Company profiles: IBM

Based in Armonk, North Castle, NY, the International Business Machines (IBM) is a widely recognized key player in the information technology (IT) sector. It has been in business for a long time and some refer to the organization as the 'Big Blue', the multinational corporation is a proud recipient of many accolades awarded by reputable powerhouses such as the Forbes Magazine. Founded in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company by Herman Hollerith and later switched International Business Machines in 1924. The company runs a website for software developers and information technology professionals on which they can access various software downloads, podcasts, wikis, and tutorials in relation to computer languages, operating systems and web services. These include PHP, Java, Ajax, Linux, XML and countless IBM offerings like Lotus, Tivoli and Websphere among others. One of IBM core areas of expertise is the development of high quality microprocessors, whose reputation precedes them.

The gaming market in particular utilizes IBMs microprocessor and a good example is Xbox 360 which brandishes a PowerPC tri-core processor while Sony's Playstation 3 comes with a Cell BE microprocessor (a collaboration product by IBM, Sony and Toshiba). The company derives its strength from the power of collective intelligence by involving their huge staff base dotted around the globe in determining some strategic decisions. This influence has in the past been harnessed to find ideas in connection with company values, the ambitious project saw over 50,000 of IBM worldwide employees taking part. As can be expected, such a conscientious IT entity would be keen on the activities of the Open source initiative, and indeed IBM has been in the forefront of not only supporting releases but also unleash their own code.

Some of the open source licenses released under the platform include independent software Eclipse and the Java based relational database management system (RDBMS) Apache Derby. Under alphaWorks the International Business Machines corporation derives technologies such as Fair UCE - which serves spam filtering purposes; the accessibility browser - a web browser meant for people with visual impairment. The flexible internet evaluation report architecture - covering architectural aspects of internet surveys; the IBM history flow visualization application - designed for visualizing dynamic documents and authors' reactions. While the IBM Linux on power performance simulator is responsible for the provision of a set of performance tools for 'Linux on Power' users, and the archiving and restoration functions of hard disk files are covered by the database file archive and restoration management application.