Now, I must tell you, I am not sure that in 1993 I or anyone else would have started out to create an IBM. But, given IBM’s scale and broad-based capabilities, and the trajectories of the information technology industry, it would have been insane to destroy its unique competitive advantage and turn IBM into a group of individual component suppliers—more minnows in an ocean.

Fortunately, by the 1980s there were pockets of radical thought inside IBM that were already agitating for the company to join the open movement. And by the mid-1990s, we’d mounted the massive technical and cultural effort required to repudiate closed computing at IBM and open up our products to interoperate with other industry-leading platforms.

I think you know the decision a former customer made, and IBM today is providing support for customers who still depend on OS/2.

Many IT companies that have built their businesses on some proprietary product have tried to leap across that chasm. Few have made it across successfully.

For IBM, breaking with our proprietary past meant walking away from all the historic architectural control points.