Worked at Revco drug stores a few decades ago. We used to sell shave cream below cost in order to sell customers large margin items related to shaving. Blades, razors, & after shave. We had a system designed specifically for this purpose called market basket analysis. Revco made some bad decisions, went bankrupt, emerged under a guy called grave dancer, (Sam Zell) who cut to the bone, and sold Revco to CVS. Making billions.
Companies make bad decisions all the time. The key is to try and make more good decisions than bad. One thing I’ve found having worked at 15 different companies is that most managers and executives are no smarter than the low level employees. I worked at Phar Mor for 3 years during their bankruptcy and the CEO (Mickey Monus) went to prison for a decade for fraud. So did 2 of his executives Pat Finn & Jeff Walley. People called Phar Mor the next great retailer. Until the fraud came to light. Most of the retailers around when I was a kid are gone. Sears, K-Mart, Woolworth, (later Woolco) Montgomery Ward, & others are long gone. Was it bad decisions or just changes to the retail industry? Perhaps a combination. Many of the mainframe hardware providers are gone. So are most of the software companies. Mostly through consolidation or their inability to keep up with IBM’s mainframe technology. People submit requests for changes to IBM all the time. Just because 1 or 2 shops/people might think something is important, it undoubtedly goes through analysis to determine its viability and costs benefit. I’d like more than a 12 gallon gas tank on my hybrid car to increase its range from 500 miles to 660 but I doubt Toyota is willing to make the Avalon with 2 gas tank size options. Citigroup, one of the world’s biggest banks, back in 2008, almost went belly up. They were bailed out basically, had to do a reverse stock split and survived. Many/Most of the companies I worked for in 45 years are no longer around. Some from bankruptcy, some via merger/acquisition. The fact that IBM has survived for over 100 years, speaks to their ability to make decisions which have kept them at the forefront of IT. Have they made bad decisions? Of course. As others are pointing out in the other thread, the cloud isn’t the panacea many thought. Many transitioned because they were sold the “shave cream” loss leader and now the cloud players want to capitalize on it. Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Monday, August 7, 2023, 2:26 PM, Crawford Robert C (Contractor) <000004e08f385650-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote: As a witness to an outsourcing followed some years later by an insourcing, I can infer that cloud providers (which are essentially outsourcers) can and will lowball companies to get their business on the platform. Then comes the big contract renewal. A customer's bargaining position is weaker during renewal because of the time, risk and expense of moving to another provider or, God help them, bringing the process back in-house. Robert Crawford Abstract Evolutions LLC (210) 913-3822 -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Matt Hogstrom Sent: Monday, August 7, 2023 12:37 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: [EXT] Re: Cloud may be overpriced compared to on-premises systems It would be interesting to understand if the early adopters of cloud were the beneficiaries of aggressive discount pricing and now find themselves trapped on those platforms. For a long time storage was “unlimited and not expensive” but now you’re starting to see the reality of costs factor into the cloud offerings. Agree on the religious undertones comment. Many people wanted to be the cool kids and move to the cloud. Those architects are likely long gone but the impact of those decisions live on. Matt Hogstrom m...@hogstrom.org +1-919-656-0564 PGP Key: 0x90ECB270 Facebook <https://facebook.com/matt.hogstrom> LinkedIn <https://linkedin/in/mhogstrom> Twitter <https://twitter.com/hogstrom> “It may be cognitive, but, it ain’t intuitive." — Hogstrom > On Aug 7, 2023, at 12:51 PM, Dave Jones <d...@vsoft-software.com> wrote: > > Savvy architects consider all the options. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
