The corporation originated from a conglomerate of companies that produced tabulators and chronometers that formed before the First World War. Gradually, it became an international technological colossus, a pioneer in the development of electronic computers, and then, in the era of mainframes, an absolute monopolist. Until the 70s, the corporation was headed by the icons of American capitalism, Thomas Watson Sr. and Thomas Watson Jr.

Structure

As of January 2016, the following divisions operate within IBM:

• Global Technology Services
• Software
• Systems and Technology
• Global Financing

Compared to the beginning of 2015, the company's structure has not changed.

IBM in Russia and CIS countries

Since 2006, an IBM development center has been operating in Russia.

Assets

Data centers

As of the end of 2014, the number of IBM data centers serving cloud infrastructure is 49.

Performance indicators

2019: Fall in revenue from $79.6 billion to $77.15 billion

Acquisitions of companies and sales of assets

Working and managing people at IBM

Research and development

2018: Leadership in patents 26 years

At the beginning of 2019, patent research company IFI Claims Patent Services published its annual ranking of the largest patent recipients. IBM has been leading for 26 years in a row. Next came Samsung, Canon, Intel and LG Electronics - the same top five as in 2017.

According to data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in 2018 IBM received 9,100 patents, of which almost half are related to the most discussed technologies in the IT market, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing , information security, blockchain and quantum computing. IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty said the inventions demonstrate the company's commitment to "solving problems that many people haven't even thought about yet."

Among the patents issued by IBM in 2018 are solutions aimed at improving communication between AI and humans (Project Debater); improving the quality of control of aquatic ecosystems to protect marine flora and fauna; systems for combating voice phishing schemes. Hybrid Cloud Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research Arvind Krishna said in an IBM blog post that climate change mitigation was a major focus in 2018.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a total of 308,853 patents in 2018, down 3.5% from 2017, according to IFI Claims Patent Services. Chinese companies increased the total number of patents issued by 12% compared to 2017. Bloomberg notes that steady growth The number of patents issued to Chinese companies reflects their increased development of their own technologies.

With 9,100 patents, IBM had 6.4% of the total number of patents issued to companies in the US. New patents were issued to more than 8,500 IBM inventors in 47 different states and 48 countries.

A noticeable decrease was shown by Sony (15th place in the ranking, a decrease in the number of patents received by 21% compared to 2017), Google (11th place, minus 16%) and Qualcomm (8th place, minus 12%). Facebook, which entered the top 50 for the first time in 2017, dropped out of the shortlist altogether.

2016: Leadership in the number of new patents

In January 2017, it became known that IBM had maintained its leadership in the number of new patents for 25 years in a row. This was reported by the research agency IFI Claims Patent Services.

In 2017, IBM registered more than 9 thousand patents, while Samsung Electronics followed - 5.8 thousand. Canon entered the top three (3.3 thousand patents).

According to IFI Claims Patent Services, in 2017 the American patent office issued over 320 thousand patents, which is 5.2% more than the year before. Over the previous 10 years, the number of registered patents in the country has doubled, Bloomberg notes.

Although patents are registered in other countries, the United States is the absolute world leader in this regard. All major international corporations strive to patent their developments here.

In 2017, the majority of IBM's inventions were in artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive computing, cloud technologies, cybersecurity, and other strategically important areas. For example, AI accounted for more than 1,400 patents. Some of them describe human speech analysis and machine learning technologies for self-driving cars.

From 2012 to 2017, IBM received more than 5,600 AI-related patents, which is 1 thousand documents more than Google.

2015

7,355 US patents

IBM's 2013 patent portfolio includes a variety of inventions that will help the company maintain its leadership position in areas such as cognitive technologies, cloud computing and analytics. These inventions will also enable a new phase of cognitive development, in which computers will be able to learn, make inferences, and interact with us in a more natural, personalized manner.

The number of patents IBM received in 2013 exceeded the total number of patents received by Amazon, Google, EMC, Intel, Oracle/SUN and Symantec. More than 8,000 IBM inventors in 47 U.S. states and 41 other countries contributed to a record 2013 patent portfolio.

The list of the top ten patent recipients* in the United States in 2013 is as follows: which allowed the corporation to lead the world list of companies with the most active inventive activity for the 18th year in a row.

Another patent describes a system for predicting conditions traffic based on the analysis of information exchanged through short-range wireless communication channels. It is expected that this invention will help alert drivers about emergency road conditions.

Also in 2010, the company patented a method for collecting and analyzing data from sensors in computer hard drives for high-precision analysis of seismic phenomena, in particular earthquakes, which can improve the speed and efficiency of emergency response in cases of natural disasters.

One of the patents that IBM notes as one of the most interesting was obtained by a native of Russia, Yuri Vlasov, who in the 1990s worked at the A.F. Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology in St. Petersburg, and since 2001 has been an employee of the IBM TJ laboratory Watson Research Center, located in New York State, USA.

The patent, obtained by Vlasov together with Solomon Assefa, Walter Bedell and Fengnian Xia, describes a technology that allows computer chips to communicate using light pulses instead of electrical signals, which can improve the performance of computing systems .

In total, more than 7 thousand IBM inventors from 46 different US states and 29 countries contributed to obtaining patents. IBM's non-US inventors contributed more than 22% of the company's total patent portfolio in 2010, up 27% over the past 3 years.

“Patents, like the inventions they represent, reflect the steadfast commitment to innovation that distinguishes IBM and its people,” said Kevin Reardon, IBM general manager of intellectual property and vice president of research development for the company. “Patent leadership is an important element of our strategy, which is focused on building a technology-enabled, connected and intelligent infrastructure that can transform the way diverse systems work to support a smart planet.”

• Soviet EC computers were directly and creatively copied from IBM/360 computers;
• ES PCs are analogues of IBM personal computers;
• ES computer operating systems were at least compatible with the corresponding IBM operating systems.

IBM(pronounced IBM; MFA: ; abbr. from English International Business Machines) is an American company headquartered in Armonk (New York), one of the world's largest manufacturers and suppliers of hardware and software, as well as IT services and consulting services.

A common nickname for the company is Big Blue, which can be translated from English as “big blue” or “blue giant”. There are several versions regarding this nickname. According to one of them, the name comes from the mainframes supplied by the company in the 1950s - 1960s. They were the size of a room and were blue in color. Another theory is that the nickname simply refers to the company logo. According to another version, this name comes from the company’s former dress code, which required many employees to wear blue shirts and suits.

Story

1888-1924: IBM founded

In 1890, a census was taken across the United States. To process its results, the “electric tabulator” invented by Herman Hollerith was first used. Thanks to him, the census data was processed in just a year, whereas the previous census of 1880 took 8 years to process. Encouraged by his success, the inventor opened the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896.

In 1924, with entry into the Canadian market and expansion of the product range, CTR changed its name to International Business Machines or, for short, IBM.

1930s - 1940s

In 2001, IBM donated $3,000,000 to the Holocaust Victims Compensation Fund for supplies to Germany of machines for recording concentration camp prisoners.

1950s - Air Force and airline projects

In the 1950s, the company created a large computerized missile defense system, SAGE, which analyzed data from radars in real time and guided interceptors to their targets. Used from the 50s to the 80s of the XX century. In later versions, the system made it possible to automatically direct aircraft to intercept, transmitting data directly to their autopilots.

Computer era

In 1956, Thomas Watson's son Thomas Watson Jr. succeeded his father as head of IBM, ushering in the era of computing for life. Under his leadership, the company's revenues grew to $8 billion, and the number of employees to 270 thousand people.

In 1964, the IBM System/360 family was introduced, which were: the first universal computers, the first designed family of computers, the first computers with byte-addressable memory, etc. System/360-compatible IBM System z computers are still being produced: this is an absolute record compatibility.

In 1971, the company introduced the floppy disk, which became the standard for data storage.

In 1972, an updated logo (blue striped letters) of the company was introduced, which is still used today. Designer Paul Rand worked on the logo (English)Russian.

