Samuel J. "Sam" Palmisano (born July 29, 1951)[1] is a former president and the eighth chief executive officer of IBM until January 2012.[6] He also served as chairman of the company until October 1, 2012.[7]
Palmisano was appointed president and chief operating officer (COO) effective in October 2000.[8] He was promoted to CEO in March 2002, while retaining the title of president, and named chairman effective January 1, 2003. Palmisano announced on October 25, 2011, that he was stepping aside as president and CEO. He was succeeded in these positions by Ginni Rometty.[6]
As of 2009, IBM was the largest IT company in the world and 45th largest company overall.[9][10]
From 1989-1990, he served a one-year stint as executive assistant to then-chairman and CEO John F. Akers. During that time Palmisano was seen as a rising star and he had lunch with former chairman Thomas Watson, Jr. once per month. Palmisano afterwards ran the company's Japanese office.
He was appointed senior vice president and group executive of the Personal Systems Group in 1997. He was then promoted to senior vice president and group executive of IBM Global Services in 1998, during the period when IBM shifted its focus from pure technology to embrace outsourcing and other services. He became senior vice president and group executive of Enterprise Systems in 1999 when the systems group drove IBM's move to adopt the Linuxoperating system.
Before leading IBM Global Services, Palmisano led the IBM strategic outsourcing business and before that, he was president of an IBM subsidiary—Integrated Systems Solutions Corporation—which ultimately became IBM Global Services.[14]
Palmisano was promoted to CEO in March 2002 and named chairman effective January 1, 2003, succeeding the retiring Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. after the Dot-com bubble bust. While his predecessor had saved the company from bankruptcy by downsizing the workforce and cutting costs and then leading IBM's resurgence with systems integration and services consulting (such as e-commerce), Palmisano's goal was to reestablish IBM as a standard-setting company. He was influenced by the Watsons, the company founders who "always defined I.B.M. as a company that did more than sell computers; they believed that it had an important role to play in solving societal challenges".
Palmisano's mandate was to move into new businesses with high-profit margins and potential for innovation. This included purchasing PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting in 2002 so that IBM could go beyond selling computers and software and help customers use technology to solve business challenges (marketing, procurement, and manufacturing). During his tenure, the company also acquired 25 software companies that specialized in data mining and analytics so that IBM could help companies and governments to find patterns in web and internal data. Palmisano also prepared the company for cloud computing, originally known inside IBM as on-demand computing, where the center of innovation would be services and software, delivered over the Internet from data centers and connecting to PCs and other devices.
In 2008, despite the financial crisis and economic recession , he launched I.B.M.’s Smarter Planet initiative which applies computer intelligence to create more efficient systems for numerous applications including utility grids and traffic management. Although the services and consulting businesses, which then-CEO Gerstner had championed, provided most of IBM's revenue, software analytics had higher margins, contributed more profits and had more growth.[10]
Palmisano also led the sale of the PC group to Lenovo which closed in 2005. The move was controversial inside IBM, as it had invented the personal computer in the 1980s, and the PC was one of the company's few products widely used by the masses and created strong brand recognition for IBM. Although it fell behind rivals during the 1990s, that division helped drive sales of other I.B.M. products in corporate accounts, and its purchasing power helped lower the cost of components for larger IBM offerings like mainframes and servers.
As IBM's PC group was profitable and generated around US$20 billion in yearly revenue, the divestiture resulted in IBM ceding the title of the world's largest information technology firm (by revenue) to Hewlett-Packard, the latter whose revenue had increased due to the acquisition of Compaq in 2002. However to Palmisano, moving to new high-margin businesses meant exiting low-margin businesses like PC manufacturing, plus PC manufacturing was becoming commoditized and offered few opportunities for innovation. It took five years but Palmisano was vindicated from 2010 onward as the Post-PC era of technology took hold[failed verification].[10] Also recognizing that drives were becoming a commodity, he sold off IBM's disk drive business to Hitachi and then signed a five-year deal to buy Hitachi drives.
As CEO of IBM, Palmisano has shifted many development and support positions to emerging markets.[15]
He was elected to the board of ExxonMobil in 2006. In 2021, he was voted off the board after an ESG - based shareholder revolt led by activist hedge fund Engine 1. He is also the Honorary Chairman of National Engineers Week 2008.
While CEO of IBM in 2009, Palmisano earned a total compensation of $21,159,289, which included a base salary of $1,800,000, a cash bonus of $4,750,000, stocks granted of $13,517,401, no options, and other compensation of $1,091,888.[17]
In 2010 Palmisano was awarded The Deming Cup, an excellence award presented by the W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness at Columbia Business School, for his ability to drive IBM to new levels of operational excellence and for his role in creating and leading IBM's Global Services business unit.
Palmisano announced on October 25, 2011, that he was stepping aside as president and CEO, being succeeded by Ginni Rometty effective on January 1, 2012.[6] Palmisano continued to serve as chairman of the board until October 1, 2012.[7]
After IBM
Samuel J. Palmisano is the chairman of the Center for Global Enterprise, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution devoted to the study of contemporary corporation, the management science in a globally interconnected world. The CGE was established in 2013 to help educate societal stakeholders – as well as leaders from the private sector, public sector, and academia – on the globally integrated economy and its promise for a better future.[18]
In May 2013, Bloomberg LP appointed Palmisano as an independent advisor for the company's privacy and data standards.[19]
Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the second company after Columbia Data Products to legally reverse engineer the BIOS of the IBM Personal Computer. It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s before being overtaken by Dell in 2001. Struggling to keep up in the price wars against Dell, as well as with a risky acquisition of DEC, Compaq was acquired for US$25 billion by HP in 2002. The Compaq brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued. Since 2013, the brand is currently licensed to third parties for use on electronics in Brazil and India.
Louis Vincent Gerstner Jr. is an American businessman, best known for his tenure as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of IBM from April 1993 until 2002, when he retired as CEO in March and chairman in December. He is largely credited with turning IBM's fortunes around.
Peter Altabef is an American businessman and lawyer. He is currently the Chair and CEO of Unisys, positions he has held since 2018 and 2015, respectively. He also served twice as the company’s president.
John Fellows Akers was an American businessman. He was president (1983–1989), chief executive officer (1985–1993) and chairman (1986–1993) of IBM.
Jim Whitehurst is an American business executive. He has been interim chief executive officer and president of Unity Technologies since October 2023. He was previously the president at IBM, chair of the board and chief executive officer at Red Hat, and chief operating officer at Delta Air Lines. Prior to working at Delta in 2001, he was vice president and director of the Boston Consulting Group and held various management roles at its Chicago, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Atlanta offices.
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Virginia "Ginni" Rometty is an American business executive who was executive chairman of IBM after stepping down as CEO on April 1, 2020. She was previously chairman, president and CEO of IBM, becoming the first woman to head the company. She retired from IBM on December 31, 2020, after a near-40 year career there. Before becoming president and CEO in January 2012, she first joined IBM as a systems engineer in 1981 and subsequently headed global sales, marketing, and strategy.
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↑ "Samuel J. Palmisano"(fee, via Fairfax County Public Library). Newsmakers. Detroit: Gale Biography In Context. 2003. Retrieved February 5, 2011. Gale Document Number: GALE|K1618003640
↑ Suite 1700, The Center for Global Enterprise 200 Park Avenue; York, New; E, Ny 10166 T. 646-632-3742. "Samuel J. Palmisano". The Center for Global Enterprise. Retrieved July 31, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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