<story><title>Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/13/jefferies-gives-ibm-watson-a-wall-street-reality-check/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway9980</author><text>IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don&amp;#x27;t solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM&amp;#x27;s Watson.&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives&amp;#x27; interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air?&lt;p&gt;Edit: &amp;quot;magic beans&amp;quot; is harsh and it isn&amp;#x27;t that I don&amp;#x27;t think their tools are good. My point is that they put you in a position where it seems very unlikely to meet expectations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wmccullough</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m happy to be harsh because I&amp;#x27;ve had years and years of experience dealing with IBM.&lt;p&gt;Their tools are trash for the cost they want. The majority of their offerings are overengineered and prone to failure in a production setting.&lt;p&gt;They are pros at selling to non-technical management, all the while IT employees get stuck dealing with the aftermath.&lt;p&gt;We ended up getting stuck with the IBM version of work item management, called Jazz Team Concert. From the &amp;quot;source control&amp;quot; to the actual setup and configuration, the product was a nightmare. The worst part was when we looked at license renewal. They wanted three quarters of a million dollars for something that was essentially dog shit wrapped in cat shit.&lt;p&gt;In case you thought I might be on the fence with IBM, I&amp;#x27;ll add one final clarifying point:&lt;p&gt;Fuck IBM.</text></comment>
<story><title>Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/13/jefferies-gives-ibm-watson-a-wall-street-reality-check/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway9980</author><text>IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don&amp;#x27;t solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM&amp;#x27;s Watson.&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives&amp;#x27; interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air?&lt;p&gt;Edit: &amp;quot;magic beans&amp;quot; is harsh and it isn&amp;#x27;t that I don&amp;#x27;t think their tools are good. My point is that they put you in a position where it seems very unlikely to meet expectations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>R_haterade</author><text>I recently sat through a sales pitch for a piece of IBM software that has an intensely focused (and better) competitor.&lt;p&gt;IBM&amp;#x27;s sales pitch was that 1) this particular piece of software was &amp;quot;central to IBM&amp;#x27;s [market niche] strategy&amp;quot;, and 2) if we didn&amp;#x27;t go with IBM&amp;#x27;s product, we would miss out on all the interoperability with IBM&amp;#x27;s Watson that the future is going to bring.  The tone veered toward fire-and-brimstone.  I wasn&amp;#x27;t sold, I was put off.  They&amp;#x27;ve demoed other things in the past that I&amp;#x27;ve had my socks knocked off by, but they&amp;#x27;re nothing that&amp;#x27;s the sort of &amp;quot;indistinguishable from magic&amp;quot; that they&amp;#x27;re promising in all the marketing hype.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, IBM delivers tremendous value, and they have some fantastic products. However, stunts like that leave people like me with a very sour taste in my mouth.  If they&amp;#x27;d just focus on delivering a better product, as quantified by hard metrics, (which they could easily afford to do), they&amp;#x27;d keep making out like bandits for a very long time.  There&amp;#x27;s tremendous good-will toward them in the market: bad experience aside, I&amp;#x27;m still favorably disposed toward them.</text></comment>