IBM also gave huge discounts to governmental agencies. The result of this policy was to cause governments and educational institutions to choose IBM's computers over other competitors' that were more expensive. And, since these types of customers tend to purchase rather than lease really expensive items, they were locked in to the IBM brand for a much longer time than commercial customers which typically leased the same equipment. Universities also tended to skew their computer science curricula with courses based on IBM software, operating systems, and hardware, because that was the equipment available for the students to run their test jobs on. Students graduating with degrees in computer science and with a lot of collegiate experience with IBM equipment tended to want to continue working with IBM equipment when they entered the job market. These new hires who moved up into management and had authority to select computer equipment also tended to want to obtain IBM equ! ipment, as they were more familiar with that than competitors' equipment. What started out as an apparently benevolent policy produced a strong brand addiction, resulting in a major market share for many years.
Bill Fairchild Software Developer Rocket Software 275 Grove Street * Newton, MA 02466-2272 * USA Tel: +1.617.614.4503 * Mobile: +1.508.341.1715 Email: [email protected] Web: www.rocketsoftware.com -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bob Shannon Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 4:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Another one bites the dust IBM used to give huge discounts to universities. About 15-20 or so years ago they did away with the discounts and universities started migrating off the mainframe. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
