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The State of R&D At HP, IBM, and Microsoft
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:36 AM
from the no-monopoly-on-good-ideas dept.
from the no-monopoly-on-good-ideas dept.
jcatcw writes "Computerworld surveys the R&D efforts at HP, IBM and Microsoft ($17 billion annually) and raises the question: Are these companies supporting more long-term basic research, or just the usual short-term, product-oriented work? HP is consolidating its focus on a few 'big bet' projects in five major research areas — information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation, intelligent infrastructure, and sustainability. IBM has four 'high-risk' basic research areas — nanotechnology, cloud computing, integrated systems and chip architecture, and managing business integrity through advanced math and computer science. Many of the 272 research projects named at Microsoft Research's Web site are structured with major product lines like Windows, Office, or Xbox in mind, but many also seem to have no likely application to anything the company sells today."
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Cloud computing (Score:4, Funny)
Dear fucking god, my boss comes in at least once a week and asks me if our flagship app could run on cloud computing. Give me a gun and one bullet please.
Re:Cloud computing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Cloud computing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Cloud computing (Score:5, Funny)
sure it is. it needs to be a really big bullet though and you need to super heat it before it hits the clouds. Fire it from space. The cloud will dissipate around it.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Dear fucking god, my boss comes in at least once a week and asks me if our flagship app could run on cloud computing. Give me a gun and one bullet please.
A bullet for you or your boss?
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Re:Cloud computing (Score:5, Funny)
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You should have a pretty well-prepared answer by now.
Re:Cloud computing (Score:5, Funny)
That's easy, one day when he's out, connect wall current directly to the motherboard of his computer, Apply an etherkiller as well just to be complete.
Tell him you tested the app with cloud computing as he asked, but it was so powerful it turned into a thunderhead and nearly burned the building down. Luckily it grounded itself into his PC.
Tell him you'll be trying again soon, but need to requisition a few electricians to rewire the building first.
If he balks, come back in a couple days and tell him you've figured out how to do a small scale test. Have him order everyone in the office to hop on one foot over a rubber mat patting their heads and rubbing their bellies at the same time (to generate an intermittent ground wave of opposing static charge). Video tape his orders and the results, be sure to get his whacked out explanation to the staff.
Now, call mental health services and submit the video anonymously to his boss.
Bonus points if your story about the experiment magnetizing him and attracting cosmic rays actually convinces him he feels little pinpricks periodically. The random twitching and slapping himself should seal the deal.
Lather, rinse, repeat endlessly.
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No money in Research (Score:4, Interesting)
Narrow view (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Narrow view (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely agree.
I was fortunate to participate in (Comp. Sci.) a research project where some industry companies worked along with some Universities. One of those companies was HP (participating via a researcher appointed to the project).
I can say from first account experience that HP was one of the companies which put more interest and time in the research (while, other unamed companies sometimes were not even present at the meetings).
From that project, I learnt several things about HP research (at least in Europe). They indeed have several projects going. A lot of those projects are however "sensitive" or secret. But you certainly can see several good publications with interesting implications coming from HP.
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The nature of research (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether research is aimed at solving an immediate problem or a problem conjured up in the mind of a scientist, it is not the technical abilities that make research useful. Any project can come up with a solution, pretty much. Rather, it is the mindset that "we are doing research" that makes the activity so productive.
By opening your eyes to all possibilities and outcomes makes even mistakes useful, and having no penalty (relatively speaking, of course) when those mistakes arise frees researchers to create and build. Instead of creating a tailored solution, they can find various solutions and even branch out into more fruitful areas if the main branch turns cold.
Having overarching themes that you want to pursue, like HP and IBM have, makes it easy for researchers to focus. On the other hand, pure research as they do at MS allows the researchers to go off in any direction that seems fruitful, even if most of the projects end up as dead ends.
Re:The nature of research (Score:4, Insightful)
Researchers--good ones, anyway--generally don't have a problem focusing. Having an overarching theme just makes it easier for them to focus on the problem that you want them to work on.
Also, research doesn't need to involve a solution. Much of the best basic research usually involves just wanting to know how something works. (Once you understand, then you can come up with applications and devise solutions using the new findings, but that's often the &D part of R&D.)
