IBM

Multinational company, the largest manufacturer of computers in the world. The company is a descendant of the Tabulating Machine Company, formed in 1896 by US inventor Herman Hollerith to exploit his punched-card machines. It adopted its present name in 1924. By 1991 it had an annual turnover of US$64.8 billion and employed about 345,000 people, but in 1992 and 1993 it made considerable losses. The company acquired Lotus Development Corporation in 1995. By 1997 IBM had, under new management, recovered financially. In 2007 IBM's total revenue was US$99 billion and with 330,000 employees in 75 countries it was the world's largest information technology company.

In 2003, IBM's chairman and chief executive, Sam Palmisano, unveiled the company's ‘big bet’ for the future, e-business on demand. On-demand computing envisages corporate applications working together with those of other companies using World Wide Web services, and with shortfalls in computing capacity being remedied through access to online data centres.