OSBC Keynote Competition between Sun, Microsoft, and IBM — IBM Won

I continue to stand in awe of IBM's ability to market. Here's how the line-up of executive keynotes went down this morning at OSBC.

First up was Jonathon Schwarz, Sun CEO. Jonathon always gives good presentations, although he seemed a little brittle this morning. His messages this morning:

• It's all about the cloud.
• We are it.
• It's still about business.
• [Please] buy our hardware.

Microsoft stepped in with Robert Youngjohns, President of Microsoft North America. An excellent soft speaker that quickly established his historical geek credentials and breadth of technology interests beyond Microsoft tech. He apparently even worked at both Sun and IBM. His messages this morning:

• It's all about interoperability.
• We get it [finally].
• It's still about business.
• [Please] buy our software.

Robert Sutor, IBM VP of Open Source and Linux, then finished with a virtuoso performance. It was about collective action. His messages this morning:

• It's all about open source and open standards.
• Linux is an amazing mature flexible solution for the world's information processing problems. "It's not a hammer, but a collection of fine tools." Our involvement in the Linux community is ten years old.
• It's NOT about business. It's about solving hard problems. [A nice paraphrase of Drucker's the purpose of a company is not to make money.]
• We [collectively] have the tools to solve these problems. We [IBM] can help you.

I think the only time he actually mentioned IBM was when he said in passing that they had broken the petaflop barrier last year. It was masterful. It was designed to remind you that IBM has depth of technology experience, and the tools (people, hardware, software, knowledge) to help you with your information management problems. It was a conversation starter between the company and customers. It wasn't about selling technology but rather tailoring solutions — just tell us what you need.

It doesn't matter what you think about each company. Good executive keynotes are performance art delivering a marketing message. (Bad executive keynotes are product announcements to audiences that paid good money to learn something other than the latest thing they're going to be forced to buy.) While all three presenters today are consummate performers, one message was about solving problems, the other two about selling stuff.

Long after Sun's been cut up for parts the way DEC was, and long after Msft stops trading, IBM will still be humming along as a technology solutions company with a mixed-margin portfolio offering, terrifying as that might seem for some. Well done, Bob.

Comments

[Vox]

I have to agree with you...IBM is here to stay, way way into the next generation...hell, I'm betting the holodeck on the Enterprise will be running from an IBM mainframe...running linux, of course :)

[Paul Powen]

My only problem with your analysis is... I'm buying ZFS based storage. I run MySQL. I buy whiteboxes, and the corp IT group is about to start ordering Sun kit. IBM has a great message... but they don't have a single product to sell in the new world.

If they're going to be all about services, that is a smooth message. But then the $50b in product revenue that's keeping IBM humming is going to have to go away. I don't know a single cloud built from DB2, I don't know anyone using Rational or Lotus or AIX. We're moving off WebSphere to Jboss. So where exactly does IBM fit?

Marketing. Exactly right.

[Stephen R. Walli]

Hello Paul: Thanks for taking the time to comment. I completely agree that vendors need to build things that solve customer problems. My commentary was strickly on marketing execution and the difference in focus of the three messages, not the relative merits of any of the technologies involved. cheers, stephe