Linux Advocates: Change Agents Rather Than Revolutionaries
(Other LinuxWorld Expo: Paris Diary, Page 4)
By T. Bruce Tober
February 14, 2000
I told Robert LeBlanc, vice president for Software Strategy of the IBM
Software Group, that I suspected Tom Watson, IBM's founder, must be rolling in his grave at the thought of IBM
getting involved with these anarchist revolutionaries and their Linux stuff.
"Well, you can call them revolutionaries. I call them change agents, and you have to go
with change. You have one of two options: either be a change agent or become a laggard and watch as the world passes
you by and then jump on the train as it's leaving the station."
And IBM knows how that goes. It's been there, done that I reminded him. "Yeah, yeah, and
we see ourselves as the New IBM. We look at opportunities and potential."
Well, not totally new, "you're still wearing a blue dress shirt," I said.
"I'd not even noticed that," he said. "But you'll notice I have no tie. I've only
worn a tie once this year and that was for a customer briefing with one of the big financial institutions. They're
still old world. But I don't wear white shirts anymore.
"But it's all about really understanding where the market is going in terms of technology,
trends, in terms of what customers are trying to do," Le Blanc said. "It's about really trying to help
customers and clearly as we put together our whole Linux strategy we've been working very closely with our customers
to make sure we understand what they're trying to do, so we can give them the set of capabilities and technology.
"The one thing we like about the open source community is the spirit of innovation and how
quickly they innovate. And that comes from getting a lot of very smart people together with common goals. And a
lot of that will not come from a single company.
If you look at all the great innovations, they all come from people in kind of an open standard
community and they come from the universities, which is by definition an open area. That's how the Net started.
And we see it as being potentially a very important point in the market place. With us and our customers viewing
it that way, we thought it prudent for us to get up there and try to help the community and the industry move into
this new space."
I said that sounded like great PR/Spin Doctor speak, but that we all know IBM was once the world's
leading computer company, perhaps the world's biggest company. And then some geek from Harvard changed everything.
"Isn't your move into Linux sort of a get back, revenge play," I asked.
"No. You can see a lot of parallels. The IBM of old, in those days, didn't recognize the
opportunities, didn't recognize the change that was going to go on with the PC, and viewed the PC as something
evil. We would tolerate it but wouldn't really push it.
"The problem," Le Blanc said, "is in most businesses that are leaders in their
field, it's very hard to change. Change doesn't come from the guy who's in front. It tends to come from the people
in the trenches. And we've learned from an IBM perspective to listen to customers. We're very maniacal about listening
to and working with our customers. Because, at the end of the day, they're the ones that write the checks, they're
the ones that provide for what we provide.
"So you had the old IBM: We thought if we wanted to turn right, we should turn right and
everyone in turn would follow. Those days are over for any company. But there are still companies that act in that
way. They're the ones who are going to miss the next new opportunities that are out there."
He said it's got to be a case of live and learn for any person or company. And added,"I
like to believe the IBM company has really learned from its past and the mistakes it made. Now I view us as one
of those change agents. And that change is going to happen with a lot of people. It's not going to come just from
one company. It's going to come from the industry."
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