news

august 26th was a monday, and it rained heavily in beijing.

programmer zhang heng, as usual, came to the huanyu building in phase 1 of zhongguancun software park, where the ibm software r&d center is located.

zhang heng received an email from ibm headquarters early saturday morning. the day before, his and his colleagues' intranet access had been shut down. the email informed that there would be an online meeting for all employees on monday.

that was the longest weekend zhang heng had ever spent.

the meeting started on time in the morning. ibm's vice president of global enterprise system development spoke first. he said that this was a very difficult decision, but:

then, the general manager of ibm z and linuxone and the vice president of storage engineering spoke. the three executives ended the meeting with a total of:

just a few words sealed the fate of ibm's china r&d center, including the china development laboratory (cdl) and the china system laboratory (cls), involving thousands of employees in beijing, shanghai, and dalian. overnight:

from then on, ibm's only business in china was consulting sales and technical support.

in the next two days, zhang heng received a compensation plan. a two-month buffer period, n+3 compensation, and a year-end bonus next year. the pace was so fast that zhang heng could hardly react. this feeling was like:

"slowly it crumbles, then it collapses." this is how hemingway described the desperate situation of businessmen in his novel the sun also rises. zhang heng also heard the sound of his company crumbling and breaking apart.

it turns out that true departure is always silent.

ibm's research center in beijing was established in september 1995.

at that time, ibm was the first it multinational company to set up a research and development organization in china, and soon a group of companies such as intel followed suit.

in the same year, huawei also established a research institute in beijing, specializing in the then emerging field of data communications.

when ibm entered china, it was actually going through a financial crisis. it had been losing money for years, with the cumulative loss exceeding 16 billion us dollars. lou gerstner, the top leader at the time, thought of many ways and began to implement a package of reform strategies.

in 1997, ibm turned losses into profits. on christmas eve of that year, ren zhengfei visited many it giants, including ibm. unlike other companies, ibm did not guard against this outsider, but spent a whole day explaining project management to ren zhengfei.

it was this unreserved attitude that earned ibm its first management consulting business in china. they quickly came up with a plan. they sent 70 consultants to huawei, charging them hourly rates of $300, $500, and $680. over the five-year contract, they would have to pay:

in 1998, huawei's total sales were only 8.9 billion rmb, but huawei agreed without blinking an eye.

ren zhengfei said that the reform assistance provided by ibm is a pair of american shoes:

the prescription ibm gave huawei was called integrated product development, or ipd. originally, huawei's r&d department was independent and decentralized. after the reform, r&d became a market-driven link.

at that time, huawei already had 20,000 employees, but because of the tough reforms, 30% of the employees in the chip research and development department alone were lost.

driven by ipd, a new department was born in huawei. the marketing engineering department is directly under the marketing department. this means that the direction of huawei's r&d is:

when ipd was launched, huawei had already invested 2 years in 3g r&d. at that time, 2g was still the mainstream and 3g r&d was an unknown adventure. but ipd turned this adventure into a process with a clear path.

everyone knows what happened later. it was 3g that pushed huawei to a new peak.

it was not until june 2003 that ibm consultants withdrew from huawei's r&d building in bantian, shenzhen. by then, ipd thinking had completely flowed into huawei's blood. and a group of process experts trained in huawei were also capable of replacing ibm consultants.

when people noticed ipd again, it was already 2021. in the wave of new car manufacturing, ideal auto was the first car company to announce that it would learn ipd from huawei in an all-round way.

more than 20 years ago, huawei required its executives to read the power of pace, which was the book that ibm executives gave to ren zhengfei.

more than 20 years later, many of the books on the list that li xiang gave to senior executives were related to huawei's ipd.

watson is one of the important research products of ibm china research institute.

watson is the forefather of language big models. it was five years earlier than alphago defeated go champion lee sedol:

it actually took ibm only 4 years to develop watson. at that time, there were 30 researchers from all over the world participating in the project, including the united states, japan, and israel, as well as:

until its closure in 2021, watson was the flagship product of the china research institute and indeed enjoyed a commercial honeymoon period in china.

ibm first entered the field of clinical application of cancer treatment. ibm commissioned a consulting company to conduct a survey. they found that in some areas of northeast china, doctors' treatment plans for cancer patients were in line with standard guidelines:

the cost of setting up a hospital information system is extremely high. if it is a high-end private hospital, it may cost hundreds of millions of dollars. on the other hand, the interests of doctors and pharmaceutical companies are deeply intertwined, and the application of watson will undoubtedly affect their pie.

so despite facing numerous difficulties, watson entered the market in 2016.

by analyzing 300 medical journals, more than 200 textbooks, and nearly 15 million pages of text, watson can assist oncologists in making medical plans.