1981 has firmly entered the history of mankind as the year of the appearance of the Personal Computer “IBM PC”. 640 kilobytes of RAM and one or two floppy drives were enough to run the DOS operating system, offered by the then small company Microsoft, and a number of applications. Along with DOS, models were offered on the CP/M-86 OS and UCSD Pascal P-system, but these systems did not survive, since Microsoft provided a unique offer for that time: to purchase a license to supply for a one-time payment software for an unlimited number of computers, which significantly reduced the price of a configuration with MS-DOS, which attracted a large number of buyers and, accordingly, brought wide popularity Microsoft.

It is noteworthy that at first the company’s management did not attach any importance to this machine: the development was carried out by a group of only 4 people (under the leadership of Philip Donald Estridge). The most noticeable consequences were that, contrary to its strict principles of intellectual property protection, IBM did not patent either DOS (with a BASIC language interpreter) or another revolutionary invention of its developers - BIOS. As a result, more astute third-party developers, using published specifications, made clones of the IBM PC, which led to explosive market growth, but a large share (and a significant amount) was lost to IBM.

Around 1984, the AS/400 series was launched, a mini-computer designed for business tasks. It was backward compatible with previously released S/36 and S/38 minicomputers. It used Micro-Channel (MCA) bus technologies and the SCSI interface, which is still used in servers. Computers in this series are still in production and can use any software developed earlier.

In 1986, IBM lost 1st place in sales in the personal computer market it itself created.

In 1990, an attempt was made to seize the initiative in the personal computer market with the release of PS/2 series computers with the OS/2 operating system, which were not compatible either in hardware or software with PC and DOS. The machines used advanced technologies, for example, the Micro-Channel bus (much superior to the ISA bus then used in PCs, and the PCI bus appeared only in 1991). The PS/2 series did not receive widespread market recognition, and its production was soon discontinued. However, connectors for keyboards and mice based on a Mini-DIN plug, called PS/2 ports, are still widely used in PCs.

As part of this series, the OS/2 Warp V3.0 operating system was planned to be released, initially created directly with Microsoft, but IBM continued to rely on the mainframe market, which led to a delay in the development of this project. As a result, Microsoft switched to Windows development, and a series of computers running OS/2 entered the market later than planned and, despite massive advertising campaign and very good characteristics, the project could not survive on the market.

Era of Consulting

IBM office in Kazan

Focusing its business on the delivery of services, in 2005 IBM sold its division for the production and sale of personal computers (the ThinkPad and ThinkCentre lines) to the Chinese company Lenovo for $1.8 billion. And in 2014, Lenovo also bought from IBM for $2.3 billion a division responsible for the development and production of x86 servers (mainly the System X and BladeCenter lines). Also in 2014, by selling its semiconductor factories to GlobalFoundries, IBM announced that it was becoming a fabless company in the semiconductor segment, continuing to develop processors but abandoning their production.

Beginning around 2007, IBM began to operate in the segment of cloud computing and business services delivered over the Internet. Strengthening its position in this sector, in 2013 IBM bought a large international hosting provider, Softlayer Technologies, for approximately $2 billion. (English)Russian, which owned a network of 13 data centers in the USA, Singapore and Amsterdam, and in 2014 announced an investment of over $1.2 billion in the construction of 15 new data centers as part of a strategy to expand cloud services on the IBM Cloud platform (English)Russian .

In March 2017, IBM announced the IBM Q project to create the world's first universal quantum computer, access to the resources of which will be provided through the IBM Cloud cloud platform (English)Russian. It is planned that within a few years a universal quantum computing system will be created to carry out tasks for the development of new drugs, advanced materials, research in the field of artificial intelligence, digital security, logistics and financial services. And in November 2017, IBM scientists successfully built and measured a prototype processor with 50-quantum bits.

At the IBM Think 2018 conference, company representatives presented the smallest computer in the world today. This computer has a size of 1 by 1 millimeter, which is comparable to the size of a grain of table salt. The cost of producing one such computer is estimated at less than 10 cents.

Activity

Key divisions of IBM:

• IBM Global Services (English)Russian (IGS, consulting division), brought the company $47.357 billion in revenue out of $91.134 billion in total in 2015;
• IBM Software Group(software development division), brought the company $15.753 billion in revenue in 2015;
• IBM Systems & Technology Group(STG, equipment manufacturing division), brought the company $23.857 billion in 2015;
• IBM Watson Group(a division of cognitive computing - which grew out of the development of the IBM Watson supercomputer project);
• IBM Research (English)Russian ;
• IBM Global Financing.

Software

IBM's influence on the development of computing and software

Significant developments in the information technology industry

• 1943 - Mark I, the first American computer;
• 1946 (September 27) - the first commercial calculator;
• 1956 - the first commercial hard drive;
• 1957 - Fortran compiler released;
• 1959 - the first airline ticket reservation system - Saber (English)

What is MOM

The state in which many domestic enterprises find themselves can be called a transition from “island” automation to the creation of unified information systems covering several various fields activities, and often interacting with information systems of other enterprises (business partners, suppliers of certain resources, etc.). This process is unlikely to be painless - it will often be accompanied by additional organizational processes associated with the introduction of new technologies, such as the appearance or disappearance of jobs, changes job responsibilities employees, the need for their training, etc. One should not ignore such an important fact as the rapid development and change of technology, as well as the change in the business of the enterprises themselves. This often leads to the fact that an enterprise is forced to constantly modernize one or another part of the information system it operates.

In this situation, solving the problem of integrating existing applications, including those operating under different operating systems, becomes especially relevant. According to research by the analytical agency Forrester Research, projects related to application integration consume up to 30% of enterprise spending on information technology development.

There are many different ways to create distributed applications that run on different platforms, such as COM or CORBA technologies, create Web applications, and create and use Web services to produce application results. Promotion modern technologies In most cases, it involves replacing existing systems with new ones. At the same time, an approach based on application integration based on Messaging Oriented Middleware (MOM) means the preservation and integration of existing systems and, therefore, significant savings and preservation of investments made. Many computer industry analysts have noted the rapid growth in the number of solutions using MOM due to the flexibility of this architecture. This type of integration is implemented in the IBM MQSeries family of products.

Message queuing tools are designed to store messages sent by applications and then deliver them to another application using a special server application - a queue manager. The queue manager writes the message to a local queue and then forwards it over the network to another queue manager containing what is called a destination queue for the destination application. The destination application accesses the target queue and accesses the message. Thus, the message queuing system provides an asynchronous method for program interaction that does not require direct communication between them. This ensures that the transmitted message is neither lost nor received twice.

Problems of data exchange between various applications arise quite often, and ten to twenty years ago, to solve them, developers created their own modules for exporting and importing data. It was these modules that were essentially the predecessors of MOM. With the development of applied information systems, the need arose to create a universal infrastructure that ensures such exchange. This need was the reason for the creation of MOM.

In 1992, IBM published the Message Queue Interface (MQI) specification, and since that year there has been a family of products called MQSeries. During the existence of these products, versions of queue managers have appeared for all popular server platforms, including OS/390, MVS, VSE/ESA, OS/400, OS/2, OpenVMS, Digital Unix, AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Sun Solaris, SCO UNIX, UnixWare, AT&T GIS UNIX, DC/OSx, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 95/98, and MQSeries client versions for even more platforms. Recently, tools have appeared for integrating MQSeries with relational DBMSs, combining queue managers into clusters, and various software interfaces that simplify the development of applications using MQSeries.

Currently, the IBM MQSeries family of products (Fig. 1) contains:

• MQSeries - a tool for organizing message queues and processing them;
• MQSeries Integrator - application integration tool;
• MQSeries Workflow - business process management tool;
• MQSeries Adapter - a tool for creating adapters, that is, transition software between application systems and MQSeries;
• MQSeries.EveryPlace is a message queuing service for mobile devices and mobile users.

Below we will look at the purpose and main capabilities of each of these products.

