Reason given by OP: Click here.
“Nobody Gets Fired For Buying IBM” If you are looking at this quote with furrowed brows, let me explain! In the 1960-70s era IBM was the preeminent tech. company – making the biggest computers out there; leading innovation in hardware & software; hiring the best & the brightest – and a smart marketing team. At that time – like now – large IT projects were life & death for the CIO or CFO. So if you were an IT buyer, who would you trust for the largest chance of success – the co. with the quality, knowledge, & scale to make it work? IBM of course! A lot of water has flown down the Ganges since then. Technology, society, markets, number of players,… & most importantly – buyer behaviour keeps changing drastically every few years. Yet when we sell – we still believe that we are today’s teleported mini-IBMs of yore & end up treating the customer as someone with little choice.
Real Reason / My Comment: Click here.
I’ve heard a totally different rationale for the old saying “Nobody got fired for buying IBM”. It has to do with integrity, not tech chops.
IBM had several competitors who were equally competent as IBM. But, according to the legend, IBM never bribed customers to win deals, unlike most of its competitors.
Tech projects fail for a lot of reasons such as change management challenges, poor data quality, and so on, for which the customer company is to blame – not CIO or tech vendor.
When customer bought from somebody other than IBM and the project failed, aspersion would be cast immediately on the CIO’s integrity, it would be taken for granted that the CIO took a bribe, and s/he would be fired without any due process – such as post-mortem / inquest – to investigate into other reasons for project failure.
Whereas, when customer bought from IBM and the project failed, corruption was completely ruled out, CIO got the benefit of a “fair trial”, inevitably other reasons would be found for project failure that were unrelated to the CIO, and CIO got to keep his or her job.