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Herman Hollerith pioneered the use of punched card tabulating machines, securing an early success by enabling the 1890 U.S. Census to be processed in unprecedented time.
Building on this achievement, he founded the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896, later consolidated into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and finally renamed International Business Machines (IBM).
Establishing the technological foundation of the corporation's dominance of data processing for decades to come.
However, after this bright start, Hollerith's failing health led him to sell the business in 1911 for $2.3 million, unable to foresee the empire that would eventually emerge from his inventions.
A renowned organizer of trusts, Charles R. Flint masterminded the 1911 amalgamation of four companies, including Herman Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company, into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), assembling the enterprise that would become the major force in data processing.
Though Flint only served IBM briefly as an advisor, he laid the foundations for its decades of dominance by diversifying its products and services.
However, his talents proved better suited for bringing companies together than managing their operations, so he stepped back from day-to-day leadership of CTR quite soon after its creation, leaving the consolidation of the new company to the more steadfast guidance of general manager Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
Thomas J. Watson Sr. transformed the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company when he became CEO in 1914.
He built a disciplined sales team and instilled strict service standards across the company.
In 1915, he took the president's role, and by 1924 had renamed the firm International Business Machines.
Under his leadership, IBM went from selling basic tabulating equipment to providing comprehensive data processing solutions.
Watson's legacy carries complexity.
His aggressive business tactics drew criticism, as did IBM's choice to supply equipment to Nazi Germany.
Yet his commercial vision—particularly his emphasis on data processing technology—positioned IBM to become the computing pioneer it was when he died in 1956.
Inheriting the helm of IBM from his father in 1952, Thomas J. Watson Jr. led the company into the computer age, making the bet-the-business decision to launch the pioneering System/360 in 1964 and steering IBM's dominance as the world's foremost computer company during the 1960s and 70s.
Though Big Blue continued its growth under his tenure, ultimately disparate ventures into new technologies diminished IBM's command of the market during the 1980s.
Watson Jr. retired as Chairman and CEO in 1971 after overseeing IBM's rise to extraordinary international success, though not its later troubles adjusting to computing's changing landscape.
Frank T. Cary assumed IBM's CEO role in 1973 amid thriving mainframe revenues but the looming storm of minicomputers and microcomputers.
Guiding the venerable giant of computing through a tumultuous decade of ascending new rivals and unprecedented antitrust scrutiny, he was unable to recapture the supremacy IBM enjoyed during the Watsons' tenure.
Though Cary kept earnings and revenues on the uptick, rapid technology shifts to distributed systems and personal computing saw Big Blue's dominance slip significantly by the early 1980s as upstart names like Apple, Microsoft and Intel captured public imagination and market share.
Despite weathering external challenges, Cary reflects now on a difficult period where IBM failed to read the trends toward smaller systems and maintaining its two decade lock on computing's direction.
Taking the reins from Cary in 1981, John R. Opel strode an increasingly stormy deck as IBM's share of the computer market was halved from a prior sixty-plus percent.
While mainframes remained cash cows during his tenure, nimble competitors compressed profit margins selling PCs, minicomputers and IT services to a customer base enamored with smaller, open, standards-based systems.
Though Big Blue retained its bellwether status through the 1980s, the 13-year federal antitrust lawsuit's dismissal and Opel's own retirement in 1985 signaled the end of an era, as IBM's dominance gave way to the decentralized computing models that prevail today.
Named CEO in 1985 amidst rapidly eroding mainframe and minicomputer market share, John F. Akers worked to reinvent IBM's offerings for the personal computing and client/server era, though decentralization diminished lucrative proprietary machines and software.
BIG BLUE's struggles to adapt accumulated in the early 1990s, as IBM posted the largest annual loss in American corporate history then and in 1992.
With the IBM brand besmirched after decades of seeming infallibility, Akers 1993 ouster foreshadowed the extensive restructuring and three-years of additional losses required to stabilize the computing pioneer.
Facing relentless deficits amid IBM's slip from utter dominance, the first external CEO since 1914, Louis V. Gerstner Jr. arrived in 1993 and swiftly reversed centralization that preceded the bottoming-out.
Reconstituting IBM around services and software, his business model undoing 1960s unbundling ironically stabilized Big Blue as the computing industry's landscape shifted to open architectures.
Though Gerstner restored profitability, his tenure concluded at 2002's end without fully retrieving the monopoly rents previous CEOs commanded in enterprise computing's heyday of proprietary systems and barrier-moated market control.
Ascending to IBM's top post in 2002, Samuel J. Palmisano steered the venerable company to refine its focus on high-value technologies like Linux-based systems, enterprise security, and business analytics, while selling commoditized divisions like PCs and printers.
Palmisano's tenure through 2011 returned IBM to leadership in IT patents and positioned its global services as premier digital consultants for Fortune 500 clientele.
Though the Watson analytics triumph made headlines in 2011, Palmisano's tenure also witnessed cloud computing erode much hardware to interchangeable utilities amid ascendent data-driven decision making, trends which troubled IBM's proprietary hybrid cloud and complicated Palmisano's legacy by the early 2010s.
Named the first female CEO in IBM's century-long history, Virginia M. Rometty continued Palmisano's focus upon specialized high-margin niches like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and blockchain through a challenging decade as cloud computing gained widespread enterprise adoption.
Rometty countered declining hardware sales and outsourcing's shrinkage of classic consulting services by acquiring 65 companies including Red Hat's strategic hybrid cloud platform, though revenues and IBM stock lagged rivals as critics called for faster transformation.
While forays into next generation technologies of healthcare, weather forecasting and Watson defined 2010s headlines, Rometty retired in early 2020 with Big Blue perceived as better positioned for the future but still trailing a fast-moving pack beyond longtime core businesses.
Inheriting the burden of reviving growth as the Coronavirus pandemic gripped clients worldwide in early 2020, Arvind Krishna accelerated IBM's hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence-focused strategy through acquiring Red Hat and selling slower growth business process outsourcing arm Kyndryl.
Executing on his targeted vision, Krishna aims to restore IBM's centrality to enterprise IT by enabling digital transformation via a platform-centric model melding proprietary and open technologies.
While too early to gauge success of this repositioning, Krishna's IBM must still demonstrate its vitality developing leading solutions as global 2000 CIOs face rising data complexity and dynamic cyberthreat spectrums amidst an economically challenging decade.
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