IBM MQSeries

IBM MQSeries, one of IBM's flagship products, is a message queuing and processing tool in a heterogeneous, distributed environment that is independent of either hardware platform or operating system. The simplest scheme the operation of IBM MQSeries is shown in Fig. 2.

When a user sends a message request to Application 1, MQSeries writes the message to a local queue for transmission to remote systems, and then transmits it over the network to the remote target queue. The destination program (application 2) reads the target queue and accesses the message. Thus, user applications do not necessarily have to deal with the internal structure of queues and the means of communication between queue managers.

MQSeries messages are a data structure consisting of a message header, which contains information about the characteristics of the message intended for message managers (information about the sender and recipient, about the route of the message, about the queue to which the response should be delivered), and transmitted data (when If necessary, they can be converted from one format to another).

A message queue is a means of storing and processing messages. In order to increase the reliability of their transmission, messages can be logged.

Applications using MQSeries do not access them directly - message queues can only be accessed through several alternative application programming interfaces: MQI (Message Queue Interface), AMI (Application Message Interface), JMS (Java Message Service), CMI (Common Message Interface). These interfaces can be used with the languages ​​Ci, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Cobol, PL/1, Lotus LSX, Basic, as well as with the most popular development tools VisualAge, Delphi, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic.

Queue managers send messages using channels and a special MCP (Message Channel Protocol) protocol that runs on top of lower-level transport protocols. The use of this protocol fully ensures message transmission, including in the event of a system or network failure, since the message is removed from the queue only after confirmation of its receipt by the recipient.

Note that MQSeries allows you to combine a group of operations for sending and receiving messages into a single transaction. In this case, until the transaction completes, sent messages are invisible to other applications, and received messages are not removed from queues. If a transaction is rolled back, the queues are returned to the state corresponding to the moment it began. Therefore, MQSeries queue managers can act as distributed transaction monitors and participate in distributed transactions controlled by other transaction monitors.

MQSeries includes: a utility for administering and configuring queues, message channels, security - MQSeries Explorer, a component for testing application programming interfaces - MQSeries API Exerciser, as well as interfaces designed for embedding into other applications to add MQSeries administration capabilities. There are also third-party MQSeries administration utilities on the market.

In addition, MQSeries can be supplemented with message encryption tools, as well as other external modules, for example: MQSeries Link for SAP R/3 - for integrating R/3 with other applications or remote R/3 systems; MQ Enterprise Integrator, MQSeries LSX, MQSeries Link, MQSeries Extra Link - for exchanging messages between Lotus Notes and other systems using MQSeries; MQSeries Internet Gateway - for converting HTTP requests to MQSeries messages and vice versa.

It should be noted, however, that in addition to message delivery, the task of recognizing and processing its content is also important. To solve this problem, the MQSeries Integrator product is used, which will be discussed in the next section.

IBM MQSeries Integrator

IBM MQSeries Integrator is a message broker that processes and distributes message streams to applications, databases, and other recipients. It enables application integration by facilitating the exchange of data between applications running on different platforms.

MQSeries Integrator uses rules that enable enterprise-wide business intelligence to be applied to business events, and can perform dynamic message processing and routing, such as adding data from corporate databases to the information transmitted, storing information in corporate databases, convert data contained in messages from one format to another. Data can be transmitted in Publish/Subscribe mode, and also converted into XML format and back. Data formats can be stored in dictionaries, including those supplied by independent manufacturers.

The MQSeries Integrator product consists of a graphical environment for developing formats and processing procedures for message flows ControlCenter with a repository of message formats MessageRepository, a Configuration Manager management server and a distributed system of message processing servers Message Broker, which acts as an MQSeries message processor and router. Having received a message, the Message Broker processes it in one way or another (depending on the content of the message) in accordance with the rules defined in the Message Broker configuration.

MQSeries Integrator contains tools for converting messages from one format to another, describing formats, saving descriptions in appropriate databases, and recognizing parts of a message according to existing formats. Format conversion may include adding or removing data, changing message headers, performing calculations, and performing user-defined functions. There are ready-made dictionaries in standard formats for MQSeries Integrator, for example for SAP R/3 and S.W.I.F.T.

In addition to format conversion tools, MQSeries Integrator includes tools for creating and applying message distribution rules based on the field values ​​contained in the message. A typical example of such a rule is sending a copy of the message to another recipient if the value of any field in the message is within a predefined range (for example, if the transaction amount exceeds a certain value). Note that the latest version of MQSeries Integrator allows you to use third-party products as a means of implementing certain message distribution rules.

Access to the tools described above is possible using the appropriate application programming interface or using graphical administrative utilities (Fig. 3).

To ensure data protection, the product includes a User Name Server, which is responsible for storing a list of users and user groups, as well as information about their rights to access data, messages and operations.

IBM MQSeries Workflow

IBM MQSeries Workflow is a workflow management tool that helps you manage business processes, data, applications and even people across your entire enterprise, including managing relationships with external partners. This product is used to develop, improve, document and manage enterprise business processes. Using this tool, you can document business processes, automate operations that do not require management, change processes as they change business enterprise, send lists of tasks to employees and provide the necessary information about the implementation of certain processes.

The MQSeries Workflow product consists of server and client components.

Server components include the following servers:

• execution server - is responsible for the timely movement of the required task position to a specific employee. To achieve this goal, the server can start or stop processes, register events, and store information about them in the database. You can use multiple copies of the execution server;
• administration server - manages other MQSeries Workflow server components, is responsible for their availability, operation and recovery from failures. The administration server is accessed using the MQSeries Workflow Administration Utility component;
• scheduling server - manages notifications for operations that must be completed within a certain period of time;
• system resource return server - is responsible for physically deleting copies of processes that have been terminated;
• Application Execution Server - Calls server applications, such as CICS and IMS transactions, for execution. It is currently available on the OS/390 platform.
• MQSeries Workflow client components include:
• BuildTime - it can be used to create workflow models; for this purpose, it includes a graphical editor for creating process models. In addition, this component can determine which personnel are involved in the process, which programs and data are used in the workflow. The created model can be saved or exported in a format convenient for documentation, and then converted into a template and transferred to the MQSeries Workflow server components (Fig. 4);
• MQSeries Workflow Client - used to launch processes to edit work lists, manage copies of processes, change job assignments, and track process execution. Instead of a ready-made client application supplied with MQSeries Workflow, you can use one created in-house - there is a corresponding API for this. To launch external applications used to perform operations, the Program Execution Agent is used;
• MQSeries Workflow Client for Lotus Notes - designed to use Lotus Notes as an external working environment for MQSeries Workflow without any adaptation. This component provides Notes users with access to all MQSeries Workflow features and provides developers with an interface to embed Lotus Notes functionality (forms, documents) into a workflow solution;
• Administration Utility - is an administration utility for MQSeries Workflow server components.

IBM MQSeries Adapter

IBM MQSeries Adapter is a tool for creating adapters, that is, transition software between applications and MQSeries. The product consists of two components - MQSeries Adapter Builder and MQSeries Adapter Kernel, as well as two support components - MQSeries Adapter Sets and MQSeries Integrator Library.

MQSeries Adapter Builder provides the ability to import an application interface into a repository by processing function prototypes of structure definitions, allowing the data contained in the message to be associated with the data that the application should receive. This can be done either by reformatting the data or by using more complex transformations, such as evaluating functions. The result of the tool is C code, which can be compiled on the platforms where the application will operate.

MQSeries Adapter Kernel are runtime libraries that are accessed by adapters created using the Adapter Builder.

MQSeries Adapter Sets - a set of standard adapters for SAP R/3, Baan Ivb and JD Edwards OneWorld. These adapters can be modified if necessary.

The MQSeries Integrator Libraries allow MQSeries Integrator users to use it with adapters.

IBM MQSeries EveryPlace

IBM MQSeries EveryPlace is a message queuing service for mobile devices running Windows CE, Palm OS, mobile phones, as well as for mobile users with computers running Windows, supporting guaranteed delivery of information between portable devices and interaction with the standard MQSeries queue manager infrastructure. This product is specially adapted for use on systems with minimal hardware resources and can be used on all platforms that support Java (Figure 5).

