[fat0wl]

this may be true. I use a lot of IBM server/development techs & pretty much all of them are missing the magic they claim, boiling down to "confusing forced development paradigm that bleeds millions from your company in infrastructure and niche developer costs" (Web Experience Factory, Coremetrics, Portal etc.). None of the out-of-the-box-everything-integrates-seamlessly aspect is there, despite that being the whole basis for these monstrous sales prices. In short, many of their products have laughably little value and even non-technical corporate management is realizing this.

(You can tell a lot of the software is sold with IBM thinking "We'll tell them its their fault for a couple of years unless they hire a few of our consultants, then if they realize the product actually sucks hopefully we will have an upgrade ready by then.")

However, whenever I see articles from that Cringely dude (the one referenced repeatedly in this summary) I have to think "eh, maybe.... I'll believe it when I see it". He is pretty much an anti-IBM conspiracy theorist from what I can tell, though of course they are a strange enough organization that a lot of what he says turns out to be true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely

http://www.cringely.com/

[aragot]

I've worked with IBM ClearQuest and IBM FileNet and I concurr, those products are retarded bloats of off-market junk. The free golf courses in Orlando are nice, though, so I've renewed the purchase for two more years.

[stuff4ben]

Yup. Message Broker wasn't all that bad, but the all-expenses paid trip to Vegas for a week was better.