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R&D means product development.
A simple truth: sometimes companies just do R&D to lobby the government, esp. in foreign nations. HP is an example, but also Microsoft.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
R&D means product development.
Of course; otherwise, it would just be called "R" instead of "R&D".
A company doing research for purely altruistic reasons is probably going to get sued by its shareholders someday. Microsoft plans to make plenty of money by controlling future markets through its R&D efforts. That, and sequestering researchers who had a chance to make a difference behind a "silicon curtain" of obscurity so they don't threaten the status quo. ("If we give those graphics professors from CMU enough toys, maybe we can
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Never mistake Success for Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush, private diary, November 8th, 2006.
Article fails to mention... (Score:4, Funny)
...that $35 million line item in Microsoft's budget that reads "EVIL (misc.)"
Dynamic Cloud Services? (Score:4, Funny)
Evidently, their lab's automated buzzword generating script is being tested.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Your sig is like grammar nazi kryptonite. Reading it felt like getting hit in the face with a fish four times.
I hope you mean for it to be funny, because if not...wow.
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What sequence of events led you to getting hit in the face four times with a fish?
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Re:Dynamic Cloud Services? (Score:5, Funny)
Grammar nazi's are the WORST waste of human space there is online.
That's "Nazis". HTH, HAND.
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Re:Dynamic Cloud Services? (Score:5, Funny)
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As much as I don't like Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
I fully admit that I am speaking from a small dataset; but I am inclined to suspect that good corporate R&D is perhaps the one upside to companies with more market power than is strictly desireable. Think about Bell Labs back in the day. They did loads of basic research, including such minor little projects as transistors and Unix. Compare this to our dear present day carriers, whose primary mode of "innovation" appears to be writing ever more incomprehensible contracts.
This is hardly to say that high concentrations of market power are a good thing, as R&D can be done in startups and universities and the like without all the downsides; but it does seem that high levels of market power do, somewhat, preserve R&D from being sacrificed on the altar of quarterly results.
Re:As much as I don't like Microsoft... (Score:4, Interesting)
That is so not true! They are very innovative at figuring out ways to charge their customers for add-on services. For instance - sell them a camera phone and then *charge* them to get the pictures out of the phone. Sell them a "music" phone that uses proprietary headphones only. Sell them their favorite song as a ringtone, then sell it again to them as a full track, and then sell it to them again as a ringback tone -- brilliant!
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Incidentally, I have a project just begging for a talented flash designer with a sick sense of humor: Create, in the form of a flash demo app(or, for ex
Microsoft R&D (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft R&D do make some stuff that's applicable to current products.
One clear example of that is multi-touch surfaces, that will be supported in Windows 7.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's amazing. I mean, someday that groundbreaking research might even enable multitouch on smartphones. That would be awesome!
big company r&d (Score:2)
It's usually 6 month time frame projects that are very likely to become products, not voodoo academic research. It was IPTV implementations after IPTV became big. Blu-Ray demos after Blu-ray technology was developed. iPOD syncing after iPods became big.
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didn't we just hear about HP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't researchers at HP recently discover how to build memreistor's? That isn't a 6 month to market product and can profoundly change computing.
Thus negating the article at least for HP. IBM does work like this also it is where the Cell processor idea came from years and years ago.
MSFT does have singularity, and a few other pieces of completely random but cool tech that will break compatibility with their other offerings so they will never see the market but are still done just because.
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I would imagine that it works roughly the same for other companies. You have to keep track of their research projects to find out about that, though. It's rare that a research project transforms into a cash cow straight away - instead, good (and marketa
Research is practically a Moot Point (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously,
These companies are so large the basic research dies sometime after the researcher gives his presentation to Marketing/Product Management.
Marketing may, actually come up with some good ideas, and send them into some Managerial circle jerk with Sales Management. After a couple of comments, the good ideas die in a perpetual Gordian knot.
The knot presents itself as:
1. No customers for new idea.
2. No budget for some new idea.
3. No "proven" market for new idea.
4. No one is willing to risk their status taking a chance at a new product.
Which leads to a tremendous waste of resources "catching up" to upstarts at a later date.