Conclusion

In this article we looked at the features of the IBM MQSeries family of products. We talked about the features of MQSeries as a means of organizing message queues and their processing, as well as a number of products created on its basis, namely: MQSeries Integrator - an application integration tool, MQSeries Workflow - a business process management tool, MQSeries Adapter - a creation tool transition software between applications and MQSeries and about MQSeries EveryPlace - a message queuing service for mobile devices and mobile users. We are convinced that these products can serve as the basis for creating an enterprise information infrastructure or solutions that are part of such an infrastructure.

IBM is one of the world's largest manufacturers and suppliers of hardware and software, as well as IT services and consulting services.

The company was founded in 1911 and was originally called CTR (Computing Tabulating Recording). Today p represents todaymultinational corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York (USA).

In 1940 it became the manufacturer of the first large-scale computers in the United States. In the 1950s, it produced computers based on tubes and transistors; in 1981, it entered human history as the manufacturer of the IBM PC Personal Computer. In the 1990s, IBM’s business increasingly showed a desire to shift its business towards the delivery of services, primarily consulting . This was most clearly demonstrated in 2002, when the “blue giant” acquired the consulting division of the auditing company PricewaterhouseCoopers for $3.5 billion. Currently, this business, merged into the IBM Global Services division, is the most profitable in the IBM structure, generating more than half of the company’s income . Today the company produces server equipment, mainframes, supercomputers, data storage systems, software, and provides a range of consulting services.

IBM is a well-known company today. She left a huge mark on computer history, and even today her pace in this difficult matter has not slowed down. The most interesting thing is that not everyone knows why IBM is so famous. Yes, everyone has heard about the IBM PC, that it made laptops, that it once seriously competed with Apple. However, among the merits of the blue giant is great amount scientific discoveries, as well as the introduction of various inventions into everyday life. Sometimes many people wonder where this or that technology came from. And everything is from there - from IBM. Five Nobel laureates in physics received their prizes for inventions made within the walls of this company.

This material is intended to shed light on the history of the formation and development of IBM. At the same time, we will talk about its key inventions, as well as future developments.

Time of formation

IBM's origins go back to 1896, when, decades before the advent of the first electronic computers, the outstanding engineer and statistician Herman Hollerith founded a company for the production of tabulating machines, christened TMC (Tabulating Machine Company). Mr. Hollerith, a descendant of German emigrants who was openly proud of his roots, was prompted to do this by the success of his first calculating and analytical machines. own production. The essence of the Blue Giant's grandfather's invention was that he developed an electrical switch that allowed data to be encoded in numbers. In this case, the information carriers were cards, in which holes were punched in a special order, after which the punched cards could be sorted mechanically. This development, patented by Herman Hollerith in 1889, created a real sensation, which allowed the 39-year-old inventor to receive an order to supply his unique machines to the US Department of Statistics, which was preparing for the 1890 census.

The success was stunning: processing the collected data took only one year, in contrast to the eight years it took statisticians from the US Census Bureau to obtain the results of the 1880 census. It was then that the advantage of computing mechanisms in solving such problems was demonstrated in practice, which largely predetermined the future “digital boom.” Earned funds and established contacts helped Mr. Hollerith create TMC in 1896. At first, the company tried to produce commercial machines, but on the eve of the 1900 census, it repurposed itself to produce counting and analytical machines for the US Census Bureau. However, three years later, when the state “feeding trough” was closed, Herman Hollerith again turned his attention to the commercial application of his developments.

Although the company was experiencing a period of rapid growth, the health of its founder and inspirer was steadily deteriorating. This forced him in 1911 to accept the offer of millionaire Charles Flint to buy TMC. The deal was valued at $2.3 million, of which Hollerith received $1.2 million. In fact, it was not about a simple purchase of shares, but about the merger of TMC with the companies ITRC (International Time Recording Company) and CSC (Computing Scale Corporation), as a result of which the CTR (Computing Tabulating Recording) corporation was born. It became the prototype of modern IBM. And if many people call Herman Hollerith the grandfather of the “blue giant,” then it is Charles Flint who is considered to be his father.

Mr. Flint was undeniably a financial genius with a knack for envisioning strong corporate alliances, many of which have outlived their founder and continue to play a decisive role in their fields. He took an active part in the creation of the Pan-American rubber manufacturer U.S. Rubber, one of the once leading world producers of chewing gum, American Chicle (since 2002, now called Adams, part of Cadbury Schweppes). For his success in consolidating the corporate power of the United States, he was called the "father of trusts." However, for the same reason, the assessment of its role, from the point of view of positive or negative impact, but never from the point of view of significance, is very ambiguous. How paradoxical it is that Charles Flint's organizational skills were highly valued in government departments, and he always found himself in places where ordinary officials could not act openly or their work was less effective. In particular, he is credited with participating in a secret project to buy ships around the world and convert them into warships during the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Created by Charles Flint in 1911, the CTR Corporation produced a wide range of unique equipment, including time tracking systems, scales, automatic meat cutters and, which turned out to be especially important for the creation of the computer, punched card equipment. In 1914, the post general director occupied by Thomas J. Watson Sr., and in 1915 he became president of CTR.

The next major event in the history of CTR was the change of name to International Business Machines Co., Limited, or IBM for short. This happened in two stages. First, in 1917, the company entered the Canadian market under this brand. Apparently, by this she wanted to emphasize the fact that she is now a real international corporation. In 1924, the American division also became known as IBM.

During the Great Depression and World War II

The next 25 years in IBM's history were more or less stable. Even during the Great Depression in the United States, the company continued its activities at the same pace, practically without laying off employees, which could not be said about other companies.

During this period, several important events can be noted for IBM. In 1928 the company introduced a new type of punched card with 80 columns. It was called the IBM Card and was used for the last several decades by the company's calculating machines, and then by its computers. Another significant event for IBM at this time was a large government order to systematize job data for 26 million people. The company itself recalls it as “the largest settlement transaction of all time.” In addition, this opened the door for the blue giant to other government orders, just like at the very beginning of TMC.

Book "IBM and the Holocaust"

There are several references to IBM's collaboration with the fascist regime in Germany. The data source here is Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust." Its name clearly states for what purpose the blue giant's calculating machines were used. They kept statistics on Jewish prisoners. The codes that were used to organize the data are even given: Code 8 - Jews, Code 11 - Gypsies, Code 001 - Auschwitz, Code 001 - Buchenwald, and so on.

However, according to IBM management, the company only sold equipment to the Third Reich, and how it was used further does not concern them. By the way, many American companies did this. IBM even opened a plant in Berlin in 1933, that is, when Hitler came to power. However, there is a downside to the use of IBM equipment by the Nazis. After the defeat of Germany, thanks to the machines of the blue giant, it was possible to track the fates of many people. Although this did not stop various groups of people affected by the war and the Holocaust in particular from demanding an official apology from IBM. The company refused to bring them. Even despite the fact that during the war, its employees who remained in Germany continued their work, even communicating with the company’s management through Geneva. However, IBM itself disclaimed all responsibility for the activities of its enterprises in Germany during the war period from 1941 to 1945.

In the USA, during the war period, IBM worked for the government and not always in its direct line of business. Her production capacity and workers were busy producing rifles (notably the Browning Automatic Rifle and M1 Carbine), bomb sights, engine parts, etc. Thomas Watson, still head of the company at the time, set a nominal profit on this product of 1%. And even this meager amount was sent not to the blue giant’s piggy bank, but to the founding of a fund to help widows and orphans who had lost their loved ones in the war.

Applications have also been found for calculating machines located in the States. They were used for various mathematical calculations, logistics and other war needs. They were no less actively used when working on the Manhattan Project, within the framework of which the atomic bomb was created.

