The Corporation Otherwise Known as Big Blue is making news this week, with two stories generating lots of discussion in the tech world. The first is an article on CNET that says IBM is now encouraging its employees to use Firefox as their browser of choice. Starting today, IBM employees will be able to download [...]
The Corporation Otherwise Known as Big Blue is making news this week, with two stories generating lots of discussion in the tech world.
The first is an article on CNET that says IBM is now encouraging its employees to use Firefox as their browser of choice. Starting today, IBM employees will be able to download the browser off internal servers and access support from internal IT.
Not only is this an attempt to eat away at rival Microsoft’s market share, it’s also making good on the firm’s renewed commitment to open-source, which we alluded to in a post earlier this year. Brian Truskowski, CIO at IBM, says:
“This is a real good example of walking the talk when it comes it comes to open standards and open source.”
It’s a smart way for IBM to save money – fixes and additions are free. Right now only 10% of the staff is using Firefox, but as that number gets bigger, the costs associated with switching will decrease.
As Firefox celebrates it’s 50 millionth download (seems like only yesterday we were at 25), it’s exciting to hear about a big, established company getting on board. Hopefully it’ll further their credibility and get other companies to pay attention, as they should.
The second story comes courtesy of Silicon Valley Watcher and has details on an employee blogging initiative, the largest of its kind, that IBM is set to roll out early next week.
Here’s a quick snippet:
“Employees will be taught what blogging is, and they will be guided on what is appropriate blogging content. IBM has also set up a wiki, a simple technology that allows groups to collaborate on projects and share knowledge. Wikis are not as sophisticated as IBM’s Notes collaborative software, but they are making significant inroads within corporate departments where they sometimes displace the use of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.”
This move comes amid news of 13,000+ layoffs, and IBM execs are hoping it’ll prove a shrewd way to get internal staff to act as evangelists, save on marketing costs, and improve the firm’s competitive positioning.
130,000 bloggers – the scale is huge when you think about it, especially compared to Microsoft’s roughly 1,300 (at last count in March of this year). Wonder if IBM’s given any thought to how it’ll prevent employees from making disparaging remarks in their blogs, a consideration with every corporate blogging endeavour, but a very real possibility in a layoff environment.
Check out one of the better IBM employee blogs here.
