Re:IBM Lost the Cloud
by nicholasbraker on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @03:57AM
(#28756593)
I can relate to this. I did some contracting work for a large bank (let's call them client #1) and had to deal with IBM mainframes connecting their OSA-adapters to an IP-network. These adapters talk OSPF to the network and we needed some changes. No one from IBM allocated to my customer then (this is essential..) had any clue. I had to arrange via another colleaugue of mine working for another customer (client #2) who also dealt with IBM that an IBM engineer for his client (#2) talked to the IBM engineer for my client (#1) to have this change done. IBM seems to be silo'd as hell and no one from their team (PM's whatever) seem to be in any rush to contact within IBM to help solve an issue.
At the time (2016-2018) their IBM Bluemix cloud offering was a joke. Custom made and in no way a match for AWS/Azure. Luckily I persuaded my client to refrain from using Bluemix and go with Azure/AWS instead.
It was a FN nightmare to get anything done - it took a month just to get static IPs allotted to the project, way too many meetings, too many PMs on the IBM side and the pricing was absolutely ridiculous. IIRC we were charging DOW ~$40,000 a month to host two Racks in the DC when prices for bandwidth were ~$900/MB at the time...
I then worked with IBM and Intel when Intel was deploying a an OpenStack setup for RedHat. Same level of BS to get simple things accomplished. It was one of those cringeworthy projects where you had PMs on the team who didnt know jack about anything we were doing and were super slow to get anything done. You just cringed when on a call and people throughout the project were so disjointed and disconnected that you felt embarrassed for them on the calls...