Time for big mainframes

The beginning of the second half of the last century was of great importance for the modern world. Then the first ones began to appear digital computers. And IBM took an active part in their creation. The very first American programmable computer was the Mark I (full name Aiken-IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator Mark I). The most amazing thing is that it was based on the ideas of Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first computer. By the way, he never completed it. But in the 19th century this was difficult to do. IBM took advantage of his calculations, transferred them to the technologies of the time, and the Mark I was released. It was built in 1943, and a year later it was officially put into operation. The history of "Marks" did not last long. A total of four modifications were produced, the last of which, Mark IV, was introduced in 1952.

In the 50s, IBM received another large order from the government to develop computers for the SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) system. This is a military system designed to track and intercept potential enemy bombers. This project allowed the blue giant to gain access to MIT research. Then he worked on the first computer, which could easily serve as a prototype modern systems. So it included a built-in screen, a magnetic memory array, supported digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions, and had a certain option computer network, could transmit digital data over a telephone line, supported multiprocessing. In addition, it was possible to connect so-called “light guns” to it, which were previously widely used as an alternative to the joystick on consoles and slot machines. There was even support for the first algebraic computer language.

IBM built 56 computers for the SAGE project. Each cost $30 million at 1950s prices. 7,000 company employees worked on them, which at that time amounted to 20% of the company’s entire staff. Except big profits the blue giant was able to gain invaluable experience, as well as access to military developments. Later, all this was used in the creation of computers of the next generations.

The next major event for IBM was the release of the System/360 computer. It is associated almost with the change of an entire era. Before him, the blue giant produced systems based on vacuum tubes. For example, following the aforementioned Mark I, the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was introduced in 1948, consisting of 21,400 relays and 12,500 vacuum tubes, capable of performing several thousand operations per second.

In addition to SAGE computers, IBM worked on other projects for the military. Thus, the Korean War required the use of faster means of calculation than a large programmable calculator. It has already been fully developed electronic computer(not from relays, but from lamps) IBM 701, which worked 25 times faster than SSEC, and at the same time took up four times less space. Over the next few years, the modernization of tube computers continued. For example, the IBM 650 machine became famous, of which about 2000 units were produced.

No less significant for today's computer technology was the invention in 1956 of a device called RAMAC 305. It became the prototype of what today is abbreviated HDD or simply hard drive. The first hard drive weighed about 900 kilograms, and its capacity was only 5 MB. The main innovation was the use of 50 aluminum round constantly rotating plates, on which the information carriers were magnetized elements. This made it possible to provide random access to files, which simultaneously and significantly increased the speed of data processing. But this pleasure was not cheap - it cost $50,000 at the prices of that time. Over 50 years, progress has reduced the cost of one megabyte of data on a HDD from $10,000 to $0.00013, based on the average cost of a 1 TB hard drive.

The middle of the last century was also marked by the arrival of transistors to replace lamps. The blue giant began its first attempts to use these elements in 1958 with the announcement of the IBM 7070 system. Somewhat later, computers models 1401 and 1620 appeared. The first was intended to perform various business tasks, and the second was a small scientific computer used to develop the design of highways and bridges. That is, both more compact specialized computers and more bulky, but much faster systems were created. An example of the former is the 1440 model, developed in 1962 for small and medium-sized businesses, and an example of the latter is the 7094 - actually a supercomputer of the early 60s, used in the aerospace industry.

Another building block towards the creation of System/360 was the creation of terminal systems. Users were assigned a separate monitor and keyboard, which were connected to one central computer. Here is the prototype of a client/server architecture paired with a multi-user operating system.

As often happens for maximum effective use innovations have to take all previous developments, find their common ground, and then design a new system that uses best sides new technologies. The IBM System/360, introduced in 1964, became just such a computer.

It is somewhat reminiscent of modern computers, which can be updated if necessary and to which various external devices can be connected. A new range of 40 peripheral devices was developed for System/360. These included IBM 2311 and IBM 2314 hard drives, IBM 2401 and 2405 tape drives, punched card equipment, OCR devices, and various communications interfaces.

Another important innovation is unlimited virtual space. Before System/360, things like this cost a pretty penny. Of course, this innovation required some reprogramming, but the result was worth it.

Above we wrote about specialized computers for science and business. Agree, this is somewhat inconvenient for both the user and the developer. System/360 became a universal system that could be used for most tasks. Moreover, a much larger number of people could now use it - simultaneous connection of up to 248 terminals was supported.

The creation of the IBM System/360 was not such a cheap undertaking. The computer was only designed for three quarters, on which about a billion dollars were spent. Another $4.5 billion was spent on investing in factories and new equipment for them. In total, five factories were opened and 60 thousand employees were hired. Thomas Watson Jr., who succeeded his father as president in 1956, called the project "the most expensive private commercial project in history."

The 70s and the IBM System/370 era

The next decade in IBM's history was not as revolutionary, but several important events took place. The 70s opened with the release of System/370. After several modifications to System/360, this system became a more complex and major redesign of the original mainframe.

The most important innovation of System/370 is support for virtual memory, that is, in fact, it is an expansion of RAM at the expense of permanent memory. Today this principle is actively used in modern operating systems of the Windows and Unix families. However, in the first versions of System/370 its support was not included. IBM made virtual memory widely available in 1972 with the introduction of the System/370 Advanced Function.

Of course, the list of innovations does not end there. The System/370 series of mainframes supported 31-bit addressing instead of 24-bit. By default, dual-processor support was supported, and there was also compatibility with 128-bit fractional arithmetic. Another important “feature” of System/370 is full backward compatibility with System/360. Software of course.

The company's next mainframe was the System/390 (or S/390), introduced in 1990. It was a 32-bit system, although it retained compatibility with 24-bit System/360 and 31-bit System/370 addressing. In 1994, it became possible to combine several System/390 mainframes into one cluster. This technology is called Parallel Sysplex.

After System/390, IBM introduced z/Architecture. Its main innovation is support for a 64-bit address space. At the same time, new mainframes were released with a larger number of processors (first 32, then 54). The appearance of z/Architecture occurred in 2000, that is, this development is completely new. Today, System z9 and System z10 are available within its framework, which continue to enjoy steady popularity. And what's more, they continue to be backwards compatible with System/360 and later mainframes, which is a record of its own.

With this, we close the topic of large mainframes, which is why we talked about their history up to the present day.

Meanwhile, IBM has a brewing conflict with the authorities. It was preceded by the departure of the blue giant's main competitors from the large market computer systems. In particular, NCR and Honeywall decided to focus on more profitable niche market segments. And System/360 turned out to be so successful that no one could compete with it. As a result, IBM actually became a monopolist in the mainframe market.

All this turned into a trial on January 19, 1969. Quite expectedly, IBM was accused of violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which provides liability for monopolizing, or attempting to monopolize, the market for electronic computer systems, especially systems intended for business use. The trial lasted until 1983 and ended with IBM seriously reconsidering its view of doing business.

It is possible that the antitrust proceedings influenced the Future Systems project, within which it was supposed to once again combine all the knowledge and experience from past projects (just like in the days of System / 360) and create a new type of computer that would once again surpass everything before made systems. Work on it took place between 1971 and 1975. Economic inexpediency is cited as the reason for its closure - according to analysts, it would not have fought back the way it happened with System/360. Or maybe IBM really decided to hold back its horses a little because of the ongoing litigation.

Another very important event in the computer world is attributed to the same decade, although it occurred in 1969. IBM began to sell services for the production of software and the software itself separately from the hardware component. Today this surprises few people - even the modern generation of domestic users of pirated software is accustomed to the fact that they have to pay for programs. But then multiple complaints, press criticism, and at the same time lawsuits began to rain down on the blue giant. As a result, IBM began to separately sell only application applications, while the software for controlling the operation of the computer (System Control Programming), in fact the operating system, was free.

And at the very beginning of the 80s, a certain Bill Gates from Microsoft proved that an operating system can be paid.

