How IBM used Fear Psychology To Own Backend Technology For Decades?

IBM maintained a competitive edge for more than 50 years built on fear.

Their dominance and paranoia created by the company helped to build an atmosphere, where none can switch from IBM to any of its competitors.

However, the company didn’t just achieve this status overnight.

It had to create a mainframe that would be cost-efficient for consumer businesses.

The significant factor for the company was to create something that will make consumers to remain with IBM for a long time.

The early centrepiece, IBM 1401 was companies mainframe business.

But it had a few drawbacks like it wasn’t interoperable, which consumers can easily detect and would surely be replaced by competitors.

It was a substantial issue from a business point.

Hence, IBM began a project to create an interoperable base mainframe that could be upgraded by consumers without rewriting entire softwares.

Following this, IBM plans to release updates to the mainframe enabling its consumers to boost processing power without purchasing new machines.

IBM’s System/360 was a triumphant as it sold out more than 1 lakh units within a month.

The system was a hit and gave consumers to be with the company for a long time.

It had its merits like it was accessible with power to upgrade without any further purchase.

Soon, IBM emerged as a one-stop solution for data centres and purchasing departments for the world.

With time, IBM came up with a sales strategy that made it popular, emphasizing the company’s size and reputation, making its product ownership a matter of reliability.

As stated clearly by Gene Amdahl (chief System/360 architect), the strategy was to create “fear, uncertainty, and doubt.”

The sales team also insisted that the system would work only with IBM peripherals and equipment and would not work with a non-IBM mainframe.

The strategy was successful in rounding up the consumers back to IBM and away from the competitors.

It’s main hurdles began with the cloud computing introduction making operating systems, software, applications and services into a commodity.

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