Chapter 7 foreword

International Business Machines Corporation, namely IBM Corporation, has an indissoluble bond with blue.Because its logo is blue, people often refer to this leader in the computer industry as Big Blue.In 1997, IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue (Deep Blue) and Kasparov, the most amazing world chess champion in history, launched a six-game man-machine battle.Half a year ago, IBM's computer was lucky enough to win one set against Kasparov, but was defeated by Kasparov three times in a row.Only half a year later, the performance of IBM's Deep Blue computer has improved by an order of magnitude in all aspects, and its "chess skills" have also greatly improved. However, it is impossible for Kasparov's chess skills to improve significantly in half a year.In the human-machine battle of six games, Deep Blue finally won 3.5 to 2.5. This is the first time in human history that a computer has defeated a human world champion in six games of chess.Millions of chess fans watched the live broadcast of the game through the Internet, and more than one billion people watched its TV news. IBM set off a blue whirlwind all over the world.

IBM may be one of the few companies in the world that has successfully escaped previous economic crises and successfully transformed itself in previous technological revolutions.In many people's minds, IBM is just a large-scale computer manufacturer, and it has become obsolete today when microcomputers and the Internet are becoming more and more popular.In fact, IBM is not that simple. It is still the world's largest consulting company, the second largest software company, and the second largest database company. IBM has the largest laboratory in the industry today, IBM Research (although its size is only one-tenth of the heyday of Bell Labs), and it is the world's largest patent applicant (later we will talk about IBM's attitude towards patents), it It is also the world's largest open source (Open Source) Linux server manufacturer.

IBM can become an evergreen tree in the technology world, thanks to its two-word secret - conservative.There is no doubt that conservatism has caused IBM to lose countless development opportunities, but it also allows it to focus on the most important things and thus remain invincible.