Time for small personal computers

Until the 80s, IBM was very active in large orders. Several times they were made by the government, several times by the military. It usually supplied its mainframes to educational and scientific institutions, as well as large corporations. It’s unlikely that anyone bought a separate System/360 or 370 cabinet for their home and a dozen storage cabinets based on magnetic tapes and hard drives already reduced in size by a couple of times compared to RAMAC 305.

The blue giant was above the needs of the average consumer, who needs much less to be completely happy than NASA or another university. This gave the basement Apple a chance to get back on its feet with its logo of Newton holding an apple, soon replaced by just a bitten apple. And Apple came up with a very simple thing - a computer for everyone. This idea was not supported by Hewlett-Packard, where it was outlined by Steve Wozniak, or other large IT companies of the time.

When IBM realized it was already too late. The world was already admiring the Apple II - the most popular and successful Apple computer in its entire history (and not the Macintosh, as many believe). But it's better late than never. It was not difficult to guess that this market is at the very beginning of its development. The result was the IBM PC (model 5150). It happened on August 12, 1981.

The most amazing thing is that this was not IBM's first personal computer. The title of the first belongs to the 5100 model, released back in 1975. It was much more compact than mainframes, had a separate monitor, data storage and keyboard. But it was intended to solve scientific problems. It was poorly suited for businessmen and simply technology lovers. And not least because of the price, which was about $20,000.

The IBM PC changed not only the world, but also the company's approach to creating computers. Before this, IBM made any computer inside and out independently, without resorting to the help of third parties. With the IBM 5150 it turned out differently. At the time, the personal computer market was divided between the Commodore PET, the Atari family of 8-bit systems, the Apple II, and the Tandy Corporation's TRS-80s. Therefore, IBM was in a hurry not to miss the moment.

A group of 12 people, working in the Florida city of Boca Raton under the leadership of Don Estrige, was assigned to work on Project Chess (literally “Project Chess”). They completed the task in about a year. One of their key decisions was to use third-party developments. This simultaneously saved a lot of money and time on our own scientific personnel.

Initially, Don chose the IBM 801 as a processor and an operating system specially developed for it. But a little earlier, the blue giant released the Datamaster microcomputer (full name System/23 Datamaster or IBM 5322), which was based on the Intel 8085 processor (a slightly simplified modification of the Intel 8088). This was precisely the reason for choosing the Intel 8088 processor for the first IBM PC. The IBM PC even had expansion slots that matched those of the Datamaster. Well, the Intel 8088 required a new DOS operating system, very timely proposed by a small company from Redmond called Microsoft. They did not make a new design for the monitor and printer. The first one was a monitor previously created by the Japanese division of IBM, and the printing device was an Epson printer.

The IBM PC was sold in various configurations. The most expensive one cost $3005. It was equipped with an Intel 8088 processor operating at 4.77 MHz, which, if desired, could be supplemented with an Intel 8087 coprocessor, which made floating point calculations possible. The amount of RAM was 64 KB. 5.25-inch floppy drives were supposed to be used as a device for permanent data storage. There could be one or two of them installed. Later, IBM began supplying models that allowed the connection of cassette storage media.

It was impossible to install a hard drive in the IBM 5150 due to insufficient power of the power supply. However, the company has a so-called "expansion module" or Expansion Unit (also known as the IBM 5161 Expansion Chassis) with a 10 MB hard drive. It required a separate power source. In addition, it was possible to install a second HDD in it. It also had 5 expansion slots, while the computer itself had 8 more. But to connect the Expansion Unit, it was necessary to use Extender Card and Receiver Card, which were installed in the module and in the case, respectively. Other computer expansion slots were usually occupied by a video card, cards with I/O ports, etc. It was possible to increase the amount of RAM to 256 KB.

"Home" IBM PC

The cheapest configuration cost $1,565. Along with it, the buyer received the same processor, but there was only 16 KB of RAM. The computer did not come with a floppy drive, and there was no standard CGA monitor. But there was an adapter for cassette drives and a video card designed for connecting to a TV. Thus, the expensive modification of the IBM PC was created for business (where, by the way, it became quite widespread), and the cheaper one was created for the home.

But there was one more innovation in the IBM PC - the basic input/output system or BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). It is still used in modern computers, albeit in slightly modified form. The newest motherboards already contain new EFI firmware or even simplified versions of Linux, but it will definitely be a few years before the BIOS disappears.

The IBM PC architecture was made open and publicly available. Any manufacturer could make peripherals and software for the IBM computer without purchasing any license. At the same time, the blue giant sold the IBM PC Technical Reference Manual, which contained the complete BIOS source code. As a result, a year later the world saw the first “IBM PC compatible” computers from Columbia Data Products. Compaq and other companies followed. The ice has broken.

IBM Personal Computer XT

In 1983, when the entire USSR celebrated International Women's Day, IBM released its next "male" product - the IBM Personal Computer XT (short for eXtended Technology) or IBM 5160. The new product replaced the original IBM PC, introduced two years earlier. It represented the evolutionary development of personal computers. The processor was still the same, but the basic configuration already had 128 KB of RAM, and later 256 KB. The maximum volume has increased to 640 KB.

The XT came with one 5.25-inch drive, a 10MB Seagate ST-412 hard drive, and a 130W power supply. Later, models with a 20 MB hard drive appeared. Well, PC-DOS 2.0 was used as the base OS. To expand functionality, the then new 16-bit ISA bus was used.

IBM Personal Computer/AT

Many old-timers in the computer world probably remember the AT case standard. They were used until the end of the last century. And it all started again with IBM and its IBM Personal Computer/AT or model 5170. AT stands for Advanced Technology. New system was the second generation of personal computers of the blue giant.

The most important innovation of the new product was the use of an Intel 80286 processor with a frequency of 6 and then 8 MHz. It was associated with many new computer capabilities. In particular, this was a complete transition to a 16-bit bus and support for 24-bit addressing, which made it possible to increase the amount of RAM to 16 MB. A battery appeared on the motherboard to power the CMOS chip with a capacity of 50 bytes. It wasn't there before either.

For data storage, 5.25-inch drives were now used with support for floppy disks with a capacity of 1.2 MB, while the previous generation provided a capacity of no more than 360 KB. The hard drive now had a permanent capacity of 20 MB, and at the same time was twice as fast as the previous model. The monochrome video card and monitors were replaced with adapters that support the EGA standard, capable of displaying up to 16 colors in a resolution of 640x350. Optional for professional work with graphics, you could order a PGC (Professional Graphics Controller) video card, costing $4,290, capable of displaying up to 256 colors on a screen with a resolution of 640x480, and at the same time supporting 2D and 3D acceleration for CAD applications.

To support all this variety of innovations, the operating system had to be seriously modified, which was released under the name PC-DOS 3.0.

Not yet a ThinkPad, no longer an IBM PC

We believe that many people know that the first portable computer in 1981 was the Osborne 1, developed by Osborne Computer Corporation. It was such a suitcase weighing 10.7 kg and costing $1795. The idea of ​​such a device was not unique - its first prototype was developed back in 1976 at the Xerox PARC research center. However, by the mid-80s, sales of "Osbournes" came to naught.

Of course, the successful idea was quickly picked up by other companies, which is, in principle, in the order of things - just remember what other ideas were “stolen” from Xerox PARC. In November 1982, Compaq announced plans to release a portable computer. In January, Hyperion was released, a computer running MS-DOS and somewhat reminiscent of Osborne 1. But it was not fully compatible with the IBM PC. This title was destined for Compaq Portable, which appeared a couple of months later. In essence, it was an IBM PC combined in one case with a small screen and an external keyboard. The “suitcase” weighed 12.5 kg and was valued at more than $4,000.

IBM, clearly noticing that it was missing something, quickly began creating its original laptop. As a result, in February 1984, the IBM Portable Personal Computer or IBM Portable PC 5155 was released. The new product was also in many ways reminiscent of the original IBM PC, with the only exception that it had 256 KB of RAM installed. In addition, it was $700 cheaper than its Compaq counterpart, and at the same time had improved anti-theft technology - weighing 13.5 kg.

