As discussed in our business book, a path towards success in a business can be broken down in to a continous four step cycle. The first step is realizing the indicators of success. IBM is concerned with financial performance. IBM has a fancy web site dedicated to its financial reports, http://www.ibm.com/annualreports is updated every year. The diagram to the left shows IBM's revenue over the past ten years. Meeting customer needs is critical for IBM. But who are IBM's customers? From students attending PartnerWorld (IBM's new university), to companies buying new technologies to produce high tech devices, IBM sells to the world. The United States, Russia, and China all have strong bonds with IBM and its technology.

IBM understands whom its customers are and delivers quality in their product

s and services. Take IBM's latest notebook series the "T-Series". The standard model comes with a 800mhz Intel CPU, a 32 gigabyte hard drive, and 13.3" 1024x768 - TFT - active matrix screen. What does this translate to? IBM decided not to use the fastest processor or the biggest screen (my Toshiba boasts a 15.1 1600x1200 UTFT). This is due to a bottle-neck in battery life. The battery life on IBM's latest notebook is eight hours. My Toshiba notebook; has the lastest CPU available, a graphics card that will make your head spin, a DVD and CD writer drive, but battery life is a mear two hours. IBM realizes that its customers are more likely to use MSWord or browse the web with their notebooks than play a game, or watch a DVD. So IBM uses innovation and creativity when designing its notebooks. Gaining employee commitment is very tough in a global business like IBM. Long hours and employee obscurity lead to job dissatisfaction. High salaries from smaller companies seeking IBM's knowledge base lure employees away.

Providing excellence in Products and Services is the third step. Design and durability have always been incorporated in IBM's products and services. In order to stay competitive, IBM works with some of the top IT's worldwide when producing products or developing services. Strategic decisions must be made everyday at IBM. There are many engineer's and scientists working at IBM. The engineer's get new ideas all the time, and the scientists discover how to make something more efficient daily, and someone at IBM has to make the decision, "Do we try to profit from this work now? Or do we wait, and try to develop it

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