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Certainly not true about Microsoft Research. As mentioned in the article, Microsoft Research is practically a university. Everything they research ends up peer-reviewed at academic conferences and in academic journals. It's virtually in the public domain.
I find it kinda hard to believe that they don't patent anything.
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Sorry I didn't think we were confined to the same company. I was arguing against the idea that the research "dies".
A public example is the Glasgow Haskell Compiler [haskell.org]. True, it's not actually Microsoft branded as "MS Visual Haskell" or anything like that, but it is developed largely by Microsoftians (most prominently Simon Peyton Jones at Microsoft Cambridge). We all get a pretty decent and very usable compiler out of it; does it matter so much that it isn't branded as a Microsoft product?
Universities and Corporations. (Score:2)
The mention that Universities and corporations are starting to work more together jives perfectly with what my supervisor has said: A lot of work in his field has been done that perhaps is a little 'too' blue sky. By working with a corporation (one of the article mentioned infact), he gets a perfect insight into what is a real problem in the real work, and what is a problem only the researchers care about.
How far Dell has fallen. (Score:2, Interesting)
Corporate research then and now (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is true that large companies spend some money on research. It's not the same kind of spend we used to have though, and that won't change until companies don't have to constantly scramble to post big numbers every quarter.
Since this pressure is going to be there from now on, all research will continue to focus on a product the company can sell in a very short time. (Look at multi-touch surfaces rumored to be included in Windows 7 for example.)
There are two problems that will keep this short term focus going forever. The first is that everyone depends 100% on the stock market for their retirement now -- this wasn't the case in the 60s and 70s when Bell Labs, IBM, etc. were able to invest huge amounts of money in research. The second problem is that because everyone's responsible for their own retirement, they're constantly watching the market, making it impossible for a company to think long term. If you miss your numbers as CEO for more than a quarter or two, you're fired, even if you're doing the right things long-term.
I can't imagine a CEO being able to address a shareholder meeting and explain that research is important. Everyone would start shouting "Shut up and gimme my money!"
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This works out. Their stock-market competitor Pfizer is in big trou
Dilbert (Score:2, Funny)
"So, what do you think of my program?"
"I wouldn't buy this."
"You wouldn't buy it, because it's designed for engineers."
"Engineers think the same as marketeers."
"If that were true, we would still be in caves wondering if rocks were edible."
"You know, you could keep recipes on this."
Um, you're missing one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sun.
As far as corporate R&D for IT companies, here's my take...
Microsoft: I have no idea what they spend their billions on, and yes, they do spend a bundle on R&D. They just never have much in the way of either (a) actual products to show for it, or (b) wow technologies like HP PARC. Seriously, considering all they spend, they should be HP PARC. They're not.
IBM: Well, they do make the fastest chips on earth at the moment (POWER6), as well as tons of other things, and the best O/S on the planet (z/OS), not to mention another awesome O/S (OS/400), plus...OK, IBM does great things with R&D.
Google: See Microsoft. Seriously - they have a great search engine. Best in the world. Hands down. And also...oh wait, I guess that's it.
HP: HP has pissed away more technology they've bought than anyone else. VMS? Tru64? Alpha? And then there are things they do that are awesome - Tandem Nonstop - but never integrated into the rest of their line. ARGH! They make great printers, I'll give them that...
Sun: Really forward-thinking, great R&D. The Solaris O/S has been Microsoft's crystal ball for years. DTRACE. ZFS. Java. Even just cool implementations like Thumper. Of course, Sun can't seem to make dime one on any of this...they really do seem to have the most clueless management on earth...a pity.
Did I forget anyone?
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These days, very little research, development and product design is done in the US. It's marketed as done in the US, but in reality, many if not most companies will order designs from no-name design firms across the dam, who specialize in delivering solutions and keeping strict NDAs. The US participation tends to be limited to those who communicate with the foreign designers.
You might want to try explaining this to the tens of thousands of IBM employees in North America.
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I think that thousands of former IBM employees in North America already know.
Re:Designed in Taiwan (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that thousands of former IBM employees in North America already know.
So explain why they're hiring [ibm.com]?
Yes... they may have reduced their helpless desk staff, but R&D is growing
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