Two years later, progress has moved a couple more steps forward. IBM did not hesitate to take advantage of this, deciding to make its portable computers something that more justifies its title. So in April 1986, the IBM Convertible or IBM 5140 appeared. The Convertible no longer resembled a suitcase, but a large case weighing only 5.8 kg. It cost about half as much - about $2000.

The processor used was the good old Intel 8088 (more precisely, its updated version 80c88), operating at a frequency of 4.77 MHz. But instead of 5.25-inch drives, 3.5-inch drives were used, capable of working with disks with a capacity of 720 KB. The amount of RAM was 256 KB, but it could be increased to 512 KB. But a much more important innovation was the use of a monochrome LCD display, capable of 80x25 resolution for text or 640x200 and 320x200 for graphics.

But Convertible's expansion capabilities were much more modest than IBM Portable's. There was only one ISA slot, while the first generation of portable PCs from the blue giant allowed you to install almost the same number of expansion cards as a regular desktop computer (it wouldn’t allow it given such dimensions). This circumstance, as well as the passive screen without backlight and the presence on the market of more productive (or models with the same configuration, but available at a much lower price) analogues from Compaq, Toshiba and Zenith did not make the IBM Convertible a popular solution. But it was manufactured until 1991, when it was replaced by the IBM PS/2 L40 SX. We'll tell you more about PS/2.

IBM Personal System/2

Until now, many of us use keyboards and even sometimes mice with a PS/S interface. However, not everyone knows where it came from and how this abbreviation stands for. PS/2 stands for Personal System/2, a computer introduced by IBM in 1987. He belonged to the third generation of personal computers of the blue giant, whose purpose was to regain lost positions in the PC market.

IBM PS/2 failed. Its sales were expected to be high, but the system was very innovative and closed, which automatically raised its final cost. Consumers preferred more affordable IBM PC clones. However, the PS/2 architecture left a lot behind.

The main PS/2 operating system was IBM OS/2. For her, new PCs were equipped with two BIOS at once: ABIOS (Advanced BIOS) and CBIOS (Compatible BIOS). The first was necessary to boot OS/2, and the second was necessary for backward compatibility with IBM PC/XT/AT software. However, for the first few months, PS/2 shipped with PC-DOS. Later, Windows and AIX (a variant of Unix) were available as an option.

Along with PS/2, a new bus standard was introduced to expand the functionality of computers - MCA (Micro Channel Architecture). It was supposed to replace ISA. In terms of speed, MCA corresponded to PCI, introduced a few years later. In addition, it had many interesting innovations, in particular, it supported the ability to exchange data directly between expansion cards, or simultaneously between multiple cards and the processor via a separate channel. All this later found application in the PCI-X server bus. MCA itself never gained distribution due to IBM's refusal to license it, so that clones would not appear again. In addition, the new interface was not compatible with ISA.

In those days, a DIN connector was used to connect a keyboard, and a COM connector for a mouse. New IBM personal computers proposed replacing them with more compact PS/2. Today these connectors are no longer available on modern motherboards, but at that time they were also available only to IBM. Only a few years later they “went to the masses.” The point here is not only that the technology is closed, but also that the BIOS needs to be improved to fully support this interface.

PS/2 also made an important contribution to the video card market. Before 1987, there were several types of monitor connectors. They often had many contacts, whose number was equal to the number of colors displayed. IBM decided to replace them all with one universal D-SUB connector. Through it, information about the depth of red, green and blue colors was transmitted, bringing the number of displayed shades to 16.7 million. In addition, it has become easier for software to work with one type of connector rather than support several.

Another new product from IBM is video cards with a built-in frame buffer (Video Graphics Array or VGA), which today is called video card memory. At that time its volume in PS/2 was 256 KB. This was enough for a resolution of 640x480 with 16 colors, or 320x200 and 256 colors. The new video cards worked with the MCA interface, so they were only available for PS/2 computers. Nevertheless, the VGA standard has become widespread over time.

Instead of large and not the most reliable 5.25-inch floppies, IBM decided to use 3.5-inch drives. The company was the first to use them as a basic standard. The main novelty of the new computers was the doubled capacity of floppy disks - up to 1.44 MB. And by the end of PS/2 it had doubled to 2.88 MB. By the way, there was one rather serious bug in PS/2 drives. They couldn't tell the difference between a 720 KB floppy disk and a 1.44 MB floppy disk. This way it was possible to format the first as the second. In principle, it worked, but there was a risk of data loss, and after such an operation, only another PS/2 computer could read the information from the floppy disk.

And another new feature of PS/2 is 72-pin SIMM RAM modules instead of the outdated SIPP. A few years later they became the standard for all personal and not so personal computers, until they were replaced by DIMM strips.

So we come to the end of the 80s. Over these 10 years, IBM has done much more for the average consumer than in all the previous years. Thanks to its personal computers, we can now assemble our own computer, rather than buying a ready-made one, as Apple would like. Nothing prevents us from installing any operating system on it, except Mac OS, which, again, is available only to owners of Apple computers. We gained freedom, and IBM lost the market, but earned the glory of a pioneer.

By the early 90s, the blue giant was no longer the dominant player in the computer world. Intel then ruled the processor market, Microsoft dominated the application software segment, Novell achieved success in networks, Hewlett-Packard in printers. Even hard drives invented by IBM began to be produced by other companies, as a result of which Seagate was able to take first place (already in the late 80s and retains this leadership to this day).

Not everything went well in the corporate sector. Invented by IBM employee Edgar Codd in 1970, the concept of relational databases (in a nutshell, a way of displaying data in the form of two-dimensional tables) began to gain widespread popularity in the early 80s. IBM even helped create the SQL query language. And here is the payment for the work - Oracle became number one in the field of DBMS by the beginning of the 90s.

Well, in the personal computer market it was supplanted by Compaq, and over time also by Dell. As a result, IBM President John Akers began the process of reorganizing the company, dividing it into autonomous divisions, each of which dealt with one specific area. Thus, he wanted to increase production efficiency and reduce costs. This is how IBM met the last decade of the 20th century.

Time of crisis

The nineties started off pretty well for IBM. Despite the decline in popularity of its personal computers, the company still made large profits. The biggest in its history. It’s a pity that this was only at the end of the 80s. Later, the blue giant simply failed to catch the main trends in the computer world, which led to not the most pleasant consequences.

Despite the success of personal computers in the penultimate decade of the last century, IBM continued to receive the majority of its revenue from sales of mainframe computers. But the development of technology has made it possible to switch to the use of more compact personal computers, and with them to large computers based on microprocessors. In addition, regular ones were sold at lower margins than mainframes.

Now it is enough to add up the decline in sales of the main profitable product, the loss of its position in the personal computer market, and at the same time failures in the network technology market, successfully occupied by Novell, in order not to be surprised at the losses of $1 billion in 1990 and 1991. And 1992 turned out to set a new record - $8.1 billion in losses. It was the largest corporate annual loss in US history.

Is it any wonder that the company began to “move”? In 1993, Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. assumed the presidency. His plan was to change the current situation, for which he radically restructured the company's policy, focusing the main divisions on the provision of services and software development. In the field of hardware, IBM certainly could have offered a lot of new things, but due to the many computer manufacturers and the presence of other technology companies, it did not do this. There will still be someone who will offer a cheaper and no less functional product.

As a result, in the second half of the decade, IBM expanded its portfolio software products applications from Lotus, WebSphere, Tivoli and Rational. Well, she also continued the development of her own relational DBMS DB2.

ThinkPad

Despite the crisis of the 90s, the blue giant still presented one popular product. It was a line of ThinkPad laptops that still exists today, albeit under the auspices of Lenovo. It was presented in the form of three models 700, 700C and 700T in October 1992. Mobile computers were equipped with a 10.4-inch screen, a 25 MHz Intel 80486SLC processor, a 120 MB hard drive, and the Windows 3.1 operating system. Their cost was $4350.

