There's not a single bit of information technology, nor industry, nor industry need, nor business process untouched by the largest IT vendor in the world: IBM . The company

International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. (Armonk, NY) is a computer company. The largest computer company in the world. Under the general umbrella of "information technology" (IT), IBM invents, designs, and manufactures computer hardware and software, network systems and components, storage devices, and microelectronics. Complementing this raft of hardware and software, IBM also provides design, implementation, management, and operational services. In fact, those services are an increasingly large part of the "big iron" from IBM.

IBM's roots date back to the mid-1880s. In 1885, Julius E. Pitrap of Gallipolis, OH, patented his computing scale, founding the Computing Scale Company of America. In 1886, Herman Hollerith created the Tabulating Machine Co. and showed his tabulating system for recording vital statistics to the Baltimore (MD) Department of Health. This system used code represented by holes punched into cardboard cards. (This code was adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau and was still used up into the 1960s.) In 1888, Alexander Dey invented the first dial recorder. In 1889, Harlow Bundy incorporated the Bundy Manufacturing Company, the first company in the world to produce a time clock for recording worker arrival and departure times on paper tape.

These companies eventually merged in 1911 to form the Computing- TabulatingRecording Company (C-T-R; New York, NY). The company had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, NY; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Washington, DC; and Toronto, Ontario. In 1914, 40-year-old Thomas J. Watson was hired from the National Cash Register (NCR) Co. as C-T-R's general manager. In 1924, Watson changed C-T-R to International Business Machines Corp. (The company had operated under the IBM name in Canada since 1917.) By then, the company had 3,384 employees, revenues of $ll-million, and net earnings of $2-million.

Over the years, IBM has developed, manufactured, and marketed a slew of products. Computers. Processors. Magnetic hard disks. Typewriters. Speech recognition. And more. Each of these hints at a story of development, market acceptance, production, and sales. IBM has also divested itself of commodity businesses, such as printers, personal computers (PC), and hard disk drives, while acquiring both technologies and competitors. Some divestitures have created new companies. In March 1991, IBM's typewriter, keyboard, personal printer, and supplies business begat Lexmark International (Lexington, KY). In 2003, IBM's hard disk drive operations begat the subsidiary Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (San Jose, CA). In December 2004, China-based Lenovo Group Ltd. acquired the IBM Personal Computing Div. In January 2007, the IBM Printing Systems Div. begat the Ricoh subsidiary InfoPrint Solutions Co. (Boulder, CO).

The list of acquisitions goes on and on. In 1997, for example, IBM spent $1-billion for 12 acquisitions, six being software companies. So far this year, acquisitions include Cognos (database management), XIV (storage technology), Encentuate (identity and access management systems), Telelogic (application lifecycle management systems), InfoDyne (high-speed data transfer system), FilesX (data protection/ disaster recovery systems), Diligent Technologies (data protection/storage systems), Platform Solutions (mainframe products), and ILOG (business rule management systems and rule engines).

IBM's divest and acquire strategies have pointed the company toward higher-value markets, specifically service oriented architecture (SOA), virtualization, highperformance chips, open and modular IT (such as Unix- and Linux-based systems), and its Information on Demand (IOD) initiative. (IOD basically covers the strategies, business processes, services, and technology for companies to acquire, manage, analyze, and use information.) A variety of IBM business partners complement what IBM already has "in house."

IBM in October 2002 acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a tax, business, and technology consulting company formed in 1998 from a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers and Lybrand. This acquisition made IBM Business Consulting Services, a part of IBM Global Services, the world's largest consulting services organization. (By 1995, Global Services had surpassed Electronic Data Systems [EDS], becoming the largest computer services business in the world.) Currently, PwC has more than 146,000 people in 150 countries providing consulting services in 22 industry-specialized practices such as tax, human resources, performance improvement, and crisis management.

All enterprises are potential IBM customers, from one-person companies to multinationals, from companies in every major industry to governments. IBM divides its markets into six major groups: industrial, distribution, financial services, public, communications, and small and medium businesses (generally enterprises with less than 1,000 employees).

The nickname "Big Blue" only hints at the company's gargantuan size. The company is a leader in almost every market it operates in, including mainframes and servers, storage systems, microelectronics, and IT consulting and implementation services. By yearend 2007, revenues were $98.8-billion (up 8% from 2006) and pretax income was $14.5-billion (up 9% from 2006). Revenue contributions by geographic regions are as follows: Asia Pacific, 21%; Europe, Middle East, and Africa, 36%; the Americas, 43%. The company's major business segments contributed to the pretax income as follows: software, 40%; services, 37%; hardware and financing, 23%. IBM generated more than $70-billion in cash flow over the past five years, ending 2007 with $16.1-billion in cash and marketable securities. Its gross profit margin rose for the fourth consecutive year- to 42.2%.

IBM has 386,558 employees worldwide, and has customers in 170 countries. In 2007, for the fifteenth consecutive year, IBM was issued more U.S. patents (3,125) than any other company.

Product information

IBM's major operations encompass five major segments: global technology services, global business services, systems and technology, software, and global financing. There's also IBM Research, the major engine behind all of the company's patents, which has about 3,000 scientists and engineers in eight labs worldwide.