencing service Ustream and formed a new cloud video unit. In April 2016, it posted a 14-year low in quarterly sales. The following month, Groupon sued IBM accusing it of patent infringement, two months after IBM accused Groupon of patent infringement in
3240-469: The antitrust laws in IBM's actions directed against leasing companies and plug-compatible peripheral manufacturers. Shortly after, IBM unbundled its software and services in what many observers believed was a direct result of the lawsuit, creating a competitive market for software. In 1982, the Department of Justice dropped the case as "without merit". Also in 1969, IBM engineer Forrest Parry invented
3321-399: The bottleneck. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 hid the details of the hardware and expressed the underlying algorithms into the code . Early languages include Fortran , Lisp , and COBOL . There are two main types of software: Software can also be categorized by how it is deployed . Traditional applications are purchased with a perpetual license for
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3402-601: The city's seventh tallest building and overlooking Beijing National Stadium ("Bird's Nest") , home to the 2008 Summer Olympics . IBM India Private Limited is the Indian subsidiary of IBM, which is headquartered at Bangalore , Karnataka. It has facilities in Coimbatore , Chennai , Kochi , Ahmedabad , Delhi , Kolkata , Mumbai , Pune , Gurugram , Noida , Bhubaneshwar , Surat , Visakhapatnam , Hyderabad , Bangalore and Jamshedpur . Other notable buildings include
3483-560: The clumsy hyphenated name "Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company" and chose to replace it with the more expansive title "International Business Machines" which had previously been used as the name of CTR's Canadian Division; the name was changed on February 14, 1924. By 1933, most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, IBM. The Nazis made extensive use of Hollerith punch card and alphabetical accounting equipment and IBM's majority-owned German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH ( Dehomag ), supplied this equipment from
3564-461: The company designed a video surveillance system for Davao City . In 2014 IBM announced it would sell its x86 server division to Lenovo for $ 2.1 billion. while continuing to offer Power ISA -based servers. Also that year, IBM began announcing several major partnerships with other companies, including Apple Inc. , Twitter, Facebook, Tencent , Cisco , UnderArmour , Box , Microsoft , VMware , CSC , Macy's , Sesame Workshop ,
3645-421: The company more manageable and to streamline IBM by having other investors finance those companies. These included AdStar , dedicated to disk drives and other data storage products; IBM Application Business Systems, dedicated to mid-range computers; IBM Enterprise Systems, dedicated to mainframes; Pennant Systems, dedicated to mid-range and large printers; Lexmark , dedicated to small printers; and more. Lexmark
3726-404: The correctness of code, while user acceptance testing helps to ensure that the product meets customer expectations. There are a variety of software development methodologies , which vary from completing all steps in order to concurrent and iterative models. Software development is driven by requirements taken from prospective users, as opposed to maintenance, which is driven by events such as
3807-400: The cost of poor quality software can be as high as 20 to 40 percent of sales. Despite developers' goal of delivering a product that works entirely as intended, virtually all software contains bugs. The rise of the Internet also greatly increased the need for computer security as it enabled malicious actors to conduct cyberattacks remotely. If a bug creates a security risk, it is called
3888-419: The cost of products. Unlike copyrights, patents generally only apply in the jurisdiction where they were issued. Engineer Capers Jones writes that "computers and software are making profound changes to every aspect of human life: education, work, warfare, entertainment, medicine, law, and everything else". It has become ubiquitous in everyday life in developed countries . In many cases, software augments
3969-475: The early 1930s. This equipment was critical to Nazi efforts to categorize citizens of both Germany and other nations that fell under Nazi control through ongoing censuses. These census data were used to facilitate the round-up of Jews and other targeted groups, and to catalog their movements through the machinery of the Holocaust , including internment in the concentration camps. Nazi concentration camps operated
4050-553: The end of 2017, as CEO of Kyndryl. In 2021, IBM announced the acquisition of the enterprise software company Turbonomic for $ 1.5 billion. In January 2022, IBM announced it would sell Watson Health to private equity firm Francisco Partners . On March 7, 2022, a few days after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine , IBM CEO Arvind Krishna published a Ukrainian flag and announced that "we have suspended all business in Russia". All Russian articles were also removed from
4131-445: The enterprise-oriented Personal Systems Group of the IBM PC Co. into IBM's own Global Services personal computer consulting and customer service division. The resulting merged business units then became known simply as IBM Personal Systems Group. A year later, IBM stopped selling their computers at retail outlets after their market share in this sector had fallen considerably behind competitors Compaq and Dell . Immediately afterwards,
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#17328010312364212-492: The first time to upgrade to models with greater computing capability without having to rewrite their applications. It was followed by the IBM System/370 in 1970. Together the 360 and 370 made the IBM mainframe the dominant mainframe computer and the dominant computing platform in the industry throughout this period and into the early 1980s. They and the operating systems that ran on them such as OS/VS1 and MVS , and