IBM ThinkPad 701 with butterfly keyboard

A little about the origin of the series name. The word "Think" was printed on the leather bindings of IBM corporate notebooks. One of the participants in the new generation mobile PC project suggested adding a “Pad” (keyboard, keypad) to it. At first, not everyone accepted ThinkPad, citing the fact that until now the name of all IBM systems had been numerical. However, in the end ThinkPad became the official name of the series.

The first ThinkPad laptops became very popular. In a fairly short time, they collected more than 300 awards from various publications for high quality execution and multiple innovations in design. The latter in particular include the “butterfly keyboard”, which was slightly raised and stretched in width to make it more convenient to work. Later, with the increase in the diagonal of the screen of mobile computers, the need for it disappeared.

TrackPoint was used for the first time – the new kind manipulator. Today it is still installed in ThinkPad laptops and many other enterprise-class mobile PCs. Some models had an LED on the screen to illuminate the keyboard in the dark. IBM was the first to integrate an accelerometer into a laptop, which detected a fall, after which the hard drive heads were parked, which significantly increased the likelihood of data safety during a strong impact. ThinkPads were the first to use fingerprint scanners, as well as a built-in TPM module for data protection. Now all this is used to one degree or another by all laptop manufacturers. But don’t forget that we have IBM to thank for all these “charms of life.”

While Apple was paying a lot of money to have Tom Cruise save the world with the new PowerBook in Mission: Impossible, IBM was really pushing the progress of humanity into a brighter future with its ThinkPad laptops. For example, the ThinkPad 750 flew on the Endeavor shuttle in 1993. Then main task The mission was to repair the Hubble telescope. I used the ThinkPad A31p on the ISS for a long time.

Today, many IBM traditions continue to be supported by the Chinese company Lenovo. But this is the story of the next decade.

Time for a new century

The change in direction of the company, which began in the mid-90s, has reached its apogee in the current decade. IBM continued to focus on providing consulting services, creating new technologies for selling licenses for them, as well as software development, without forgetting about expensive equipment - the blue giant has not left this area to this day.

The final stage of the reorganization took place between 2002 and 2004. In 2002, IBM acquired consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and at the same time sold its hard drive division to Hitachi. Thus, the blue giant abandoned the further production of hard drives, which it itself had invented half a century earlier.

IBM has no plans to leave the supercomputer and mainframe business yet. The company continues to fight for first place in the Top500 ranking and continues to do so with a fairly high degree of success. In 2002, a special program was even launched with a budget of $10 billion, according to which IBM created necessary technologies to be able to provide access to supercomputers to any company almost immediately upon receipt of a request.

While everything is fine with large computers at the blue giant, not everything went well with small personal computers. As a result, 2004 is marked as the year of sale computer business IBM of the Chinese company Lenovo. The latter received all developments in personal systems, including the popular ThinkPad series. Lenovo even received the right to use the IBM brand for five years. IBM itself received $650 million in cash and $600 million in stock in return. She now owns 19% of Lenovo. At the same time, the blue giant also continues to sell servers. It would be impossible to continue being in the top three largest players in this market.

So what happened in the end? In 2005, IBM employed about 195 thousand employees, of which 350 were recognized by the company as “outstanding engineers,” and 60 people bore the honorary title of IBM Fellow. This title was introduced in 1962 by then President Thomas Whatsan to highlight the best employees companies. Typically, no more than 4-5 people received IBM Fellows per year. Since 1963, there have been about 200 such employees. Of these, 70 people worked in May 2008.

With such serious scientific potential, IBM has become one of the leaders innovation activity. Between 1993 and 2005, the blue giant received 31,000 patents. Moreover, in 2003, he set a record for the number of patents received by one company in a year - 3,415.

Ultimately, IBM has become less accessible to the general consumer today. Essentially the same thing happened before the 80s. For 20 years, the company worked with retail products, but still returned to its roots, albeit in a slightly different form. But still, its technologies and developments reach us in the form of devices from other manufacturers. So the blue giant remains with us further.

Afterword time

At the end of the article, we would like to provide a short list of the most significant discoveries made by IBM during its existence, but not mentioned above. After all, it’s always nice to be amazed once again that one or another well-known company is behind the creation of another favorite electronic toy.

The beginning of the era of high-level programming languages ​​is attributed to IBM. Well, maybe not for her personally, but she took a very active part in this process. In 1954, the IBM 704 computer was introduced, one of the main features of which was support for the Fortran language (short for Formula Translation). The main purpose of its creation was to replace low-level assembly language with something more human-readable.

In 1956, the first reference manual for Fortran appeared. And subsequently his popularity continued to grow. Mainly due to the inclusion of a language translator in the standard software package for IBM computer systems. This language has become the main one for scientific applications in long years, and also gave impetus to the development of other high-level programming languages.

We have already mentioned IBM's contribution to the development of databases. In fact, thanks to the blue giant, most sites on the Internet today operate that use relational DBMSs. They are not shy about using the SQL language, which also came from the depths of IBM. In 1974, it was introduced by company employees Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce. It was then called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language), and later the abbreviation was shortened to SQL (Structured Query Language), since “SEQUEL” was a trademark of the British airline Hawker Siddeley.

Probably, some still remember how they launched games from cassette recorders on their home (or not home) EU computer. But IBM was one of the first to use magnetic tape for data storage. In 1952, with the IBM 701, it introduced the first magnetic tape drive that could write and read data.

Floppy disks. From left to right: 8", 5.25", 3.5"

Floppy disks also appeared thanks to IBM. In 1966, it introduced the first drive with a metal recording head. Five years later, it announced the beginning of mass distribution of floppy disks and drives for them.

IBM 3340 "Winchester"

The slang word for hard disk "winchester" also originated from IBM. In 1973, the company introduced the IBM 3340 "Winchester" hard drive. It received its name from the head of the development team, Kenneth Haughton, who gave the IBM 3340 the internal name "30-30", derived from the name of the Winchester 30-30 rifle. “30-30” directly indicated the capacity of the device - it had two plates of 30 MB each installed. By the way, it was this model that was the first to achieve great commercial success on the market.

We should thank IBM for our modern memory. It was she who, in 1966, invented the technology for producing dynamic memory, where only one transistor was allocated for one bit of data. As a result, it was possible to significantly increase the data recording density. Probably, this discovery prompted the company's engineers to create a special ultra-fast data buffer or cache. In 1968, this was first implemented on the System/360 Model 85 mainframe and could store up to 16 thousand characters.

The PowerPC processor architecture also appeared largely thanks to IBM. And although it was developed jointly by Apple, IBM and Motorola, it was based on the IBM 801 processor, which the company planned to install in its first personal computers in the early 80s. At first, the architecture was supported by Sun and Microsoft. However, other developers were not eager to write programs for it. As a result, Apple remained its only user for almost 15 years.

In 2006, Apple abandoned PowerPC in favor of the x86 architecture, and in particular Intel processors. Motorola left the alliance in 2004. Well, IBM still did not curtail its developments, but directed them in a slightly different direction. A few years ago, enough text was written about the Cell processor to fill several books. Today it is used in the Sony PlayStation 3 console, and Toshiba also installed a simplified version of it in its flagship multimedia laptop Qosmio Q50.

On this, perhaps, we will wrap up. If you wish, you can find many other amazing discoveries of IBM, and at the same time write a lot of words about its future projects, but then you should boldly start making a separate book. After all, the company conducts research in a variety of areas. She has hundreds of active projects, including nanotechnology and holographic storage media, speech recognition, communicating with a computer using thoughts, new ways to control a computer, and so on - just listing them would take several pages of text. So we call it a day.

P.S. And at the very end, a little about the origin of the term “blue giant” (or “Big Blue”), as IBM is often called. As it turned out, the company itself has nothing to do with it. Products with the word “Blue” in the name appeared only in the 90s (in particular in a series of supercomputers), and the press has been calling it a “blue giant” since the early 80s. IBM officials speculate that it could have come from the blue lid of its mainframe computers that were produced in the 60s.