Nov 03

IBM Vs Apple

Founded back in 1889, and incorporated 22 years later, we can say IBM is an ancient company, at least when compared to Microsoft or Apple. Although it is known to be the largest IT employer on Earth, IBM's total revenue has fallen behind Hewlett-Packard's since 2006, but managed to remain the most profitable IT company on the planet. Although last year IBM was second largest software company in the world, I don't think the IBM name and corporate identity are as strong as Apple's, and that's exactly what we're going to talk about today - IBM vs Apple!

These being said, let's think about IBM vs Apple for a while - IBM doesn't manufacture any media players, as far as I know, and they don't even sell mobile phones, so where's the battle between these two giants? Well, this is a very interesting story, since it seems IBM offered one of its execs one year's salary just to stay away from the Cupertino-based company! Really interesting story, don't you agree?

The story goes like this - Mark Papermaster, one of the 300 Spartans at IBM(excuse me, 300 elite managers) resigned to take a job at Apple, he ended up right in a middle of a lawsuit. Why? IBM filed a 10-page complaint on the 22nd of October, claiming that Papermaster's access to trade secrets, product pipelines and technological innovations going to Apple wouldn't be good at all. Apart from that, he would violate the non-compete clause signed with IBM.

Getting back to what I was saying earlier, the link between IBM and Apple isn't yet obvious, but hear this - Papermaster is VP of IBM's Blade Development unit, so he's in close contact with Apple - Xservers and chips for mobile devices are something that would really take some advantage of his experience with IBM.

What IBM did to keep Papermaster was to raise his salary and offer a full year's payment just to stay away from Apple. While the lawsuit may not probably stop the man from moving to Apple, the raise should. After all, IBM is still going strong, and he's been there for more than most Apple's iPod users have lived on this planet... but who am I to judge? Seeing this IBM vs Apple battle over a man, and not market share, was very interesting, and I think this may be only the beginning...