4293-443: The flagship Net/One , and later transitioned to TCP/IP as it became an industry standard in the late 1980s. Before it became the industry standard, the Internet protocol suite TCP/IP was initially a "check box" item needed to qualify on prospective enterprise sales. As a network technology supplier to both Apple Inc. and Microsoft , in 1987-88 UB helped Apple implement their initial MacTCP offering and also helped Microsoft with
4374-438: The form of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or open-source software . Software quality assurance is typically a combination of manual code review by other engineers and automated software testing . Due to time constraints, testing cannot cover all aspects of the software's intended functionality, so developers often focus on the most critical functionality. Formal methods are used in some safety-critical systems to prove
4455-439: The functionality of existing technologies such as household appliances and elevators . Software also spawned entirely new technologies such as the Internet , video games , mobile phones , and GPS . New methods of communication, including email , forums , blogs , microblogging , wikis , and social media , were enabled by the Internet. Massive amounts of knowledge exceeding any paper-based library are now available with
4536-749: The larger ones. In New York City, IBM has several offices besides CHQ, including the IBM Watson headquarters at Astor Place in Manhattan. Outside of New York, major campuses in the United States include Austin, Texas ; Research Triangle Park (Raleigh-Durham), North Carolina ; Rochester, Minnesota ; and Silicon Valley, California . IBM's real estate holdings are varied and globally diverse. Towers occupied by IBM include 1250 René-Lévesque (Montreal, Canada) and One Atlantic Center (Atlanta, Georgia, US). In Beijing, China, IBM occupies Pangu Plaza ,
4617-570: The late 19th century. Julius E. Pitrap patented the computing scale in 1885; Alexander Dey invented the dial recorder (1888); Herman Hollerith patented the Electric Tabulating Machine (1889); and Willard Bundy invented a time clock to record workers' arrival and departure times on a paper tape (1889). On June 16, 1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming
4698-451: The latest being the IBM z series. The most recent model, the IBM z16 , was released in 2022. In 1990, IBM released the Power microprocessors , which were designed into many console gaming systems, including Xbox 360 , PlayStation 3 , and Nintendo 's Wii U . IBM Secure Blue is encryption hardware that can be built into microprocessors, and in 2014, the company revealed TrueNorth ,
4779-425: The longer term. The key trends of IBM are (as at the financial year ending December 31): The company's 15-member board of directors are responsible for overall corporate management and includes the current or former CEOs of Anthem , Dow Chemical , Johnson and Johnson , Royal Dutch Shell , UPS , and Vanguard as well as the president of Cornell University and a retired U.S. Navy admiral . Vanguard Group
4860-585: The mid-1950s. There are two other IBM buildings within walking distance of CHQ: the North Castle office, which previously served as IBM's headquarters; and the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Center for Learning (formerly known as IBM Learning Center (ILC)), a resort hotel and training center, which has 182 guest rooms, 31 meeting rooms, and various amenities. IBM operates in 174 countries as of 2016 , with mobility centers in smaller market areas and major campuses in
4941-597: The mid-1970s and is vested in the company that makes the software, not the employees or contractors who wrote it. The use of most software is governed by an agreement ( software license ) between the copyright holder and the user. Proprietary software is usually sold under a restrictive license that limits copying and reuse (often enforced with tools such as digital rights management (DRM)). Open-source licenses , in contrast, allow free use and redistribution of software with few conditions. Most open-source licenses used for software require that modifications be released under
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#17328010312365022-613: The middleware built on top of those such as the CICS transaction processing monitor, had a near-monopoly-level market share and became the thing IBM was most known for during this period. In 1969, the United States of America alleged that IBM violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general-purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business, and subsequently alleged that IBM violated
5103-450: The most powerful in the world in the 21st century. As one of the world's oldest and largest technology companies, IBM has been responsible for several technological innovations , including the automated teller machine (ATM), dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), the floppy disk , the hard disk drive , the magnetic stripe card , the relational database , the SQL programming language , and
5184-644: The next several months, Newbridge laid off the bulk of the Ungermann-Bass employees, and closed the doors of the Santa Clara operation. Newbridge was later acquired by Alcatel , a French telecommunications company. IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM ), nicknamed Big Blue , is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York and present in over 175 countries. It
5265-472: The operating system) can take this saved file and execute it as a process on the computer hardware. Some programming languages use an interpreter instead of a compiler. An interpreter converts the program into machine code at run time , which makes them 10 to 100 times slower than compiled programming languages. Software is often released with the knowledge that it is incomplete or contains bugs. Purchasers knowingly buy it in this state, which has led to
5346-400: The parent company of Sesame Street , and Salesforce.com . In 2015, its chip division transitioned to a fabless model with semiconductors design, offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries . In 2015, IBM announced three major acquisitions: Merge Healthcare for $ 1 billion, data storage vendor Cleversafe , and all digital assets from The Weather Company , including Weather.com and
