Word: ibm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...computer was a 7090 -- then IBM's most complex and costly machine, which retailed for up to $5 million and leased for $70,000 a month. The buyer: a newborn college in Dallas, the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest (GRC), which was later absorbed into the University of Texas system. School records show that the institution's trustees approved the order in January 1962, despite the fact that the school didn't yet have a campus. In 1964 the computer was ready for shipment, but the school could neither afford the machine nor find any space for it. Moreover...
...college met its requirements by canceling its order for a 7090 and instead buying an IBM 1401 -- a simple nonresearch "baby computer" (price: $80,000) that is roughly 100 times less powerful and used for different purposes. "It's like the difference between a BB gun and a cannon," says a former top salesman, Ken Crider, who was "shocked" that IBM management allowed Perot to walk away with a commission on the original order...
...paperwork on the deal no longer exists, but a former IBM executive claims to have reviewed it after Perot resigned. "The proposal stated that GRC would start renting time on other people's equipment, until such time as it made sense to install a 7090," he says. "But IBM doesn't take provisional orders like that." This executive says IBM management in Dallas covered up the incident by quietly absorbing Perot's commission. Why? To save the hide of another colleague, who had approved the deal...
...Texas League Squeeze Play. One of Perot's best accounts was the Southwestern Life Insurance Co., which he inherited in 1958 from fellow salesman Jim Cox, who was promoted to a post in California. Some months earlier, Cox had received an order from Southwestern for a 7070 computer, then IBM's largest commercial unit. Perot had 90 days either to declare the deal dead (and get Cox to return a $10,000 partial commission) or to agree to try to install the machine himself for what was known as an installation commission. If he accepted the risk and failed, however...
...says Perot relented only after Cox surprised his superiors by requesting the right to install the computer himself from California. "I was going to . take it all the way to the top of IBM," he says. "There are very few people who have really tried to cheat me on anything. And, in Ross's mind, he wasn't cheating me at all. That's the frightening part...