文档介绍：PROFILESIBM MEASURING THE IMPACT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
International
Business Machines
(IBM)
ith revenue of $ billion in 2001, IBM is the world’s top provider of
puter hardware5. Among the leaders in almost every market in which it
competes, pany makes desktop and notebook PCs, mainframes and servers,
storage systems, and peripherals. pany’puter service arm is the largest in
the world. IBM is also one of the largest providers of both software (No. 2 behind
Microsoft) and semiconductors. pany continues to use acquisitions to
augment its software and service businesses, while streamlining its hardware operations
with divestitures anizational shifts.
Though perhaps still best known for its hardware, IBM’s growing services business
accounts for about 40 percent of its sales. Looking to extend its lead, IBM acquired
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting and IT services unit, PwC Consulting, for an
estimated $ billion in cash and stock. Although presenting IBM with a significant
integration challenge, the transaction serves the dual purpose of augmenting IBM’s
standard array of outsourcing, maintenance, and integration services and moving the
company into high-end management consulting.
KM PROGRAM HISTORY AND CONTEXT
When eight people in a garage somewhere can take market share from pany like
IBM, then knowledge is a factor of production much greater than land, labor, and capital.
—Larry Prusak, former executive director,
IBM Institute for knowledge management
IBM has been active in knowledge management since the 1980s. Over the years,
as IBM brought disparate business units together, data management evolved to
information management and then to knowledge management. However, the real
trigger for knowledge management within IBM came in the 1990s when pany
5 Source: , retrieved on March 2003.
96
Measuring the Impact of Knowledge Management •©2003 APQC
IBM
anized under new leadership with the concept to p