Big Blue sees Red -- Celebrating 40 years of IBM international technical support

Tony Austin
Thursday, 25 September 2008 14:58

Opinion and Analysis

True to the "international" part of its corporate name, IBM already by the 1930s had offices around the world. For example, the IBM Australia subsidiary was incorporated in 1932, and reached its 70th year anniversary Down Under in 2002.

To better serve its international staff and customers by giving them a better interface to its development labs, in 1968 IBM set up the International Technical Support Organization, or ITSO.

Most of these labs are located across the USA, but now some labs are located internationally too. These labs are not part of IBM's pure research labs, but places where IBM's commercial hardware and software products are developed.

For example, one such labs is Rochester, Minnesota, where the IBM System/3 and its descendents such as the System/38 and AS/400 were developed.

This happens to be the lab that I visited most frequently during my tenure at IBM, so I know its products quite well and one day might write an iTWire article about the fantastic architecture of these advanced systems, and how architecturally they leave Windows and Linux for dead. But I'll struggle on and refrain from doing so for now.

The ITSO at its various offices essentially centers its work on commercial IBM production systems (released, and soon to be announced or released). Permanent ITSO staff or staff on assignment from IBM field locations in the USA or around the world form the core of each ITSO office.

They also invite IBM business partner staff or customers to visit and assist them, via a program of residencies each of which lasts from a few weeks to a month or two.

The ITSO staff and guest members get deeply involved with testing released or coming IBM hardware and software, providing invaluable practical feedback to the lab hardware/software architects and developers.

Both general and international issues are highlighted, such as problems with internationalization and localization of software, installation difficulties, software bugs, system performance problems, and documentation deficiencies.

PLEASE READ ON...