Dancing Lessons

摘要

Louis Gerstner Jr. revived IBM and penned a book about making elephants dance. His successor is finding it s not so easy being a pachyderm's partner. It was the kind of big, brash coming-out party that is fitting for the new chief of the world's largest computer maker. In October 2002 Samuel J. Palmisano, a lifelong insider who succeeded superstar Louis V. Gerstner Jr. as chief executive of IBM, took the stage at the American Museum of Natural History in New York to address hundreds of corporate customers. As thousands of IBMers looked on via the Internet, Palmisano laid out a grand vision and a $10 billion gamble. He spoke of a new era of On Demand computing in which customers could forget about buying computers and, instead, could rent power from IBM as if it were an electric company, paying only for what they used. In a narrow sense On Demand was a throwback to the mainframe time-sharing in vogue in the 1970s, when Palmisano joined IBM out of college. In a broader sense On Demand was a way of reengineering businesses so that they used their data better. If On Demand took off, IBM would see a burst of growth in its services division, which now accounts for half of its revenue.