5427-555: The physical world may also be part of the requirements for a software patent to be held valid. Software patents have been historically controversial . Before the 1998 case State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. , software patents were generally not recognized in the United States. In that case, the Supreme Court decided that business processes could be patented. Patent applications are complex and costly, and lawsuits involving patents can drive up
5508-408: The release. Over time, the level of maintenance becomes increasingly restricted before being cut off entirely when the product is withdrawn from the market. As software ages , it becomes known as legacy software and can remain in use for decades, even if there is no one left who knows how to fix it. Over the lifetime of the product, software maintenance is estimated to comprise 75 percent or more of
5589-424: The same license, which can create complications when open-source software is reused in proprietary projects. Patents give an inventor an exclusive, time-limited license for a novel product or process. Ideas about what software could accomplish are not protected by law and concrete implementations are instead covered by copyright law . In some countries, a requirement for the claimed invention to have an effect on
5670-543: The time the biggest in American corporate history. Lou Gerstner was hired as CEO from RJR Nabisco to turn the company around. In 1995, IBM purchased Lotus Software , best known for its Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software. During the decade, IBM was working on a new operating system, named the Workplace OS project. Despite a large amount of money spent on the project, it was cancelled in 1996. In 1998, IBM merged
5751-431: The total development cost. Completing a software project involves various forms of expertise, not just in software programmers but also testing, documentation writing, project management , graphic design , user experience , user support, marketing , and fundraising. Software quality is defined as meeting the stated requirements as well as customer expectations. Quality is an overarching term that can refer to
5832-608: The vacuum tube based IBM 701 , in 1952. The IBM 305 RAMAC introduced the hard disk drive in 1956. The company switched to transistorized designs with the 7000 and 1400 series, beginning in 1958. In which, IBM considered the 1400 series the ''model T'' of computing, due to it being the first computer with over ten thousand sales by IBM. 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,
5913-488: Was acquired by Clayton & Dubilier in a leveraged buyout shortly after its formation. In September 1992, IBM completed the spin-off of their various non-mainframe and non-midrange, personal computer manufacturing divisions, combining them into an autonomous wholly owned subsidiary known as the IBM Personal Computer Company (IBM PC Co.). This corporate restructuring came after IBM reported
5994-543: Was announced that IBM will build Europe's first quantum computer in Ehningen, Germany . The center, to be operated by the Fraunhofer Society , was still in construction as of 2023, with cloud access planned in 2024. Software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the execution of a computer . Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software
6075-400: Was completely out of IBM. IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York , a community 37 miles (60 km) north of Midtown Manhattan. A nickname for the company is the " Colossus of Armonk ". Its principal building, referred to as CHQ, is a 283,000-square-foot (26,300 m ) glass and stone edifice on a 25-acre (10 ha) parcel amid a 432-acre former apple orchard the company purchased in
6156-400: Was exhibited on Jeopardy! where it won against game-show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The company also celebrated its 100th anniversary in the same year on June 16. In 2012, IBM announced it had agreed to buy Kenexa and Texas Memory Systems, and a year later it also acquired SoftLayer Technologies, a web hosting service , in a deal worth around $ 2 billion. Also that year,
6237-400: Was generally seen as hard to install. UB was one of the first network manufacturers to sell equipment that implemented Ethernet over twisted pair wiring. UB's AccessOne product line initially used the pre-standard StarLAN and, when it became standard, 10BASE-T . UB went public in 1983. It was bought by Tandem Computers in 1988. UB was sold in 1997 by Tandem to Newbridge Networks . Over
6318-640: Was originally part of the joint venture and was sold by LG in 2012. Continuing a trend started in the 1990s of downsizing its operations and divesting from commodity production , IBM sold all of its personal computer business to Chinese technology company Lenovo and, in 2009, it acquired software company SPSS Inc. Later in 2009, IBM's Blue Gene supercomputing program was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by U.S. President Barack Obama . In 2011, IBM gained worldwide attention for its artificial intelligence program Watson , which
6399-507: Was recognized with the 1990 Honor Award from the National Building Museum . IBM has a large and diverse portfolio of products and services. As of 2016 , these offerings fall into the categories of cloud computing , artificial intelligence, commerce , data and analytics , Internet of things (IoT), IT infrastructure , mobile , digital workplace and cybersecurity . Since 1954, IBM sells mainframe computers ,
6480-401: Was simultaneous with the compilers needed to translate them automatically into machine code. Most programs do not contain all the resources needed to run them and rely on external libraries . Part of the compiler's function is to link these files in such a way that the program can be executed by the hardware. Once compiled, the program can be saved as an object file and the loader (part of
6561-480: Was valued at over $ 153 billion as of May 2024. Despite its relative decline within the technology sector, IBM remains the seventh largest technology company by revenue, and 67th largest overall company by revenue in the United States . IBM ranked No. 38 on the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In 2014, IBM was accused of using "financial engineering" to hit its quarterly earnings targets rather than investing for
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