in 2018, watson medical system has spread to nearly 80 hospitals in 22 provinces and 43 cities in china. sales revenue in greater china accounts for half of watson medical's global quarterly revenue.

but since 2019, as sino-us relations have taken a sharp turn for the worse, it has become increasingly difficult for watson to enter chinese hospitals. on the more realistic side, watson has taken advantage of many doctors - affecting their kickbacks for prescribing cancer drugs and offending the authority of experts and professors. some doctors have even asked watson to add the function of traditional chinese medicine.

watson's story came to an abrupt end in 2021. the financial report for the fourth quarter of 2020 not only brought down ibm's stock price, but also caused the china research institute to close overnight. watson also stopped selling in the chinese mainland market.

the american media said that watson left china in defeat. the sarcastic american reporter used a line from the american tv series "succession" to describe watson's bleak position:

2001 was the most difficult year for american it giants.

the internet bubble caused old it companies such as cisco and intel to suffer the fate of seeing their stock prices evaporate by 80%.

that year, ibm surpassed microsoft and became china's largest software supplier, with software sales in china exceeding us$240 million and a market share of 10%.

microsoft and oracle are only half of ibm's.

software became ibm's most profitable business, accounting for 1/3 of the company's total profits. the most popular software they sold was databases. most of their customers were government departments, railway departments, securities companies, and especially banks.

the reason why the software business was so popular was ultimately due to the server foundation left by ibm. at that time, china's computing power industry was not yet established, and it could even be said to be barren.

the electronicization of china's banking industry started with ibm. in the 1980s, the people's bank of china launched the ybs (bank insurance system) project. the most important part of the project was the introduction of the ibm 360 system. the electronicization of 13 chinese banks in hong kong was also solved.

in 1987, ibm's customized safe ii system for icbc was put into use on a large scale. soon, bank of china and china construction bank followed suit. at that time, most banks still operated their businesses using the traditional manual method of journal entry.

in fact, before deciding to use safeii, icbc hired a team of consultants to conduct research:

it was the successful bet on ibm that allowed icbc to gain a first-mover advantage in the industry and later become the world's largest bank.

ibm also started with banking and gradually expanded its business. relying on its server customer base, it sold software and services and became very successful.

but this honeymoon period did not last long. for well-known reasons, the banking industry began to enter the ioe countdown in 2013:

after decades of integration, ibm has penetrated into the bank's servers, storage, operating systems, databases, and all aspects of infrastructure. this transformation is painful, and it breaks bones but leaves tendons untouched.

in 2019, huawei launched its own gaussdb database, which was first put into production by the industrial and commercial bank of china and china merchants bank.

in the second year, huawei's database market share soared. in the era of de-ioe, the former students gradually ate up the teacher's market share.

in the trajectory of cause and effect, all endings are natural.

2020 is the peak year for ibm's revenue, 480 billion; in 2023, ibm's revenue will be 438.1 billion. compared with the seven major us stock giants, it is already far behind. in the past 20 years, this company missed the internet and mobile internet, and now it seems to miss ai.

but looking at the world, it is still a top technology company, not to mention its deep technological accumulation.

another thing happened in 2020. arvind krishna, the current ceo of ibm, took office. he is an indian, and the relocation of chinese business to india was completed during his tenure.

whether it is retreat or transformation, it seems no longer important.

in that 3-minute meeting, ibm executives explained that there were two reasons for moving r&d tasks out of china:

bob dylan said:

if we only look at the database market, huawei's database market share is close to 14%. their clients include agricultural bank of china, guosen securities and guangdong provincial finance department.

this time, ibm announced the closure of a chinese system laboratory that is responsible for servers, storage devices, network equipment, and related hardware and software solutions, while another chinese development laboratory is responsible for cloud computing, artificial intelligence (ai), big data, and enterprise software.

in the 1980s, china wanted to develop domestically produced cars and chose to intervene from the top, setting a framework for the growth and development of domestically produced cars, which was called exchanging market for technology.

over the past few decades, the market has indeed been given to us, but the real technology has not been exchanged back. we can only change our thinking, develop new energy vehicles, and overtake others.

for example, ibm came to china for the purpose of seeking profits naturally generated by an international enterprise. there was no official prescription, no big policy to cover it. their profound technology allowed them to live in a comfortable zone in china for a long time.

they did not step out of their comfort zone. huawei, and more chinese companies, really learned skills from ibm.

but in the technological waves of the past few decades, no one can deny that ibm is a very important one.

uncle bao, who has rich experience in love, said that life is full of bitterness, but unfortunately he can't bear the bitterness and can only suffer bitterness. he also said: