THE WHATIS.COM WORD-OF-THE-DAY February 14, 2002 IBM ______________ TODAY'S SPONSOR: VeriSign - The Value of Trust
Do you need to encrypt all your online transactions? Secure corporate intranets? Authenticate your Web site? Whatever security your site needs, you'll find the perfect solution in this FREE Guide from VeriSign, "Securing Your Web site for Business." Get your copy today to learn the facts! Click here! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;3902565;5058249;o?http://www.verisign.com/cgi-bin/go.cgi?a=n094573230057000 ______________ TODAY'S WORD: IBM See our definition with hyperlinks at http://searchebusiness.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci801387,00.html IBM is by far the world's largest information technology company in terms of revenue ($88 billion in 2000) and by most other measures, a position it has held for about the past 50 years. IBM products include hardware and software for a line of business servers, storage products, custom-designed microchips, and application software. Increasingly, IBM derives revenue from a range of consulting and outsourcing services. With the advent of the low-cost microchip, the personal computer, distributed computing, open rather than proprietary standards, and the Internet, IBM has seen its position of dominance challenged as the world of information technology no longer revolves around a single company. Yet investors and competitors continue to be impressed by IBM's long-established base of customers among middle-sized and Fortune 100 businesses and its ability to adapt its products and services to a changing marketplace. In its early years, IBM was widely associated with the punched card, the invention of Herman Hollerith. Hollerith was part of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, when, in 1914, Thomas J. Watson joined the company as general manager. The CTR Company itself had been formed from three companies that sold grocery store scales, time recording devices, and tabulators. Over the next decades, Watson built the business machine company of the future, now known as International Business Machines. By the middle of the century, IBM led such companies as National Cash Register and later Digital Equipment into the computer era. Famous for its vaunted force of salesmen with white shirts and ties, IBM, led by Watson (and later his son, Thomas Jr.), also invested heavily in research. In the early 1960s, IBM introduced what was to become the de facto standard for large company business computers with its System/360. Designed to be continually upwards compatible, a program written for the System/360's operating system, OS/360, is said to be able to run today, 40 years later, in z/OS, the main operating system for IBM's larger eSeries servers (the latest incarnations of IBM mainframes). By the early 1970s, the punched card was gradually being replaced by the interactive display terminal and especially by the IBM 3270. The company also began to compete with DEC and HP in computers for small business with its System/3 (the forerunner of today's AS/400). In the early 1980s, IBM's realized that the newly-arrived Apple personal computer would revolutionize the industry. It quickly overtook the competition with a series of PCs that became the standard for business use. In doing so, it inadvertently created a future competitor by the name of Microsoft that would come to dominate the market for PC software. With the arrival of the Internet, IBM has recast its computers as servers, largely endorsed open standard technologies, and developed new revenue lines offering hosting, Web site management software and servers, and its own version of Web services. At the end of 2000, IBM had over 316,000 employees. Its stock (IBM) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. RELATED TERMS: Herman Hollerith http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci214627,00.html z/OS http://search390.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid10_gci540721,00.html 3270 http://search390.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid10_gci211498,00.html AS/400 http://search400.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid3_gci211599,00.html ______________________ SELECTED LINKS: IBM's Web site offers more information. http://www.ibm.com/ The history archives on IBM's Web site includes an exhibit of IBM attire over the years. http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/ Search390.com offers an independent portal for news and links to information about IBM's S/390 and eSeries 900 products. http://www.search390.com/ Search400.com offers similar information about IBM's AS/400 products. http://www.search400.com/ ______________________ VALENTINE'S DAY CONTEST | One day only! Ok...this contest doesn't really have anything to do with Valentine's Day. We just thought it would be fun to have a contest and give away a TechTarget hat. I knew I was spending too much time on the Internet when... I knew I was spending way much time at work when... I knew I was really a geek when... Today we challenge you to come up with signs that you are overdoing it in any of the above categories. Send us your best entries and you might win a magical hat! http://whatis.techtarget.com/content/0,290959,sid9_gci802268,00.html ______________________ QUIZ #20 | Cryptography Get out your whatis.com secret decoder ring and take our latest quiz. Ok, we're kidding about the secret decoder ring, but our latest quiz does test your knowledge about secret messages! http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci799128,00.html _________________________ STORAGE MAGAZINE EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHTS: MARCH ISSUE Here's a preview of our March topics: ** Strategies to Manage the Explosion of Customer Data. ** Storage Professionals are Hot. (A snapshot of the evolution of the storage profession.) ** How to Make NAS Work with Microsoft Exchange. ** A Guide to Secure SANS. ** Plus how September 11 changed disaster recovery for all of us, and what's been learned about the use of tape, electronic, and disk backup. FREE 42-page storage networking special report with your FREE subscription. 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